Groups and High-Performance Teams

Creating a team out of individuals can be a challenging task for even the most seasoned human resources professional. Organizations necessarily promote both diversity (and thus individualism) and teamwork. What is an example of how diversity can affect teamwork from your own experience?

The positive impact of cultural diversity on group behavior can contribute creativity to a high-performance team. Membership diversity offers a rich pool of information, talent, and varied perspectives that can help improve team problem solving and increase creativity (Hunt, J., Osborn, R., Schermerhorn, J., 2005). Cultural diversity contributes various group input and group dynamics to the team. These two factors are essential in the high performance of a team. Cultural diversity can develop a high-performance team by allowing the diverse potentials of a team to operate. The negative impact of cultural diversity on group behavior can develop numerous of conflicts between team members. Conflicting interaction can limit or decrease the effectiveness and efficiency of productivity. There should be an awareness of the diverse culture values in order to prevent these conflicts.

A team is a type of organizational group with independent members. They share common goals and work together to meet these goals (Northouse, 2016). The organization where I work has teams at various levels for maximizing the success. These teams include, core teams, coordinating teams, patient aligned care team (PACT), contingency teams, ancillary teams, support and administration teams (Veterans Health Administration [VHA], 2015). Some of these teams have interdepartmental members while others have intradepartmental staff. Successful teams have a concrete blueprint and that contributes to their effective functioning. There are several factors that affect these teams irrespective of the level. The factors comprise the presence of a clear task, separation from non-team members, authority, and stability. The factors like working conditions, team process and bridging the gaps are concerns for the executive level. The complexity of the task, individual skills and their diverse specializations affect the selection of the team members. The team’s meaningful interactions decide their success. Independent teams can help promote friendly competition within the organization and lead to better staff performance. An efficient leader can design and launch an effective team through careful planning and selection of the right members. He/she keeps the factors that affect the success of the team in mind when designing the teams. The patient care units

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.

| Employees in geographically dispersed locations can work together in virtual teams using video, e-mail, and the Internet.

At Grinnell Regional Medical Center (GRMC), there are a variety of teams that make up the organization which includes the hospital and outpatient affiliated clinics. Due to the diversity of healthcare services that are provided at GRMC, a team leadership approach is essential to the success of the organization. According to Northouse (2016), leadership is “a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal” (p. 6). Through this process, leaders help to create vision and direction for the team while engaging others on the team through motivation and inspiration, to reach a common goal (Northouse, 2016). In this paper, we will discuss the steps necessary to create more successful teams at various levels

In today's society some corporations have achieved success by replacing the hierarchical boss-subordinate relationship with that of an empowered work team. Many corporations know the value of a high-performance team. A high-performance team has a great deal to offer to the organization. In a team environment, people are not managed, controlled or supervised. They are led by their mutual vision of the organization's purpose and goals. Teams surpass individuals working alone, especially when performance requires several abilities, verdict, and active involvement...

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.

Team learning is the accumulation of individual learning. The advantage of shared learning is that employees grow more quickly and problem solving range is improved through better access to expertise and knowledge. Team learning has features such as boundary crossing and openness which helps organizations to make decisions in an efficient way. Team learning needs employees to engage in discussion and dialogue thus team members must develop shared meaning, open communication and shared understanding (Boydell,1999).

Ward, A. J., Lankau, M. J., Amason, A. C., Sonnenfeld, J. A., Agle, B. R.. (2007). Improving the Performance of Top Management Teams. MIT Sloan Management Review, 48(3), 85. Retrieved April 15, 2007, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 1250414231).

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.

Conflict is inevitable and at times stimulates beneficial or creative thinking. Often conflict is a signal that people are miscommunicating and making different assumptions about what has gone unspoken. The conflict in itself is not the problem. It is the team’s reactions to it that determines the impact, thus causing it to be a negative experience. Conflict or divergence can be destructive or it can be constructive. It is up to the people involved in the conflict to manage the outcome. This gives them an opportunity to articulate their assumptions and figure out a way to come to agreement. In a learning team situation, conflict can arise when the original agreement to work together does not address

Remote workers will need to excel at personal communication skills. They can feel left out and disconnected from the other team members. Even when rushed to provide answers to emails, they have to be careful of the tone they are using so they don‘t come across angry or annoyed. Skills in listening and reading comprehension will need to be addressed so that remote workers can communicate effectively and professionally. One great way to stay connected is by using video conferencing. In order to promote connectivity to team members and team culture is to do weekly team meetings by means of video conferencing.

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.

Building and leading a high performing team takes planning. In order to develop a successful team, a good leader must first have a reasonable and concrete expectation of the end goal as well as a solid understanding of the teams components. Once the team is formed, in order for the leader to successfully successfully guide his or her team, an environment of trust must be built, adequate resources must be supplied, timely feedback supplied, and positive reinforcement paired with recognition distributed. These are things that I learned along the way in my experiences as a manager in my various careers. I saw what worked for my managers, and what backfired. I tried to apply those in practice, and made many mistakes along the way. The keys are to determine what defines a high performing team, and to lead rather than direct.