Everyone has been part of a team at some point, whether it be work team, management team, project teams, or sport team. Each type presents their own challenges, but when organized right, a team can skillfully and efficiently reach their goals. Considering aspects such as member personality, diverse backgrounds, commitment, goal interdependence, defined roles and accountability and communication when building a team can help it perform more effectively.
Working on a team with someone that has a conflicting personality can be very hard. Building an effective team does not mean recruiting people with identical personalities. It may be tempting as people with like personalities seem to feel comfortable around one another. The key to building this effective team is finding members with personalities that complement the team. In other words find people with skills to make up where others lack. For example, some people are natural leaders while others just want to be told what to do and get their part done, followers. Though some members may not be extroverted, it is important that they still feel comfortable enough to contribute to the team as it is proven to be a defining characteristic to successful teams. “Everyone on the team talks and listens in roughly equal measure, keeping contributions short and sweet.” (Pentland, 65) When the right mix of people are brought together, a great team can have high productivity while suffering from little conflict. Strong personalities within teams can harm the team dynamic as they may stifle the contribution of new ideas from members. “We have no doubt that the high performing community that emerged was a direct result of the flexible and open team structure that supported the interaction of its members.”(Davis 44) Probably the most important person on a team is the leader, whether it is appointed or assumed. They can act as the gatekeeper making sure that there is no one sole contributor and all members ideas are at least heard and considered as a viable solution. The leader personality is described as “strong in innovativeness, for instance, might learn how to champion change, thus encouraging his/her team to achieve results in new and more creative ways.” (Zenger et al., 87) A team can have a great mix of personalities, but without the other aspects, the team’s effectiveness may suffer.
One of these other important aspects in building an effective team is diverse backgrounds among the members, which ties directly to member personalities. The Organizational Behavior textbook describes diversity best by stating, “Diversity in teams is beneficial because it provides a larger pool of knowledge and perspectives from which a team can draw as it carries out its work.”(Colquitt, Lepine, and Wesson 362) The article, “What makes high-performance teams excel?” gives an excellent example of a project that had a diverse team, “HPRDT was a very diverse group of more than 50 men and women. They came from AMD, Chartered, Sony, Toshiba, and others, and from at least eight different countries including Japan, U.S., Thailand, China, and Malaysia, and ranged in age from mid-20s to late- 50s” (Davis 43). The education level that each team member had ranged from two year associate degree to master’s degree in fields such as chemistry, engineering, or science. “The goal was to bring a complex and novel 90-nanometer semiconductor technology to market within a tight timeframe” (Davis 43). With the team member’s time limited, the team pulled from their individual areas of expertise and contributed their ideas toward shared goal of production of a new product. The team found that they needed “dedicated knowledge, skills, expertise, and coordination” to complete their “technological assignment” (Davis 43). Diverse backgrounds are not limited to only education, it is open to gender, nationalities, experience levels, sexual orientation, and previous experience. When team members feel their personal experiences can help in reaching final goal, it may assist in building commitment.
The final goal will never happen if the team is not willing to see it through to the end, which makes having committed team members a vital part in building an effective team. “Commitment, if it is to be sustained, ought to reach beyond the organization to each individual’s stake in a successful outcome.” (Dubin, 47) The first critical part of making any goal happen is getting the members of the team passionate about reaching the end result and increasing their normative commitment. Once they are personally invested in the final goals, the quality of their work will be improved. Another way to get high quality work out of your team members is to give them a challenge that is just outside of their comfort zone, and believe that they can accomplish it. “When a business leader takes on a challenge that requires people to commit and perform in ways they never have before, one of the possible outcomes might be a high-performance organization and culture” (Dubin, 46) A strong leader understands the importance of a strong team’s commitment to the final goal and it becomes their duty of setting up the right framework to accomplish the goal within a timely manner. “It’s part of creating an environment of “no back door,” where people are free to invent and deliberate in a way that makes the commitment a choice, not a directive.” (Dubin, 47) Commitment can give way to withdrawal behavior when the goal seems unreachable from the beginning or has a long time table laid out, as some may get bored with the project at hand. An example of this would be Paul Barron, managing director of United Kingdom Ruston Gas Turbine who stated “it may have seemed a little crazy to some people at the time, but what we did was set forth an objective of doubling the company in every way.” (Dubin, 47) This leads into our next aspect of building an effective team, goal interdependence.
