A team- structured organization of a taskforce involves grouping of the employees in groups mostly according to their levels of employment. This team of employees with the same knowledge works in form of a team. This type of team organization usually employs a modular type of operation in which the members of a group operate as a unit providing only a fraction towards the final work done (Vadim, pg 4). This type of organization usually has some advantages making it attractive to most organizations. As a result, many business organizations are turning to this form of organization in its structure abandoning the earlier used organization structures. The basic working unit of this type of organization is the team which as earlier highlighted consists of many people with same qualifications and operational characteristics being grouped together to operate as a single unit.
Looking at the actual structure, each team is led by a leader who is mostly known as the foreman or captain. The foreperson is the one in command in case the team out to perform a certain task where the higher order members of management team are not present. The fore people then form their own group which then is headed by one person. This process continues until the overall management committee is formed from the representatives (Vadim, pg 8).
This form of organization has several advantages one of the main being that every member is represented in the top management committee. Another advantage of this format of group organization is that the people’s voice is directly heard in the senior management without having to pass through a long bureaucracy.
Another advantage is the promotion of team work. This is mainly due to that the people working in one team are often from different backgrounds thus not the same in the way they view things. By working in a team, the members develop the ability to work with people from different backgrounds and co-exist with them coherently.
Though the form of organization is highly accepted, some flaws still exists in it causing several disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is that some team members may be lazy leading to overloading the other team members. This is mainly observed when the team is assigned a task. There might also arise some internal conflicts within the team. Though the team leaders may try to resolve the conflict, there might easily arise a go slow which might impair the operations of the organizations. The go slow may be unnoticeable by the senior management leading to reduced productivity of the members as a group as to when compared to working as independent members without groups.
Drawing our attention to some books and checking the approach used for this organizational format, Belasen elaborates in his chapters four and five of the book ‘Leading the Learning Organization: Communication and Competencies for Managing Change’ explain more on horizontal leadership and cross-functional leadership (Belasen, pg 74). In the same section, he addresses the issue of how to form and organize teams so that productivity can be enhanced. In the highlighted section of the book, the author evaluates the qualities of a good team leader some of which includes: courage, communication ability and conflict resolving ability. Later in chapter five of the book, he addresses the link between team work and achievement. He highlights several processes and relationships that enhance good outcome and resolution of team work flaws (Belasen, pg 98).
Turning to Quinn’s book ‘Becoming a Master Manager: A Competing Values Approach’, the quoted works deals specifically with the roles of a team leader as a coordinator and a monitor (Quinn, pg110). As a monitor, the leader is charged with the work of ensuring the operations within the team proceeds as outlined without any team member going slow. For a leader to be a good monitor, he/she should have courage, understanding and great interpersonal skills. The role as a coordinator though is not as direct as that of a monitor. A coordinator must at all cost have excellent interpersonal skills for his/her work to be smooth. The text also highlights other important qualities of a good team leader including use of communication to rule instead of direct impartation of power and authority (Quinn, pg 168).
Generally, the two articles from the authors revolve around communication as a tool for excellent team work. The extracts urge team leaders to have great interpersonal skills since they are dealing with people from different backgrounds having different modes of expressing dissatisfaction.
Looking at some vital qualities of a team leader, the following core values are of great importance.
1. Ability to unite the team members to operate as one unit.
2. Encouraging to the team members.
3. Share in the common vision of the team.
4. Appreciative to personal differences yet promoting team work
5. Great interpersonal skills. (Vadim, pg 36).
As a member of student help, these qualities played a vital role on my side. I was able to work in a group where my efforts were easily appreciated. This led to the development of my skills to a point that I would as a team leader requiring minimal supervision. Monitoring and coordination functions of a leader were the most conflicting in our group. A leader was supposed to give orders in from of monitoring yet the coordination role called for use of other communication criteria than orders including actual involvement in some activities. This often resulted in confusion within the leaders. At the end, I learnt that leadership is not about orders but communication and even though orders have to be issued, the language used and form of communication used matters a lot.
In conclusion, communication is the backbone to good team-based organization. It usually helps people from diversified backgrounds work together as a unit and operates without considering their differences. Therefore, a good team leader should not be based on anything else but results (Bob, pg6). This would make even the team members to follow in enhancing productivity of the group since team-based organization has the greatest performance ability compared to other forms of organization (Vadim, pg16).
Works cited
Belasen, T. 2000. Leading the Learning Organization: Communication and Competencies for Managing Change. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Quinn, E. 2011. Becoming a Master Manager: A Competing Values Approach. New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons.
Vadim, K. (2008). “Values-Based Leadership: Energizing Employees to Pursue a Common Goal Using a Set of Shared Values. Oxford University Press.
Bob, R. 2001. Values-Based Leadership: Determining Our Personal Values. Program Manager. Prentice Inc.
