Team Work Effectiveness
There are many standard to evaluate where a team work effectively. According to Mcshane, Olekalns, Travaglione (2011), a team is effective when it benefits its organization, its member and its own survival. Based on my experience I feel that a team work effectively not only when it finishes its objective on time and accurately, but it also motivates its member in order to survival. Motivation can increase responsibility of members in working. Being responsible in teamwork is very important because teamwork is a group of people who depend on each other to finish objective.
As a result, when any members are not responsible for their tasks other people will feel uncomfortable or even angry, which can influence negatively to results. For example, in week 5, our team played role as ML team which had to provide ID and pass of keepandshare website for whole class. Unfortunately, we got trouble when account had not worked. Additionally, this is the first time we work in team; therefore, some problem still happen. To be more specific, sometimes in our team, there are still some arguments contributes to debate and then, members feel uncomfortable and we did the tasks not very well.
What is more, an effective team also depends a lot on leadership. Mcshane, Olekalns, Travaglione (2011) claim that an effective leader always want to create good working environment for members and support them willingly instead of put leadership on the position of power. During short-time I led my team, I’ve learned that this point is reality because, for example, sometimes I did not understand feeling of other members in my team so some feel unconfident and results were affected negatively. There are some solutions to make a team more effective.
Firstly, an effective team should have clarity of direction. Each team member has to have a specific purpose when working so as to focus on the main jobs. When everyone has a clear goal, the team can work efficiently, so the team effectiveness could be greater. Secondly, it is necessary to create an appropriate structure and strict rules to build an effective team. There are some different people in one team so that there are competing interests and personality clashes in team and that could lead to conflicts between members.
Therefore, leader has a very important role in the team. The leader must contribute some rules to clarify for the team what is and is not acceptable behavior. Furthermore, leadership requirement for contributing an effective team is that the team has the appropriate skills to succeed. A common think in constructing teams is that having enough members to work on the objectives will lead to team effectiveness. It is a common mistake because more people does not mean more effective if they are not the suitable people for what is being asked to do.
The leader is responsible for making sure that the team has sufficient skills and resources to fulfill its submissions. Finally, one of the most important factors of contributing team effectiveness is the respect. Each team members in one team need to listen many different ideas of other members and respect their ideas. Arguments in the team are good when that lead to an agreement between team members at the end. Each team members should be polite in communication to avoid conflicts which can make the team ineffective.
