Introduction
Strong and well-functioning teams are an objective of every organization. Team strength is the cornerstone of high performance of the company;it fosters productivity and stimulates efficiency. It is a common misconception that a strong team can be built only of individuals, who have the same set of strengths and pursue similar objectives. In reality, however, team members often possess very different characteristics and functional skills, as well as come from diverse backgrounds. Theskill to leverage this diversity and to achieve cohesion in the team leads to the creation of a genuinely strong and well-performing team.
The ability of an organization to capitalize on the strengths and diversity of the team members have a number of advantages for the company. Firstly, diversity has been shown to make the team more creative, considering that all members feel comfortable participating and bringing in new ideas. Secondly, the knowledge of individual strengths and weaknesses of the team members allows more efficient sharing of responsibilities and delegation(Clermont, 2010).
However, it is also important to remember that managing a diverse team represents also a great challenge. First of all, integrating the ideas of all members usually extends the time necessary for brainstorming and preparatory work. The differences in viewpoints can also become a reason for conflicts that can put into question the functionality of the team in the long run. It is also necessary for a leader to ensure that the mix of skills possessed by the team members fits the purpose and can facilitate the completion of the tasks. Most importantly, however, it is particularly hard to achieve cohesion and to ensure that the team is pursuing a common goal, while nourishing the diversity of individual team members(Linley, Harrington & Garcea , 2010).
Diversity and awareness of team members’ strengths is indeed a great advantage for the company. However, it is also a great challenge that requires a special set of skills to manage it. That is why the role of the leader is key in ensuring that team diversity transforms into superior performance and long-term success.
Management
Team management can be broadly defined as the direction of people, who work in the organization as a unit, or a team (Hiriyappa, 2013). The management style results in our team are ratherconsistent (Majed scored 85, Jordan 78, and Raed 76, with the average of 79.67). Individual scores are graphically represented on the left.The average value indicates that our team is in the second quartile in terms of the team development, which shows a strong potential for effective teamwork.
It is possible to see that the deviation across the scores is minor, hence all team members share a common understanding about the level of our team’s development. Analysing individual results, it is possible to observe that team development and team conforming stages are the ones that require the greatest attention. Particularly the latter phaseis problematic. It is the period, when individuals within the group start functioning as one entity. Team members are faced with the division of responsibilities and the establishment of individual roles within the team. Most importantly, there is a common concern about the risk of a “groupthink” that can potentially develop in groups that try to achieve high level of cohesiveness and avoid any kind of conflict. In the long-run such attitude could jeopardize the creativity of our team and decrease the benefits of team diversity. In order to avoid this, our team has to put more emphasis on confronting the ideas of the others and to make sure that even the most different ideasare accepted and considered. One of the team members should assume the role of a challenger, who would encourage risk taking, and challenge common ideas in case there is a risk of groupthink development.
The strengths of our team is in the cohesion and in the ability to create the atmosphere of trust and support from the very start. This is demonstrated by the highest score achieved in the forming stage. This is predictable, considering all team members are mainly collaborators, and are willing to put efforts to the achievement of common goals, as well as accepts the diverse opinions within the team. This is a great team trait that could lead to cohesive team operation and creativity in task performance, should our team be able to overcome groupthink, the main threat of the teams that consist of mainly collaborators.
Conclusion
The ability of the organization to identify and use the diverse strengths of the people within the teams is an important factor that helps productivity and fosters team effectiveness. However, such approach to team building also requires significant effort from team leaders and managers. In the pursuit of team cohesion and effectiveness, they have to find people with the right skills and attitudes, who will be able to perform the job. They also have to identify individual strengths and weaknesses of diverse members and to ensure that tasks within the group are divided in such a way that the joint effort of the team exceeds that of its individual members. Most importantly, however, leaders have to create a permanent conflict-free environment that will allow people to share ideas and collaborate effectively. It is essential to ensure that all members share common goals, however are not subject to groupthink or a common bias, as it was the case with our team. Only in this case the diversity of the group will become a great benefit for the organization.
References
Clermont, I. (2010). Team magic - eleven magical ways for winning teams. Herts, AL: Ecademy Press.
Hiriyappa , B. (2013).Team Building And Group Dynamic Management. Bloomington, IN: Booktango.
Linley, A. P., Harrington, S., & Garcea , N. (2010). Oxford handbook of positive psychology and work. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
