work teams - OB

Tiffany Schmidt

Week 6 Discussion

Using information from Chapter 7, imagine that you are the leader of a newly formed self-managed work team.  The team includes 12 people, all from different functions and departments within the organization.  How will you lead your team through the various stages of team development?   How will you handle challenges that arise?

Over the last two and a half years I have been dealing with something very similar in my day to day work. I took over a dysfunctional team from a chief who was rarely at work, didn’t concentrate on the good of the group, and left program managers to fend for themselves, including making high level decisions, while managing 1200 customers on a daily basis, in addition to other subordinate staff. It was clear that when I began that the 7 program managers were working in their own silos, without regard to the others within their team. These 7 managers represented very different aspects of the business from marketing to financial and even managing a travel operation. Very few of them knew eachother and the first hurdle was ensuring that not only they met, but got to know a little more about themselves.

The Tuckman Team Development Model was located on page 177 of the text, and it shows the various stages that a team will go through over time – Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning.

The stage in which I entered, and which we needed to get the team to go through first was the forming stage – which is where the team meets for the first time, and understand how they fit into the bigger picture. One of the first things that I did throughout the first year of my tenure, was hold monthly meetings, that went above and beyond our normal weekly team meetings. In these 2 hour meetings we covered topics like customer service, accountability, innovation and more. Not only were we getting together in a room, but we were learning how others viewed the various topics that affected our business.

In year 2, after a comfort level was formed, the team moved into the storming stage – tensions arose and people started to become a little more territorial over their programs and at times viewed others as a threat. During this time we focused on developing business plans, goals, objectives and strategy, and created opportunities to cross function. However, at times this made others feel like their team members were being critical of their programs and work by making suggestion for change. During this time as well some of the members, who had once been my peers began to question my ideas and would present challenges from time to time. We continued the model of larger monthly meetings and talked openly and honest about situations and how to overcome them, at times one of ones with myself were necessary to move past roadblocks and allow employees to vent in a safer environment.

Currently we are in year 3 of my tenure. While it felt somedays like we would never get here, we have made it to the norming stage. In this stage we have overcome about 95% of conflicts and the team is finally working cross functionally together. People are open in asking for others assistance in completing projects. Along with this, the team is also in the performing stage – which is where they are beginning to achieve goals and trust is more apparent. The team still holds weekly meetings, but now we have given them purpose that tie into the business plans and strategy that they develop for their programs. Each meeting is themed i.e. week one we focus on metrics and results, week two we focus on additional objectives and milestones, week three we focus on our income statements and financial execution and week four we focus on our next set of programs and events. We do this as a team together, tying it all together into our overall picture for the organization.

As we have members that move in and out of the team, we have to go back through the stages, which can pose issues along the way as we introduce new personalities and objectives. We can somewhat consider the end of a fiscal year (September) as the adjourning phase. Even though this isn’t a project per se, we are able to close out a year before we move on to the next one. As part of the adjourning stage, we put together an annual report which shows how we met our goals and objectives and used creativity and innovation in order to bring the best possible situation for our stakeholders and customers.

This model has proven to be a useful way to get people to work together. In our instance, the team has learned a level of synergy and cohesion and it has made each one of them stronger in their own right.

Kaylyn Knapp

DB 3

Today virtual teams are more common than not due to COVID-19. Being a part of a virtual team has its complications, especially being the leader of one. As defined in our text, a virtual team is a group of members who are in different locations and work together through email, videoconferencing, instant messaging, and other electronic media. 

Being that my team is from different geographical regions across the globe setting up methods to communicate will be tricky. I will first ensure that we meet at time that is most convenient for everyone and if they're unable to meet then we will make arrangements. In order to make sure everyone is on track I will be having bi-weekly meetings with the group as a whole and weekly meetings one-on-one to ensure everyone is on track and completing their tasks. In the group meetings I will be giving everyone their tasks for the next two weeks then at the one-on-one meetings I will be tracking their progress and making sure it is being completed to the companies standards. During these meetings we will be using team cohesion which it is defined in the book as, the degree to which team members connect with each other and group think which is, people in a cohesive group go along with the group consensus rather than offering their own opinions to make sure we are all on the same track. 

With any teamwork, you will face problems. Especially with virtual teamwork, these problems are more frequent because of the lack of face-to-face interaction which can lead to miscommunication. The other problems are as follows: technology issues, lack of experience with technology, lack of effort/motivation, difficulty staying focused. To ensure these things do not happen I will hold a program on how to work the needed technology and ensure everyone is educated. I will also instruct everyone to meet in a quiet room where there are zero distractions. Lastly, at our weekly one-on-one meetings I will be tracking each members progress to ensure everyone is putting in the same effort. Bottom of Form

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