Team work & Team building

1. Team work & Team building • To understand the basic concepts and ideas of team work and team building. • To appreciate the strengths and difficulties of working as a team. • To learn the basics of promoting team work in the organization.

2. Types of Teams • Formal versus informal • Mechanical versus organic • Inter-team versus intra-team • Inter-agency versus intra-agency • Same discipline versus different disciplines • User-involved versus user-led

3. Synergy of Teams • Synergy: the creation of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. • Usefulness of synergy includes: • increasing resources for problem solving • improving quality of decision making • enhancing members’ commitments to tasks • fostering creativity and innovation • satisfying individual needs for growth

4. Task Activities of a Team • Initiating • Information sharing • Summarizing • Elaborating • Opinion giving • Distributed leadership

5. Maintenance Activities of a Team • Gatekeeping • Encouraging • Harmonizing • Reducing tension • Norming • Self-managing

6. Avoidance of disruptive activities or behavior • Being aggressive • Blocking • Self-confessing • Seeking sympathy • Competing • Withdrawal • Seeking recognition

7. Obstacles to Team Work • Personality conflicts: Individual differences in personality and work style may disrupt the group. • Task ambiguity: Unclear agendas and ill-defined problems. • Free riding: Diffusion of individual efforts and responsibilities. • Poor readiness to work: Wasting of time in unprepared meetings

8. Characteristics of High Performance Teams • A clear and elevating goal • A task-driven, result-oriented structure • Competent and committed members • A collaborative climate • External support, recognition and delegation • Strong, principled and yet democratic leadership

9. Team cohesiveness versus performance norms • Low productivity: strong commitments to harmful norms • Low to moderate productivity: weak commitments to harmful norms • High productivity: strong commitments to supportive norms • Moderate productivity: weak commitments to supportive norms

10. Teamthink/Groupthink • Teamthink or Groupthink is the tendency for highly cohesive groups to lose their critical evaluative capabilities for undermining their weaknesses and promoting their strengths. Because of undesirable competition and disruption between teams, alienation will be resulted accordingly.

11. Symptoms of Groupthink • Illusions of group invulnerability • Belief in inherent group morality • Applying direct pressure to ‘deviants’ to conform to group wishes • Self-censorship by members • Accepting consensus prematurely • Protecting the team from hearing disturbing viewpoints from outsiders

12. How to handle groupthink • Encourage a sharing of viewpoints • Create subgroups to work on the same problem and then share their proposed solutions • Assign one member to play a ‘devil’s advocate’ role at each group meeting • Review the decision after consensus is apparently achieved

13. Inputs of Team building • Organizational setting: resources, technology, structures, atmosphere • Nature of task: clarity and complexity • Group size: number of members • Membership characteristics: abilities, values and personalities • User participation: primary versus secondary users

14. Throughputs of team building • The way members interact and work together to transform inputs into outputs. • The process through which ideas and contribution of team members are recognized.

15. Outputs of team building • Accomplishment of desired outcomes as follows: - task performance and productivity - human resource maintenance and development - prevention of disruptive groupthink and team alienation

16. Task Functions • Information and opinion giver • information and opinion seeker • starter • direction giver • summariser • co-ordinator • diagnoser • energiser • reality tester • evaluator

17. Task Needs • Defining the task • Making a plan • allocating work • controlling work quality • checking performance against the plan • adjusting the plan

18. Maintenance Functions • encourager of participation • Harmoniser • tension reliever • communication helper • evaluator of emotional climate • process observer • standard setter • active listener • trust builder • interpersonal problem solver

19. Maintenance Needs • Setting standards • maintaining discipline • building team spirit • encouraging, motivating, giving a sense of purpose • ensuring communication with the group • training the group as a group

20. Self-oriented Behaviour • dominating • blocking • recognition seeking • pairing up • withdrawing • playboying

21. Individual Needs • attending to personal problems • encouraging individuals • giving status • recognising and using individual abilities • training the individual