No amount of work among team members will be worth it if they are all working toward a different goal. Goal interdependence occurs when team members have a shared vision of the team’s goal and align their individual goals to match up. Teams often develop a roadmap that identifies “all the key elements and activities” that are absolutely “critical and needed to be acted on” in order for their final goal to be reached (Davis 42). Goal interdependence requires a great deal of collaboration and communication to define the exact goal, most often done during the brainstorming leg of a project. Many debates may breakout during brainstorming as members encounter task conflict, as they discuss what direction they should take the project. A roadmap allows the team to set individual goals and delegate projects that will be combined to form the final version of the project. Once decision infirmity is established, the group can split apart and work on their individual assignments. It is often seen among effective teams that once all the individual projects and collaborative projects are done, the final project is purely a matter of assembly and polishing. Dependent upon the length and complexity of the project, many teams create a mission statement, to help all members have a “shared reference point” and clearly define the “project’s specific objectives to be communicated and discussed” during their meetings. (Davis 43). A subsequent aspect that correlates with goal interdependence is groupthink, which occurs when the team becomes more focused on creating cohesion between team members than the actual goal the team was formed to accomplish. Goal interdependence is a primary point of our theoretical model because it truly portrays that as a team all members are striving to be effective and have a shared vision of the outcome and in result be successful.
Another aspect in building an effective team is assigning member roles, and engaging in accountability. One of the first steps in forming a team is deciding who is going to do what, and how they are going to contribute. Everyone has their own strengths and abilities and when it comes to assigning roles it is important to distribute the roles based on people’s strong suits. “Every member of a high performance team possesses unique knowledge that contributes to the development and refinement of their goal” (Davis 41). Each person on the team brings many different attributes to the table due to diverse backgrounds, different ideas, and creativity. With every role comes responsibility and your team relies on your to complete your task and role to the best of your ability. Working as a team is very important just as Hatzenback and Smith define a team as “a group of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose and set of performance goals and hold themselves mutually accountable” (Davis 43). Every member must be present and are accountable for their duties, as there are people that are counting on your contributions. When a team has a roadmap to finish their project, it allows them to hold a team member accountable when certain portions of the projects are not completed on time. Knowing who is on each portion of the project makes collaboration easier. “People are accountable along many dimensions simultaneously, attending to multiple projects and using their networks to assemble resources for all those projects, often without going through a decision-making hierarchy.” (Kanter, 75-76) Having “cooperation and engagement” and “open and flexible participation” (Davis, 43) allows a team to assist members with their portions when needed.
When creating an effective team, the last vital aspect is communication. In order for a team to work efficiently and to be successful they must be able to communicate thoroughly with one another. Over the history of all communication forms “language is a relatively recent development”, but to this day it“ still shape how we make decisions and coordinate work among ourselves” (Pentland 62). The importance of communication is not realized until it fails. An example could be a team member that has a great idea but cannot express clearly and comprehensively enough for the rest of the team to see its potential. The article called “The New Science of Building Great Teams,” stated that “The most valuable form of communication is face-to-face” (Pentland, 65). All forms of communication are crucial to the success of a team but in face-to face communication is by far the most effective. Studies show that “35% of the variation in a team’s performance can be accounted for simply by the number of face-to-face exchanges among team members” (Pentland 66). A study was performed while equipping all the members of those teams with electronic badges that collected data on their individual communication behavior capturing their tone of voice, body language, whom they talked to and how much. The results showed “communication indeed plays a critical role in building successful teams” (Pentland 62). How to build a team and how well they work together may not be through individual reasoning and talent, the “best way to build a great team is not to select individuals for their smarts or accomplishments but to learn how they communicate” (Pentland 65). No matter the time, day, or year, communication will always be a leading factor in every team, or event in order to be truly successful.
In conclusion, building an effective team takes a combination of many aspects including member personality, diverse backgrounds, commitment, goal interdependence, defined roles and accountability, and communication. Effective teams draw from the members greatest personality traits to assign tasks that will benefit the team. Member diversity and backgrounds help all members to see project from a different perspective. Nothing happens in a group unless all members are committed to the project and willing to see it through to the end. Goal interdependence is important as it guarantees that all members are working towards the same end goal. Defining roles make sure each member knows what their contributions are and are willing to carry them through. Finally, communication is the ability to clearly and throughly explain an idea is a large part of building an effective team. These important elements are the essential building blocks to an effective team.
