A Research Study On Group Success

Creating Effective Teams: a Guide for Members and Leaders is a book by Wheelan (2013) designed to do as the title states; guiding members and leaders to create effective teams. Wheelan (2013) begins the book by highlighting the reasons that groups are important. Wheelan (2013) states that throughout history, “Groups have played a major role in both the survival of human beings and the development of human culture” (p. 1). The majority of the book is based on 4 stages that create a group of individuals into an effective team. The first stage is called dependency and inclusion. According to Wheelan (2013), the first stage of the group is

Team cohesion is crucial in a group’s ability to perform and stay united. Dynamics of group are constantly changing

There are many factors altering group behavior and effectiveness, such as decision- making, cohesion and communication (Crocker, 2016). The later has also shown a positive relationship with group task cohesion (Smith et al., 2013), and methods of enhancing intrateam

Many of us have seen that "Nobody's Perfect - But A Team Can Be" and we have seen a team produce a quality and quantity of work far higher than the sum of what the separate members could have produced on their own. The success of any Endeavour hinges on the behavior, talents, balance and cohesion of this management team. There are two main points when it comes to relevance of teams, the first is the recognition that human strengths usually bring countervailing weaknesses and the second is that some combinations of these roles have a greater probability of team success than others.

Throughout the readings communication was identified as a vital component for establishing and maintaining relationships. Porter-O Grady sanctioned for leaders to establish firm rules of engagement to help support a positive group dynamic (2013). While Kelly & Tazbir explained that friction and conflict were a normal part of group development and were representative of the Storming stage of group process (2014). Moreover, they explained that with assistance from the team leader the team can overcome these obstacles, strengthen inter-professional relationships, and enter into the Norming stage (Kelly & Tazbir, 2014). Here the team is able to participate in the effective exchange of communication and begin making progress toward goals. This represents progression into the Performing stage of group process (Kelly & Tazbir, 2014). When the team has met its intended target they are ready to anylze the outcomes of their work and enter the final stage of group process—Adjourning (Kelly & Tazbir,

“When groups are planned so that each member's strengths have authentic importance to the ultimate success of the group's activity, this creates a situation where individual learning styles, skills, and talents are valued, and students shine in their fortes and learn from each other in the areas where they are not as expert.”(Willis)

The features of effective team performance are set out in Brian Tuckman’s phases of team development theory, ‘Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing.’ This outlines the phases that a team will go through in order to become effective and reach maturity. At the ‘Forming’ stage of team development individual roles and responsibilities are unclear and each member of the team is concerned to avoid conflict with each other. From this point the team will go through the ‘Storming’ phase which is when they start to conflict as individuals put forward ideas which will be challenged by others in a bid to gain power and position over others. After this the ‘Norming’ phase follows and it is at this point that individual roles are defined and accepted

Reid Hastie, in his book “Wiser,” discusses many of the common points of how groups succeed and fail mainly due to group think. Throughout his years of research, he found a number of attributes that effective teams have in common. From his book, we have extracted ten important lessons that we believe are the most important for teams to learn and implement to be high performing. These findings also relate to the “5 Dysfunctions of a Team” that are outlined by Patrick Lencioni. Teachings taken from “Wiser” are symptoms, or indicators, of dysfunctions within a team, and many of his solutions help teams to overcome certain dysfunctions.

Teams are infused by group of individuals, but not all groups are teams. In a team, members work together to accomplish a common goal, they also take responsibility to achieve success. On the other hand, a group is consisting of two or more individuals that have mutual interest or characteristics, and the group members recognize each other due to similarity in traits. Groups can vary in size and scope. For example, a large group can be created by the members of the same NGO, or a small book club designed by bunch go neighbors who share common interest. Nevertheless, group differ from team in numerous ways. Teams entail harmonization of tasks and activities to accomplish a communal goal. Groups are not required to focus on explicit fallouts. Team members are codependent as they take stand for a set of resources to yield a common product. Whereas, people in a group can be completely disengaged from each other and do not depend on associated members of the group. Teams are designed for a specific purpose and can be short or long-lasting. A group can be designed of people of the similar race or ethnic background.

Realizing that a group can become a high performance team is important. Accomplishing this goal is invaluable, advantageous and profitable. Once able to operate from a group to the high performing team is a great step into preparation into the big business world. Leaders and members must also realize not only how to accomplish this but that some problems will and can arise from different demographic characteristics and cultural diversity. That is if one is in such a group, which the probability would be quite high.

One of the three criteria for evaluating effective groups is output. This states that the final output of the group has to meet a certain standard or exceed that standard. The second criteria is learning. This is defined as the fact that working in the group should help group members learn and also help them be satisfied, instead of aggravating them (Wageman, R). The last and final criteria are the Social Processes, which are that the group should be able to communicate and interact, in the present as well as in the future. The group shown in the video is not an effective group because many of the group members were trying to avoid work by making excuses, and were very unwilling to cooperate with the group leader, even when given a choice of what they wanted to do.

While team dynamics and cohesion play a great role in the success of any team, we believe that external factors (situation, system) can profoundly affect behavior and performance. The importance of creating an environment that supports great people and encourages them to support one another so the whole is far greater than the sum of the parts is undermined by this statement. Even a great team can’t be guaranteed to fix a mediocre idea or come up with good ones every time. The system/environment have a big role in the success of a team.

The main objective of a great facilitator is to development a team that is cohesive and cooperative, producing results that make the group the most effective and efficient unit possible. However, this is not always the case. Building a team that flourishes in any situation can be a daunting endeavor. Many individuals unknowingly lack the skills necessary to be a great facilitator. Roger Schwarz (2002), has created nine ground rules for honing a more effective group. When these nine ground rules are applied and executed by a team, any facilitator will be able to produce a more effective and efficient group.

Group performance and its contribution to organizational behavior has been deemed very important that researchers are now paying attention to the underlying factors that affect group performance. The authors who published the three articles I am going to analyze in this report tried their best to unravel the deep seated elements that either positively or negatively impact performance within an organization. I am also going to compare and contrast these articles paying particular attention to their strengths and weaknesses, similarities and differences, ending with my recommendations in this discourse emanating from the reported analysis. Some researchers are now paying attention to meta-analysis as a better suited research tool in trying to explain the relationship between diversity and performance. This paper is also going to link the three articles based on what they say on the issue of demography and how it affects group performance. There are notable similarities within the papers as they all allude to the fact that psychological factors are now more important in determining group performance and contributing to organisational behaviour at a macro level. Also these articles agree to the notion that there are beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries when certain policies are introduced within an organization and the way they are received by the groups differ. Hence I hope this report will be insightful on organisational behaviour basing on the themes discussed earlier.

partnership and group effect to succeed. Research has shown that when success is attained that this needs to be recognized and celebrated.