Definition of Team Building

Teams are an interesting part in any organisation. Much work in the organisations is interdependent. Each department depends on other department for something or the other. The concept of team is a good approach to ensure the coordination and cooperation among the employees, for accomplishing tasks successfully.

Daft defines team as “a unit of two or more people who interact and coordinate their work to accomplish a common goal for which they are committed and hold themselves accountable. If we think in a broader view, society works as a team, world civilizations evolutes as a team. People together, if can work for a common goal and can accomplish the task, then that group is a team. The main underlying difference between a group and team is, groups don’t have the shared value of missions, but teams have. The individual identity is secondary and the team identity is primary in teams which is not in groups.

Team building and team development

Team Building

Team building is defined as “Philosophy of job design in which employees are viewed as members of interdependent teams instead of as individual workers” Individual employees are identified, united to form a team that stays and works together to achieve the given task.

Team Types

There are different models of team. Depending on the needs of the task assigned, the team type can be decided. The various team types that are effectively used in organisations are

Formal Teams

Informal Teams

Temporary teams

Task teams

Virtual teams

Global teams

Formal Teams: Teams created by the managers of the organisationto carry out a specific task on the lines of achieving organisations goals. It may sometimes have the manger himself as the team leader, and the other members report to the manager.

Formal teams are usually of two types, based on the organisational structure:

Horizontal teams and

Vertical teams

Horizontal teams are created with employees of same hierarchicallevel, from different departments, given with a specific task.

Vertical Teams are composed of a superior and his subordinatesin the formal chain of command. Also called as Command teams, these types of teams include three or four levels of hierarchy.

Informal Teams: Informal teams or groups emerge wheneverpeople come together and interact regularly. Such groups develop within the formal organizational structure. Members of informal teams tend to subordinate some of their individual needs to those of the team as a whole. In return, the team supports and protects the individual members. The activities of informal teams may increase the interests of the members in the organization –meetings at temple every week, or gathering at a indoor   games club or a women’s group may meet to discuss various actions that can make the organization a better place for women to work are examples. These regular meetings may strengthen the members’ ties to each other and help each other at workplace needs.In large corporates where many employees feel that their employer don’t even know their names, these informal teams enable them to share problems, ideas and grievances, thus enabling themselves of creating an identity and support group for them.

Temporary Teams

Teams that are formed for a short time period or for a specific project are called as temporary teams. These are formal teams and are also called as project teams. The teams get disbanded once the project is completed.

Task Teams

Task teams are usually formed for specialized tasks. For example "The India Smart Grid Task Force" is an inter ministerial group of Power Ministry of India. This group serve as government focal point for activities related to Smart Grid.(Power Grid).

The main functions of this task force are

To ensure awareness coordination and integration of diverse activities related to Smart Grid Technologies.

Practices & services for research & development of SMART GRID.

Coordination and integrate other relevant inter governmental activities.

Collaborate on interoperability framework.

Review & validate recommendations from India Smart Grid Forum etc.

Virtual Teams

Virtual teams are teams of people who primarily interact electronically and who may meet face-to-face occasionally. Examples of virtual teams include a team of people working at different geographic sites and a project team whose members telecommute. Teams typically never meet face-to-face, and conduct all project work using VOIP technology and other virtual meeting applications, such as SharePoint.

Virtual team members work separately due to the following factors:

Team members may not be in the same geographical location

It may not be practical to travel to a common work place

Team members work in different shifts

Global Teams

Also called as Cross-country teams, global teams are formed by members of a Multinational Corporation working in different counties come together for a high value task. Team diversity is a competitive advantage, but global teams have unique challenges such as fragmented effort by isolated team members who may confuse meanings and lack clear understanding of goals and tasks of the team. On the upside, high-value global teams use information together to innovate, learn and execute business strategy for a global enterprise to operate effectively.

Team Development

A team has a life cycle. The different stages of a Team life cycle are called as

Forming

Storming

Norming

Performing

Adjourning

This model of team life cycle suggests that the organisational teams move along these five stages. But, it is not generalized on the time period of crossing the stages or staying period in each stage. Some teams may go through some of the stages faster or some teams may reach performing stage slower, it all depends on the individuals capacity and the teams competency. Now, let us examine the stages in detail.

