For the team to achieve its full potentiality, team members must be answerable to their actions to avoid mediocrity and non productive behaviors. Members of effective team should exhibit higher level of interdependence, cohesion and autonym.
A team member is obligated to; contribute their skills and talents to help the team in deciding on its purpose and goals, deliver on commitments and operate within set standards feeling sense of owning and being accountable to the team for success, take responsibility for elements of the team working on available tasks asserting needs and how best a team can utilize available resources, help the team to major on its own process effectively evaluating its progress and development. Lastly to prevent the team from being immobilized by helping the team to in cooperate new and different ides ,learn from failures and frustration when solving a problem or making decisions.
Since team leader should not hold the feet of members to the fire for them to deliver as expected, Braverman (1999) argued that it’s paramount for a team to have clearly defined goals in measuring and enhancing once performance. This makes it the responsibility of the team member to have individual goals which are well structured, specifically measurable and realistically attainable within a given timeline. The team member must live up to the agreed-upon standards of performance and behavior duly accepting the consequences of his or her actions. The member should embrace open discussion of their success within the entire team to allow other members passionately realize how their performance impacts the results of other team members for stronger teamwork. The team member must be responsible for establishment of well defined monitoring and feedback progress system with rewards being tied to the achievement of respective team member.
It’s good for a member to lead a team he or she has been part of when the position of a leader becomes vacant or when there is need to replace non performing leader. This is possible when the member has actions and behaviors which can inspire, influence, control and direct team members. A member must be able to act as the focal point in creating room for honest and effective communication between members, to establish team goals fostering participatory leadership. If well equipped with social skills, a member can nurture productive participation of all members contributing their skills and knowledge in collective decision making and consensus building embracing team synergy due to diversity.
Leading peers may be tricky as no peer will admit that there is someone else smarter. The leader must be able to establish authority leading from front and shouldering team accountability. Peer to peer feedback needs to be encouraged as members understand their mandate and identity.
Resources
Braverman .M. (1999) Building Accountability, retrieved from http://www.cooperativegrocer.coop/articles/2004-01-08/building-accountability
GITT Core Curriculum (2001).Team Member Roles and Responsibilities, retrieved from http://www.gittprogram.org/files/Team_Roles.pdf
Morgeson et al. (2009) Leadership in Teams, A Functional Approach to Understanding Leadership Structures and Processes, retrieved from http://www.scottderue.com/wp-content/downloads/Morgeson-et-al-JOM-2010.pdf.
