Class Discussion - Chapter 14 – Leading Teams
Experts say that for teams to function well, members must get to know one another in some
depth. What specifically would you do to facilitate this in a co-located/hybrid team? What about
in an all-virtual team?
For a hybrid team to function well there are five key elements they need to be effective. These
elements are trust, healthy conflict, commitment, accountability, and results orientation. Each
one of these helps create a similar understanding and a relationship bond between coworkers,
departments, and management levels across. Choosing people that excel in either one or more of
these elements and putting a team together will all five creates a productive and skilled outcome
for the tasks at hand.
For virtual teams these elements are still needed to productive, but employees will need to utilize
technology more to communicate more effectively with the other members of the team. This type
of team building requires a little more dedication and monitoring to make sure issues are still
being addressed and resolved. Being sure to communicate regularly and discuss progress is
important when members can not meet face to face.
Class Discussion - Chapter 15 – Managing Quality and Performance
Most companies have policies that regulate employees’ personal use of work on computers
during work hours. Some even monitor employee emails and track the web sites that have been
visited. Do you consider this type of surveillance an invasion of privacy? What are the
advantages of restricting employee use of the Internet and personal email at work?
No, I would not consider this an invasion of a person’s privacy. For a company to know if their
employees are being safe and following guidelines, they need to be able to access records and
watch over them while they are using company equipment and on company time.
Some advantages of having restrictions are that your employees are not watching or engaging in
inappropriate actions while at work or with company equipment. These restrictions also come in
handy to limit virus and scams from the internet. Using personal email at work is risky because
people could open popups that could download malware that could risk private company
documents.
