High Performance Teams

Katzenbach and Smith (1993a) recognise teams as the basic units of performance in organisations and identify a team as '...a small number of people with complimentary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.'

Executives refer to business as a team sport for a variety of reasons. First, many business organizational structures arrange departments either in cross specialty teams or task oriented teams based on operational design and expected outcomes. These teams are designed with members who are assigned roles that increase overall team productivity. The team members bring talents, knowledge and a skill set that uniquely contributes to collective intelligence and resourcefulness. Through collaboration and team work, Successful teams achieve synergy, or “exceeds the sum of each individual’s contribution”.

Introduction: In the given statement "simply put, teams will be the primary building block of performance in the high performance organization of the future. As a result, effective top managers will increasingly worry about both performance and the teams that will help deliver it" (p. 239, The Wisdom of Teams). Authors Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith conversed with several individuals in more than thirty organizations to figure out where and how groups function best and how to upgrade their adequacy. They uncover: The most critical component in group success who exceeds expectations at group authority. Furthermore, why they are infrequently the most senior individuals Why company wide change relies on upon groups. Furthermore, more comprehensive and demonstrated compelling, The Wisdom of Teams is the fantastic first stage of making groups an effective apparatus for accomplishment in today 's worldwide commercial center.

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...

It is challenging to define a high performing team. We believe that a factor which makes a difference in performance is innovation, an ability to think out of the box. Hewlett et al. (2013) defined six behaviours that unlock innovation in a team; ensuring everyone is heard, creating a safe environment for proposing novel ideas, giving team members decision-making authority, sharing credit for success, giving actionable feedback and implementing feedback from the team. Through the previously agreed direct and explicit communication, we are paving our path to successfully completing this first graded assignment and avoiding possible unhealthy conflicts in the future. Another very important factor when it comes to our team is that we come from cultures of different contexts, some are more high-context than the other, for

Establishing high performance teams can prove to be an extremely difficult task. In the beginning of any team there will be difficulties such as backgrounds, social status, work status and the biggest one of them all ego challenges. In order for the team to be successful they will need to be able to look past all of these performance boundaries. The team leader will need to tailor his training and guidance to cater to all these challenges. There have been many teams that have broken apart and ultimately failed due to issues such as communication which in the business world is a high priority. The level of communication must be able to be understood by all team members.

A high-level of performance makes up the basis for groups and teams today. High-performance is a major focus for many organizations since group and teams have become more common among organizations. High-performance teams are teams that get together for a specific and important task. For a group to become a high-performance team, the team needs to be able to use their

Self-directed work teams are comprised of employees from diverse departments who join forces on a specific task. The selected individuals bring their expertise to the group to create a product, outline a process or begin a product launch. The self-directed work teams frequently meet to review the progress of their project. Members of the team each come from various professional backgrounds and bring their knowledge and skills to the project. This allows each member to share their experiences with their colleagues and they can all learn from one another.

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.

A high-performance work team is described as a group of highly in-tune individuals that are extremely goal focused. This elite group tends to have a specialized expertise and skills in which they collaborate, innovate and produce efficiently and produce consistent results. A high performance group possesses the mentality to not only work independently, but to aggressively pursue performance excellence, through team-shared goals, effective organizational leadership, effective collaboration and communication, clear expectations of one another and a strong sense of accountability and trust amongst team members (BOMI, 2016).

Teams are prevalent in all walks of life. People participate in teams through church, volunteering, school, sports, and now in the workplace. Working together in teams in the workplace is becoming increasingly popular. So much so that Robbins, S. P., De Cenzo, D. A., & Coulter, M. (2015) states that and estimated 80% of Fortune 500 companies have at least half their employees working in teams. Teams are thought to outperform individual work and help achieve organizational goals faster. Work team use complementary skills and use a collective performance to reach goals. Work teams rely on key components like structure, diversity, autonomy, and specific goals to remain effective. Although individuals want to develop close relationships and become cohesive with team members, we must try to remain ourselves and not always feel the need to conform in order to feel accepted. Managers can help avoid these conformity pressures by creating a team in which members can be themselves and voice their opinions without fear of retaliation. Managers must also look at contemporary leadership views to lead teams effective, maximize their strengths, and avoid pitfalls along the way.

Motivation requires energy, and the manager of a company must be able to communicate with the different diversities within the team and keep the team going down the right path. Statistics say that high-trusted teams created openness and create a positive atmosphere and better performance. Another area that could cause a supervisor to have some issues with a high performance team is to keep the team open-minded. High performance team may run into the process where they are not willing to listen to other team members opinion. This could cause the vision to not be seen or, it can cause the company to not meet the objective because of a close minded mentality. We discussed what areas may require more opportunities for coaching but, what characteristics are good to have when managing a high performance team. In a self managing team, some of the better aspects are that they can do whatever task they are given without the need to have a supervisor looking over them. They do not need to be micromanaged. High performance team can be self motivated do what is needed to complete the project given to them. The team members on this type of team keep everyone responsible, for their part of the vision in the company. The trust that the team members have for each other is what helps create such success. They have specific set knowledge and skills which can be utilized to continually be successful

Successful teams within the organization are comprised of many effective techniques used to arrange the staff into self-managing, productive teams. There will be a balanced distribution of power among the members in each team, created by intentional observation of employee strengths and performance (Pimenta, da Silva, & Tate, 2014). It is suggested that teams be held accountable for joint planning, improving communication, and developing a mutual understanding for the shared goals (Pimenta et al., 2014). The major characteristics of the teams are power distribution, team performance, applied goals, shared vision, and measured impacts of integrations of the organization’s procedures (Pimenta et al., 2014).

The organisational organ known as the team is becoming more and more apparent in today's dynamic business world. Increasingly managers are searching for a means to improve production and keep their organisation competitive in the global market. A lot of these managers have turned to the team as a means for achieving this improvement. Quality circles were looked at to fulfil this role. However, this form of team is being phased out and may have posed as incubator for the current trend; self - managed work teams (Klein, 1995). These teams are increasingly being looked at today to solve many an organisation's production problems and inefficiencies, and in the process are both badly failing and greatly

A team is a group of people who work in tandem to achieve a common outcome (Chatfield, 2011). A common type of team found in the workplace is self-managed teams (SMT). A self-managed team empowers employees to manage the day to day functions, operations, and tasks of a specific job area with little or no supervisory oversight or intervention. In other words, it is a self-contained unit (Williams, 2011). For example, self-managed teams handle work direction, job assignments, trouble-shoot problems, and handle all of the decision making aspects of the job (Silverman,1996). Moreover, companies that have used SMTs report an increase in productivity and quality, increased employee morale, creativity, job satisfaction, and a decrease in