Analyses of factors that lead to successful team building

Successful team building

Appreciating interpersonal dynamics in teams can help managers identify the optimal arrangement of individuals to ensure team success and high performance. When individuals gather to achieve a common goal, many interpersonal dynamics play a role in whether or not the team will be successful. Sometimes a team can engage well together and succeed at anything they attempt; however, other teams, regardless of available resources, seem to flounder in failure. So, how can leaders determine whether a team will exhibit effective team performance?  This paper seeks to answer such questions that may rise by analysing factors that lead to successful team building.

v Communication 

Proficient communication mechanisms are essential to develop effective teams. In order to understand the scope of a goal and agree upon a path to reach that goal, teams must develop an effective method of communication. Indicators of effective team communication include: mellow conversation tones, willingness to consider all opinions, desire to enhance communication frequency, effective conflict resolution, and efficient decision-making processes.

Furthermore, to foster team cohesion, employee satisfaction and motivation, organizations should execute a formal conflict resolution process in cases where a team cannot effectively resolve conflict internally. Communication is the key to any successful team effort. Not only must all team members know the goals and target dates for accomplishing those objectives, but they must know how the group is progressing toward meeting those goals. Bear in mind that communication is the single most important factor in successful teamwork. Facilitating communication does not mean holding meetings all the time. Instead it means setting an example by remaining open to suggestions and concerns, by asking questions and offering help, and by doing everything you can to avoid confusion in your own communication.

v Cohesiveness

The first factor to consider in successful team building is how interconnected members are with one another. Once a team is highly interrelated, a member’s commitment and willingness to strive for excellence thrives. Team cohesion affects the extent to which members like one another, get along with each other, and trust and respect one another’s abilities and opinions. Although these characteristics are difficult to observe, managers can look for signs that team members are well-acquainted past superficial meet-and-greet topics. Managers can also determine whether team members equally participate in group discussions and activities rather than forming cliques or subgroups of cohesive units.

Furthermore, the most critical success factor for a team is the way in which the team members relate to each other and the manager and vice-versa. This chemistry between the team members and the manager and within the team determines to a large extent the success or failure of the team. Once the elements of trust, integrity and commitment are established within the team and the manager or the leader communicates the same effectively to all the team members, the team is well on its way to becoming a high performing one. The bottom-line here is that the symbiotic relationship between the team members where each gives and takes from the other team members is the most crucial aspect that determines the success of the team.

v Groupthink

Groupthink is a propensity for decision-making teams to suppress opposing viewpoints in order to preserve group harmony. This observable fact can occur because individual team members have an overwhelming desire to be accepted and teams want to minimize conflict. When determining the degree to which a team is experiencing groupthink, a manager can evaluate whether the team is exerting an excessive amount of dominating characteristics. Other signs of groupthink include individual conformity, apathy toward team goals and outcomes, peer-pressure exerted by leaders within the team, and discussions that tend to be one-sided. There is need to Emphasize the importance of each team member's contribution and demonstrate how all of their jobs operate together to move the entire team closer to its goal.

v Homogeneity

Homogeneity is the extent to which members are similar or different to one another. The difficulty for most project managers is finding the right balance between overly homogenous and overly heterogeneous teams. When evaluating team homogeneity, a manager can consider similarities and differences in personal characteristics, education, skills, abilities, generational backgrounds, cultural background, and income levels.

Teams that are homogenous tend to be highly cohesive and can easily develop effective communication methods that reduce conflict. However, too much homogeneity leads to greater instances of groupthink. Alternatively, teams that are highly heterogeneous have an advantage because members are highly diverse, which leads to more instances of creativity, ingenuity, and resourceful productivity. However, teams that are too diverse may limit the degree to which members can relate to one another and effectively communicate.

v Role Identity

Role identity is the extent to which members are capable of assuming different roles throughout the team structure, thus diversifying efforts and developing subject matter experts. This emphasizes improving team members' understanding of their own and others' respective roles and duties. This is intended to reduce ambiguity and foster understanding of the importance of structure by activities aimed at defining and adjusting roles. The diverse skills and knowledge that members bring to a team provide a large range of capabilities necessary to achieve a goal. Managers can observe the extent to which a team can recognize the individual potential in each member and identify the role best suited for that member. If not, a team cannot be expected to be highly functional and perform well.

v Stability

The sixth factor that significantly influences team performance is the degree of stability among members and project leaders. Teams that have lower turnover rates experience higher levels of group cohesion, better communication methods, and more effective role identity. In addition to simply evaluating turnover rates, managers can evaluate the degree to which members are comfortably interdependent with one another, which comes with stable and trusting relationships.

