Making The Team: Wowzer Inc.

2. The effect of social facilitation can be positive when the task is but negative when the task is ___________

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

When teams are performing at their best, you are likely to find that each team member has cleared responsibility. You’ll also see that every team member needed to achieve their own personal goals in order for the team’s goal to be fully met to an adequate level. Dr Mereditch Belbin studied team work for many years and he mainly observed that people in teams tend to assume different roles within the team. He defined a team role as a “tendency to behave,

This fable was a great way to promote the importance of a team and its functions. This book had many highlights throughout the context and I would highly recommend it to leaders of a corporation or of that of a team like setting. This book offered many great implications of the model and how to use it in many diverse settings when trying to build and manage successful teams.

After reading The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Pat Lencioni, discussing the function of effective teams in class, and completing various team building exercises, I have developed a much better understanding of the importance of a proper team in a business setting and how good team work can produce more efficient and productive results.

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.

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.

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.

Teamwork cannot be demanded. Everyone involved must discuss and understand what the goal is and what is required of them. Teams should have traits such as goals and objectives, empowerment, trust, authentic participation, innovation, creativity, risk taking and leadership. (Temme and Katzel, 1995)

Having tasks that are too difficult or are unfamiliar are likely to incite social loafing because they group member lacks the ability or courage to provide input. Robbins and Judge (2011) theorize that another cause of social loafing is an uneven equity. When two people are putting in different levels of input and receiving the same level of output the larger contributor will adjust their input to reduce cognitive dissonance. Another reason they believe is “dispersion of responsibility” group members cannot be held responsible because tasks and roles are not clearly assigned. (Robbins & Judge, 2011). In research by Worchel and others (1998) it was found that groups with friends or familiar members are far less likely to loaf when compared with groups made up of strangers (Worchel, Rothgerber, Day, Hart, & Butemeyer, 1998) Most people have been in a group made up of friends and colleges they are familiar with and seen that in these types of groups social loafing is drastically reduced.

In today’s complex and ever changing environment, organization continue to experiment with new forms of team development. Some of the most successful teams bring together employees with different talents and perspectives. In this research report, my aim is to have a clear and deep research on teamwork and how it affects businesses so that I can help Tina and Frank who is coming back from overseas to start their own business. Before could anybody start their business, it is very important to learn certain aspects. Team work is one among them. I have included some of the important information I collected through my research in order to help Tina and Frank succeed in their business.

The area of team leadership attracts a lot of attention in the modern world because of the need to assemble and deploy diverse teams for the completion of projects. The future of many corporations relies more and more on the kind of team leadership they have for their projects. This paper explores a number of facets that constitute effective team leadership.

Work Team development is a dynamic and often difficult process. Most teams find themselves in a continuos state of change and development. Eventhough, most teams never reach full stability, there is a general pattern that describes how most teams evolve. There are five stages of team development, the first stage is forming. In this stage there is a great deal of uncertainty about the teams purpose, structure and leadership. Members are testing the the waters to determine what types of behaviors are acceptable. This stage is complete when members began to think of themselves as part of the team. The second stage is called storming. In this stage there is much intragroup conflict.Team members accept the existence of the team, but there is resistance to the control that the team imposes on individuality. Conflict can arise from numerous sources within the team setting but generally falls into three categories:communication, factors, structural factors and personal factors (Varney, 1989/Townsley). In addition, there is conflict over who will control the team.

Social loafing is the idea that groups can become unproductive as members of the group tend to work less in a group environment than they would if they were working on their own. The larger the groups the more unproductive an individual often becomes as the larger the group is the easier it can be to hide their lack of work. Two examples of social loafing which can be found in the literature include Ringelmanns experiments which were again detailed by Kravitz and Martin (1986) and Latané, Williams and Harkins (1979).

Alleviating the laidback behavior of a loafer in a group setting is crucial for shared responsibilities and tasks completion in the group. Also, lack of effort from a group member like Brian can be frustrating and can elicit the sucker effect among partners of a social loafer (Simms & Nichols, 2014). Various social loafing studies have examined the antecedents and preventions of social loafing with variables such as the effect of personal effort, motivation, the group size and expectations (Simms & Nichols, 2014). Each variable examined revealed that people who are well motivated in completing an assigned tasks are more likely to engaged in social facilitation when they are part of a group (Voyles, Durik, & Bailey, 2015). Also, people tends to contribute less personal effort and accountability to group tasks, when they feel that their individual efforts have little or no impact on the outcome of a group project (Voyles, Durik, & Bailey, 2015). If Brain assumes that his effort in the group is not essential to the team outcome, personally he assumes a lesser role and expect someone else to take action on task. Also, this diffusion of responsibility is experienced in the bystander effect where individuals have the tendency to decline rendering assistance to a person in trouble when other bystanders are present. Hence, motivating Brain by verbalizing the uniqueness of his contribution to the group can deter him from engaging in social loafing.