Working on a team with someone that has a conflicting personality can be very hard. Building an effective team does not mean recruiting people with identical personalities. It may be tempting as people with like personalities seem to feel comfortable around one another. The key to building this effective team is finding members with personalities that complement the team. In other words find people with skills to make up where others lack. For example, some people are natural leaders while others just want to be told what to do and get their part done, followers. Though some members may not be extroverted, it is important that they still feel comfortable enough to contribute to the team as it is proven to be a defining characteristic to successful teams. “Everyone on the team talks and listens in roughly equal measure, keeping contributions short and sweet.” (Pentland, 65) When the right mix of people are brought together, a great team can have high productivity while suffering from little conflict. Strong personalities within teams can harm the team dynamic as they may stifle the contribution of new ideas from members. “We have no doubt that the high performing community that emerged was a direct result of the flexible and open team structure that supported the interaction of its members.”(Davis 44) Probably the most important person on a team is the leader, whether it is appointed or assumed. They can act as the gatekeeper making sure that there is no one sole contributor and all members ideas are at least heard and considered as a viable solution. The leader personality is described as “strong in innovativeness, for instance, might learn how to champion change, thus encouraging his/her team to achieve results in new and more creative ways.” (Zenger et al., 87) A team can have a great mix of personalities, but without the other aspects, the team’s effectiveness may suffer.
One of these other important aspects in building an effective team is diverse backgrounds among the members, which ties directly to member personalities. The Organizational Behavior textbook describes diversity best by stating, “Diversity in teams is beneficial because it provides a larger pool of knowledge and perspectives from which a team can draw as it carries out its work.”(Colquitt, Lepine, and Wesson 362) The article, “What makes high-performance teams excel?” gives an excellent example of a project that had a diverse team, “HPRDT was a very diverse group of more than 50 men and women. They came from AMD, Chartered, Sony, Toshiba, and others, and from at least eight different countries including Japan, U.S., Thailand, China, and Malaysia, and ranged in age from mid-20s to late- 50s” (Davis 43). The education level that each team member had ranged from two year associate degree to master’s degree in fields such as chemistry, engineering, or science. “The goal was to bring a complex and novel 90-nanometer semiconductor technology to market within a tight timeframe” (Davis 43). With the team member’s time limited, the team pulled from their individual areas of expertise and contributed their ideas toward shared goal of production of a new product. The team found that they needed “dedicated knowledge, skills, expertise, and coordination” to complete their “technological assignment” (Davis 43). Diverse backgrounds are not limited to only education, it is open to gender, nationalities, experience levels, sexual orientation, and previous experience. When team members feel their personal experiences can help in reaching final goal, it may assist in building commitment.
The final goal will never happen if the team is not willing to see it through to the end, which makes having committed team members a vital part in building an effective team. “Commitment, if it is to be sustained, ought to reach beyond the organization to each individual’s stake in a successful outcome.” (Dubin, 47) The first critical part of making any goal happen is getting the members of the team passionate about reaching the end result and increasing their normative commitment. Once they are personally invested in the final goals, the quality of their work will be improved. Another way to get high quality work out of your team members is to give them a challenge that is just outside of their comfort zone, and believe that they can accomplish it. “When a business leader takes on a challenge that requires people to commit and perform in ways they never have before, one of the possible outcomes might be a high-performance organization and culture” (Dubin, 46) A strong leader understands the importance of a strong team’s commitment to the final goal and it becomes their duty of setting up the right framework to accomplish the goal within a timely manner. “It’s part of creating an environment of “no back door,” where people are free to invent and deliberate in a way that makes the commitment a choice, not a directive.” (Dubin, 47) Commitment can give way to withdrawal behavior when the goal seems unreachable from the beginning or has a long time table laid out, as some may get bored with the project at hand. An example of this would be Paul Barron, managing director of United Kingdom Ruston Gas Turbine who stated “it may have seemed a little crazy to some people at the time, but what we did was set forth an objective of doubling the company in every way.” (Dubin, 47) This leads into our next aspect of building an effective team, goal interdependence.
No amount of work among team members will be worth it if they are all working toward a different goal. Goal interdependence occurs when team members have a shared vision of the team’s goal and align their individual goals to match up. Teams often develop a roadmap that identifies “all the key elements and activities” that are absolutely “critical and needed to be acted on” in order for their final goal to be reached (Davis 42). Goal interdependence requires a great deal of collaboration and communication to define the exact goal, most often done during the brainstorming leg of a project. Many debates may breakout during brainstorming as members encounter task conflict, as they discuss what direction they should take the project. A roadmap allows the team to set individual goals and delegate projects that will be combined to form the final version of the project. Once decision infirmity is established, the group can split apart and work on their individual assignments. It is often seen among effective teams that once all the individual projects and collaborative projects are done, the final project is purely a matter of assembly and polishing. Dependent upon the length and complexity of the project, many teams create a mission statement, to help all members have a “shared reference point” and clearly define the “project’s specific objectives to be communicated and discussed” during their meetings. (Davis 43). A subsequent aspect that correlates with goal interdependence is groupthink, which occurs when the team becomes more focused on creating cohesion between team members than the actual goal the team was formed to accomplish. Goal interdependence is a primary point of our theoretical model because it truly portrays that as a team all members are striving to be effective and have a shared vision of the outcome and in result be successful.