v Goals

Each team must have clearly measurable goals and objectives to function properly. Whether management establishes the goals or the team sets them collaboratively, there need to be clear indicators or benchmarks to indicate the progress the team is making. Once the goals are in place, each team member can perform his assigned tasks. These assigned tasks might be similar in nature, or they might draw on the strengths of each individual team member. For this reason, it's important either to appoint or elect one person to lead the team based on that person's leadership qualities. That person is then responsible for encouraging the rest of the team to work to meet the project goals.

v Team Size

By evaluating a team’s size, managers are able to maximize productivity to ensure high levels of team performance. The greater number of members within a team the more resources available to achieve a goal. However, as team size increases, so does the number of conflicts resulting in decreased levels of cohesion and inefficient productivity. To evaluate whether a team is too large or small, managers must consider how effectively and harmoniously members work together and whether the required tasks are being efficiently accomplished by all members of the team.

In conclusion, assigning workers to teams is a good way to maximize the strengths of each individual. Effective team building doesn't stop with making team assignments. For any group of individuals to work together successfully, you need to put a number of team building strategies in place. These strategies make the most out of the team's efforts to accomplish its assigned task.

Diversity initiatives help an organisation keep a competitive Human Resource advantage

Workplace Diversity

Diversity management is the key to growth in today’s fiercely competitive global marketplace. Organizations that seek global market relevancy must embrace diversity in how they think, act and innovate.  Diversity can no longer just be about making the numbers, but rather how an organization treats its people authentically down to the roots of its business model. In today’s new workplace, diversity management is a time sensitive business imperative. Modern work setting requires for people from different culture, religion, beliefs, background, race and so forth. In order to manage this, companies need to focus on the needs of clients, suppliers, employees and society and they need to implement diversity since it has a great impact in maximising productivity and high competitive human resource advantage. However, if an organisation fails to manage diversity wisely it may lead to high employee turnover, high probability of tension within the organisation which will lead to negative work behaviour reducing employee performance and also tarnish the reputation of the organisation.

Cox, (2001), defined diversity as the variation of social and cultural identities among people existing together in a defined employment or market setting. While, William and O’Reilly (1998) also defined diversity as a degree of heterogeneity among team members on specified demographic dimensions, their theory aims to explain how such heterogeneity affect team process and performance. Diversity management refers to the voluntary organisational actions that are designed to create through deliberate policies and programs greater inclusion of employees from different background into the formal and informal organisation structure Diversity can reduce lawsuits and turnover in a workforce and it increase team performance, better customer services and it enhances creativeness and innovation. Hence diversity initiatives helps an organisation keep a competitive Human Resource advantage.

According to Hubbard (2004), diversity management is about recognising that customers and clients come from different backgrounds. In essence, global diversity management is defined to relate to the management of workforces (citizens and immigrants) in different countries (Mor Barak, 2005). It is management discipline that concern how effectively a global workforce can be managed in achieving competitive advantage and business benefits, while being influenced to a large extent by organizational strategy and pressures from local labour and product markets (Florkowski 1996). Mor Barak (2005) recognizes that the cultural dimension of diversity program has strong sensitivity when corporations faced different type of customers and markets and it could be used to solve problem related to multicultural teams, gaining new market shares and product development. This, effectively managing a global workforce is considered to be critical in achieving benefits for business and in sustaining international competitive advantage (Florkowski 1996) as well as workforce mobilization (Konrad 2003). To cap, diversity initiatives helps an organisation keep a competitive Human Resource advantages.

Diversity improves customer services because the all range of customers could be represented inside the company. By listening employees’ needs, organizations could carry out customers’ needs. Diversity influences also the corporate reputation and environment. The environment improves employees’ satisfaction; consequently, if employees are satisfied, they will be more motivated and more efficient in their job. (Singh and Point, 2005), “diversity creates rich and unique work atmosphere”. That means, managing environment in which evolved the diversity is an important challenge for companies and permits to create a unique atmosphere in which each individual have his place and could develop his competences and skills in order to serve the organization and in order to achieve the firm’s objectives. Adapting to the needs of the employees helps an organisation keep a competitive Human Resource advantage.

Walson and al., 1997, (Mc Mahon and al., 1998), argued that heterogeneous groups are more efficient in identifying and solving problems. This idea is also develop by Bhadury and al. (2000). This argument makes diversity a component of the organization’s competitive advantage as well. This part will be really interesting to discuss later on the thesis because I would like to carry out why and how human resource diversity could be a strategic asset for organization. They also argued that diversity reduces discrimination and creates opportunities for employees. Singh and Point (2005), were arguing that diversity creates opportunities for organization. Hence diversity initiatives helps an organisation keep a competitive Human Resource advantage.

