Internal Competition - a Curse for a Team Performance

There are many problems that hinder good group dynamics. We don’t usually have the luxury of picking who we are going to work with on a team; dealing with different personalities and personal agendas are common challenges in working within a team. Other commons challenges like, poor leadership, bad communications, and lack of focus can be helped or eliminated by establishing team roles.

Teams consist of personnel with varied backgrounds, experience, education, and intellectual ability. These differences will, by nature lend themselves to varying perceptions in business, its problems and solutions, which result in

This directly relates to my family dynamic I have on the team because without a cohesive team, we will not be successful. The ability to communicate problems and work past them is crucial if you want to accomplish common goals together. With heart and drive to win a match for something more than yourself gives you the extra determination needed to fight for your family and earn the hard wins. This goes against our common nature of having individualistic tendencies because we realize that we are competing hard for not only our own success but for the success of our family as well. Without sound communication, belief in one another, and love for your family or team one will not be able to conquer goals together and set the sights high for future

There is a saying that many hands make light work. The essence of this statement is that more can be achieved as a collective than individually. We all have different skills, knowledge and personal attributes. By utilizing all of these different aspects in a team, more ideas can be generated. As more ideas are generated, more creative solutions are generated, leading to better results. It is amazing the amount of support that is created in teams, especially when the going gets tough. People will often go to what seems like extreme lengths when they know that they can rely on the support and encouragement of the team. Never underestimate the significance of this in

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

The team leader’s ability to identify, understand and correct any dysfunctional teams is also an important process to stay productive. There are three types of dysfunctional teams (MCMANUS, 2014) the “war zone” team is an environment where everyone is watching their backs and jockeying for position behind closed doors. There is usually a struggle for power and is generally a very completive environment between team members. The “love fest” team is heavily focused on

A failure teams must be on the lookout for is hidden profiles. Hidden Profiles occur when common knowledge information is more likely to be shared than information held by only a few people. Common knowledge that the whole group knows carries much

Like any individual or team, there are going to be weaknesses. It’s not necessary to focus on them every time, however; it’s important to know what they are so when it comes about, it’s able to be addressed at that time and to avoid an conflicts or disagreements. Robbins & Judge said that, “When managers use collective work situations to enhance morale and teamwork, they must also be able to identify individual efforts. Otherwise, they must weigh the potential losses in productivity from using groups against the possible gains in worker satisfaction” (2013). Our teams weaknesses are being impatience, some might take themselves too seriously, can be critical, some might be slow decision-makers, won’t speak up or be unresponsive while others are over thinkers and don’t want to rick change. Also we fear work criticism, some don’t like surprises or the feeling of being hustled or looked at as too “soft”, and don’t want to lose control. Even though these are weaknesses, we don’t look at it that way because when one style is having these current issues, we can rely on each other’s strengths to come in and make sure everything stays in order.

Team members must understand the nature of team discussion and decision making---Differences in discussion habits can paralyzed a team. All team members have an approximately model in mind for how and how long a topic should be discussed.

Why do you believe teams or team member’s behavior different with different roles or tasks?

In his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, recognized analyst Patrick Lencioni (2002), employs the literary style of injecting tales to stretch out a down to earth message of the rights and wrongs of group leaders. Lencioni believes there are five dysfunctions at the focal point of why teams often fall short. Lencioni illustrates, through his fable, the common barriers presented, a dynamic model, and active steps that can be used to build an effective and powerful group.

Some teams didn’t have adequate directions from their managers. Team members were seeking help from others who were not on the team because they didn’t have faith or confidence in their managers. Every time there was a mistake the team spent time blaming each other instead of finding solutions to fix the issues they had. Team members seem to be at competition with each other. Everything seem to be a competition, especially for resources and training.

Teamwork is the backbone of effective communication and the crucial cog that keeps the wheel of successful project management turning. The role of teamwork in enhancing problem solving skills, cohesion, learning, and productivity can no longer be ignored. Proper teamwork plays an integral role in promoting the effective implementation and fulfillment of shared goals in a team project in a manner that is better and quicker. Team work also provides a solid platform on which team members can take on different responsibilities and contribute in ways that together makes the entire team an effective unit.

written by Katzenbach and Smith called “The Discipline of Teams”. This article was written to

Levin (2005) suggests that the idea of a team is to share the same objectives. This may not always be the case if team members have never met before and are not fully clear of the task set. This can lead to confusion between members and may mean that some team members are unwilling to be told by their peers what to do. This is an example on ineffective team work.