Another aspect in building an effective team is assigning member roles, and engaging in accountability. One of the first steps in forming a team is deciding who is going to do what, and how they are going to contribute. Everyone has their own strengths and abilities and when it comes to assigning roles it is important to distribute the roles based on people’s strong suits. “Every member of a high performance team possesses unique knowledge that contributes to the development and refinement of their goal” (Davis 41). Each person on the team brings many different attributes to the table due to diverse backgrounds, different ideas, and creativity. With every role comes responsibility and your team relies on your to complete your task and role to the best of your ability. Working as a team is very important just as Hatzenback and Smith define a team as “a group of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose and set of performance goals and hold themselves mutually accountable” (Davis 43). Every member must be present and are accountable for their duties, as there are people that are counting on your contributions. When a team has a roadmap to finish their project, it allows them to hold a team member accountable when certain portions of the projects are not completed on time. Knowing who is on each portion of the project makes collaboration easier. “People are accountable along many dimensions simultaneously, attending to multiple projects and using their networks to assemble resources for all those projects, often without going through a decision-making hierarchy.” (Kanter, 75-76) Having “cooperation and engagement” and “open and flexible participation” (Davis, 43) allows a team to assist members with their portions when needed.
When creating an effective team, the last vital aspect is communication. In order for a team to work efficiently and to be successful they must be able to communicate thoroughly with one another. Over the history of all communication forms “language is a relatively recent development”, but to this day it“ still shape how we make decisions and coordinate work among ourselves” (Pentland 62). The importance of communication is not realized until it fails. An example could be a team member that has a great idea but cannot express clearly and comprehensively enough for the rest of the team to see its potential. The article called “The New Science of Building Great Teams,” stated that “The most valuable form of communication is face-to-face” (Pentland, 65). All forms of communication are crucial to the success of a team but in face-to face communication is by far the most effective. Studies show that “35% of the variation in a team’s performance can be accounted for simply by the number of face-to-face exchanges among team members” (Pentland 66). A study was performed while equipping all the members of those teams with electronic badges that collected data on their individual communication behavior capturing their tone of voice, body language, whom they talked to and how much. The results showed “communication indeed plays a critical role in building successful teams” (Pentland 62). How to build a team and how well they work together may not be through individual reasoning and talent, the “best way to build a great team is not to select individuals for their smarts or accomplishments but to learn how they communicate” (Pentland 65). No matter the time, day, or year, communication will always be a leading factor in every team, or event in order to be truly successful.
In conclusion, building an effective team takes a combination of many aspects including member personality, diverse backgrounds, commitment, goal interdependence, defined roles and accountability, and communication. Effective teams draw from the members greatest personality traits to assign tasks that will benefit the team. Member diversity and backgrounds help all members to see project from a different perspective. Nothing happens in a group unless all members are committed to the project and willing to see it through to the end. Goal interdependence is important as it guarantees that all members are working towards the same end goal. Defining roles make sure each member knows what their contributions are and are willing to carry them through. Finally, communication is the ability to clearly and throughly explain an idea is a large part of building an effective team. These important elements are the essential building blocks to an effective team.
References
Colquitt, J.A. , Lepine, J.A., & Wesson, M.J. (2010). Organizational Behavior: Improving Performance and Commitment in the Workplace, 2ndEd. Burr Ridge, IL: McGraw-Hill, Inc.
Davis, R. (2009). What makes high-performance teams excel? Research-Technology Management, 52(4), 40-45.
Dubin, H. (2005). Building high-performance teams. Chief Learning Officer, 4(7), 46-49
Kanter, R. (2011). How great companies think differently. Harvard Business Review, 89(11), 66-78
Pentland, A. (2012). The New Science of Building Great Teams. Harvard Business Review, 90(4), 60-70.
Zenger, J. H., Folkman, J. R., & Edinger, S. K. (2011). Making Yourself Indispensable. Harvard Business Review, 89(10), 84-92.
Davis, R. (2009). What makes high-performance teams excel? Research-Technology Management, 52(4), 40-45.
Dubin, H. (2005). Building high-performance teams. Chief Learning Officer, 4(7), 46-49
Kanter, R. (2011). How great companies think differently. Harvard Business Review, 89(11), 66-78
Pentland, A. (2012). The New Science of Building Great Teams. Harvard Business Review, 90(4), 60-70.
Zenger, J. H., Folkman, J. R., & Edinger, S. K. (2011). Making Yourself Indispensable. Harvard Business Review, 89(10), 84-92.