Diversity management within an organisation will create employee commitment since the workers no longer live and work in an insular market place they are now part of worldwide economy with competition coming from almost every continent. Employee involvement and participation will create a sense of belonging thus the employees will feel that they are part and parcel of the organisation thereby increasing productivity due to employee’s loyalty. Metzler (2003) emphasises the initiation of diversity management as a key to manage the competitive and commitment of employees in an organisation. These goals and objectives require a fundamental philosophy and shift in the strategies to account for more various and openness to diversity in employee characteristics and ways of working than member’s background are highly similar. To cap, diversity initiatives helps an organisation keep a competitive Human Resources advantages.

However, many organizations are finding that the goal of creating a multicultural work culture that both welcomes and leverages diversity remains elusive. In addition, Metzler (2003) lists the ten reasons why diversity initiatives fail: 1. Failure to address the deeper issues of discrimination and marginalization. 2. Failure to view diversity as organizational change. 3. Failure to examine how much change an organization can accommodate and in what increments. 4. Failure to address systemic issues such as organization's practices, policies, procedures and unwritten informal rules. 5. Failure to clearly and comprehensively articulate why an organization is devoting time, effort and resources to a diversity initiative. 6. Failure to engage white men in diversity discussion involving blacks or minority group. 7. Poor diversity training and education. 8. Lack of authentic diversity leadership. 9. Selecting incompetent consultants. 10. Lack of accountability. Though efforts are made, promoting workforce diversity has been challenging in the practical way.

In conclusion, it is acceptable to state that there is no "best way" to manage diversity. The execution of the workforce diversity concept could be vastly different from country to country, from company to company. The very success of its implementation is depending on business needs and workforce issues as well as situational factors, such as the organizational culture and workplace environment. While a broad range of issues is covered, it should be noted that "one size does not fit all" as organizations are in different stages of development regarding workplace diversity. Ultimately, the strength of commitment by the CEO, senior management and HR leadership will determine whether the organization successfully leverages workforce diversity, in achieving competitive advantage. However, many organizations are finding that the goal of creating a multicultural work culture that both welcomes and leverages diversity remains elusive. Efforts of promoting workforce diversity has been challenging in the practical way.

Motivation can only come from within. Discuss

Motivation

Eric Ziramba:

The thrust of this essay is to discuss the notion that motivation can only came from within and attempts from other people to motivate have little lasting influence. In order to come up with a best argument, it is important to define the term motivation. Motivation can be defined as the direction and persistence of action. It is concerned with why people choose a particular course of action in preference to others, and why they continue with a chosen action often over a long period of time and in the face of difficulties and problems. Mitchell (1982) identifies four common characteristics of motivation, which underline the definition of motivation, which are: motivation as an individual phenomenon, as intentional, motivation as multifaceted and as a purpose of motivational theories to predict behavior. From the above definition of motivation, it shows that employees are not only motivated from within, but are also other extrinsic motivational factors that help pushing up a person to reach the expectant or set goal.

Maslow (1943) basically proposed that people are wanting beings, they always want more and more, and what they want depends on what they already have. He suggested that human needs are arranged in series of levels, a hierarchy of importance or a hierarchy of needs. Maslow used the terms Physiology, Safety, Belongingness and Love, Esteem and Self-Actualization to describe the pattern that human motivation generally move through.

More so, Maslow suggested that if motivation is driven from the existence of unsatisfied needs, therefore it helps manager to understand the needs which are more important for individual employee. In this case they will be an opportunity to motivate employees through the management style, taking example of the physiological needs, the management can provide break and wages that are sufficient to purchase the essentials of life. From this view employees can be motivated both intrinsically and extrinsically.

While Maslow’s hierarchy makes sense, it is important to note that not all people are driven by the same needs, at any time, different people are may be motivated by entirely different factors. In fact, there is evidence of that contradicts the order of needs specified by the model. For example, some people prefer to place social needs before others. However, drawing from the model, people are mostly motivated from within.

Like Maslow, Alderfer (1972) agrees that individuals progresses through a hierarchy from existence needs to relatedness needs and to growth needs as the lower-level needs became satisfied. However, Alderfer suggests that these needs are more of a continuum than hierarchical levels. He propounds that more that one need maybe activated at the same time. He also came up with a frustration-regression process with an example that if an individual is continually frustrated in attempting to satisfy growth needs, relatedness need may reassume most importance. Like Maslow the theory is more likely to conclude that employees are driven from within. In support Whitmore (2002) suggest that “Self-belief and meaningful work are the fundamental bedrock that underlines business performance. Of course, pay and conditions are important too but we know that. It is these two that we barely recognized…..”