Forming

The early stage of the team is forming. The team members are new to each other, trying to exhibit their good side to impress upon the other members. Some team members may be introvert in nature and would keep a distance from other members. Members would be willing to consider other members opinions and conflicts would be the last resort. An overall mood of happiness and excitement would prevail in the scene. More importance would be given on the personality and behaviour of the individuals than the team task or the team goal. It would be more of a discovery route in nature than a platform for performance.

Storming

This is the stage when people know each other and start expressing openly to others. This is the stage where conflicts and interpersonal issues heads-up among the members. Leadership’s importance will be more. A introspection of team goal and action plan will be the high light of this stage.

Norming

As by this stage the difference of opinions, role conflicts, and belongingness - all comes to sort of settling down. Team members start to feel a sense of being part of team and starts identifying themselves with the team’s identity. Role clarity and individual responsibilities get clearer and members gets used to each other’s behaviour. The important works in this stage are establishing

Teams’ performance expectations

Specific roles

Policies and procedures

Conflict solving procedures

Shaping up team culture

Performing

The fruitful stage is Performing stage. After successfully passing through the earlier stages, the team reaches performing clearly what is expected from them. The relationship between the members gets stronger. Team goal gets focused. Group synergy dominates the team and there will be a considerable increase in the flexibility in roles and functionality. The individual tasks get accomplished amounting to totality of work. The key points are work accomplishments, team commitment, loyalty and trust. The team performance is also appraised, feed backs collected and the performance improvement methods are discussed and implemented.

Adjourning

Adjourning is the end of a team’s life cycle. When the purpose of the team is solved, the team has to be disbanded. Usually, the teams get restructured with different members and new goals. There can be two kinds of adjourning phase – planned and unplanned. Project teams, task teams etc have a planned disbanding once the project is completed. Other team types may be disbanded due to various reasons like members posted in other departments, promotions, mergers, restructuring, transfers, fund deficiency etc. The unplanned disbanding may be stressful for the team mates.

Team Conflicts

Let us now see the problem areas in Teams.

Loss of Individual Identity of achievements:

In teams, a star performer and his achievements may not be focused and recognized as he would have got rewards if he was not in a team and he performed individually. For example, in a team of engine designers, a major obstacle to the design may have been found by a team member.

At the end of the day, the team achievement of designing the engine will be discussed and not his talent of finding the fault in the design. On the other hand, if he worked individually in the department and have found the same fault in his department, his manager would have appreciated and rewarded him for the contribution.

Social Loafing

In a team, there is always a chance of some team members not willing to hard work or contribute as much as others do. The other team members when working hard, he may be on a phone or surfing on the net. It happens all the time. These kind of people, who evades work or not giving equal contribution of work like his team mates are called as social loafers or free riders. This leads to accumulated frustration for other team members and will not yield good result in long run. This we may have experienced while doing our college and school group projects. Some of the students will sweat and strain to complete the project, while some may not do anything, and at the end, the project cover will have all the students name in the group equally.

Reverse Gearing

When some teams reaches higher and higher levels of success, more than the sum total individual performance, some teams performs worse than the individual sum total. That is, in the first case, if they were not in teams, they may not perform up to the high level. In the second case, if they were not in teams, they would have performed better. This is like driving the vehicle in reverse gear, just because the team is formed. If individuals they may win the race. This may be the result of

Lack of commitment

Lack of involvement

Lack of trust on other members

Ineffective team leadership

Social loafing in high percentage

Afraid of accountability

Fears of conflict in the group

Lack of goal clarity for the team

Lack of attention to results

Inefficient performance monitoring

Above all these things, if the belongingness to the team and the bonding between the team members is not achieved, the team performance may not be up to the expectations.

Independence of an individual

The feel of freedom in initiating an idea or working out an experimental an innovation is well done if the individual has to do it. The individual may happily sacrifice to achieve his idea. But, when in team, first, he is frightened of the criticisms he might get when he voices out his ideas. This is worse, in case of lower level employees comes out with brilliant ideas. Second, he may not be willing to sacrifice when in a team, as he might do, when he individually performs. In team, his result of his sacrifice is also divided among the team members. Unless all the team members do an equal sacrifice, he loses his major part of result. That’s why the idea of putting team first doesn’t go well with people with strong and independent culture.