Further more, Herzberg (1959) agues that attempts by other people to motivate only last for a short time. He added on in his hygiene theory that the so-called dissatisfaction factors or the hygiene factors motivates employees to work but his emphasis was that it won’t last long because the motivation factors that determines whether there is satisfaction or no satisfaction are intrinsic to the job itself. Hygiene factors can be roughly related to the Maslow’s lower-level needs and motivators to higher-level needs. To motivate workers to do their best, managers must give proper attention to the motivators and growth factors. However, Herzberg gave good performance as motivator that leads to job satisfaction rather than reverse. Crainer and Dearlove (2001) added that “It is self development, career management and self management learning that can be seen as a motivator drawing from Herzberg’s insight”. In other words Herzberg is giving credits to self motivation.

A person’s effectiveness in certain job functions are influenced by an employees need to achieve, to have affiliation and power, Mc Clelland (1988). People with higher need for achievement seek to excel and thus tend to avoid both low-risk and high-risk situations. In high-risk projects, achievers see the outcome as one of chance rather than one’s own effort. High risk achievers are motivated by other high risk achievers hence motivated by other people. This Mc Clelland’s work originated from the investigations into the relationship between hunger needs and the extent to which imaginary of food dominates thought processes.

More so, people with high need for affiliation needs harmonious relationship with other people, be it other employees or the management, and they need to feel accepted by other people. High need affiliation individuals prefer work that provides significant personal interaction. They perform well in client interaction situation, hence motivated by other people. In addition to Mc Clelland’s theory of needs, people’s need for power can be a motive. Those who need personal power want to direct others, and this need often is perceived as undesirable. In most cases people who need power are self-centered people, people who want to achieve self goals. The first three motives of Mc Clelland’s theory correspond to Maslow’s self-actualization and love needs and they are relatively intrinsic. Drawing from this people are motivated mostly from within in order reach the highest point of the pyramid,

However, some writers like Mc Gregor (1960) assumes that people has no ambition, no wants nor responsibility, and would rather follow than lead. With this alone it shows that people are motivated form outside factors and that they need a push or an external force to pull them up. Mc Gregor an American psychologist in his theory X of 1960 gave a conclusion that are gullible and not particularly intelligent, and also that employees dislike work. Essentially, his theory assumes that people only work for money and security hence he dismissed issues like esteem and self actualization proposed by Maslow. In his work, people are only motivated by money and having security and are not internally motivated since people dislike work.

In contrary, Mc Gregor (1960) however, proposed the Y theory assuming that higher level needs of esteem and self actualization are continuing needs in that they are never completely satisfied. As such, it is these higher-level needs though which employees are motivated or can best be motivated. His Y theory propounds that employees are motivated from within rather than externally, this is because employees actually want to reach the highest level-needs. Employees are self directed to meet their work objectives, from these, people are only working from their heart and they took work natural as play or rest. People will be committed to their work if reward favors to address higher-level of needs such as self actualization. Under those assumptions, there is any opportunity to align personal goals and organizational by using the worker’s own quest for fulfillment as a motivator.

Process theories, or extrinsic theories, attempt to identify the relationships among the dynamic variables that make up motivation and the action required to behavior and actions. They provide a further contribution to the understanding of complex nature of work motivation. Expectancy-based model, equity theory and the goal theory are some of the extrinsic theories that explain the nature of motivation at work. The underlying basis of expectancy theory is that people are motivated by the expected result of their action. Motivation is the function of effort expended and the expectations that rewards. Vroom (1964) propounds that people prefer certain outcomes from their behavior over others. In the expectancy theory, there is a motivational force, and that force is used to reach the desired outcome. However Porter and Lawler (1968) goes beyond motivational force and consider performance as a whole. They pointed out that motivational force does not lead directly to performance but it is by individual ability and traits and by the person’s role perceptions. Hence Porter and Lawler denies extrinsic force as a source of motivation. Porter and Lawler, suggest that effort does not lead directly to performance but it is influenced by individual characteristics. Factors such as intelligence, skills, knowledge and personality affect the ability to perform a given activity.

Equity theory as proposed by Adams (1963) focuses on people’s feelings of how fair they have been treated in comparison with the treatment of others. What the theory is saying in simple is that employees get motivated if they are treated fairly. However if there is a feeling of inequity, it may cause tensions which is an unpleasant experience, but inequity can motivate a person to remove or reduce it.

Another process usually considered under the heading of motivation to work is the goal theory. The theory is based mainly the work of Locke (1975). The basic premise of goal theory is that people goal and intensions play an important in determining behavior. Locke accepts the importance of perceived value, as in directed in expectancy theory. He concluded that setting a goal motivates employees to reach the desired outcome.

To cap it all, Adlar (2006) concluded that fifty percent of motivation comes from within and 50% from the environment, especially from the leadership encountered there. Fifty-fifty rule in motivation does not claim to identify the different proportions in equation exactly. It is more likely a rough and ready rule of the thumb. In effect it says no more than a substantial part of motivation lies with a person while a substantial part lies, so to speak, outside and beyond control. Therefore motivation comes from both sides.