Essay on Obstacles In Team Dynamics

Communicating in Teams. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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.

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)

Conflict arises from various sources in the team setting (Capozzoli, 1995). The most common causes of conflict are values, attitudes, needs, expectations, perceptions, resources, and personalities. As we are all raised with different values, morals come into play when the team issue deals directly or indirectly with ones values, morals, or ethics. Conflicting attitudes can bring about problems as two or more team members prove to have differing goals in mind. Individual needs can cause rifts within a team when they are not satisfied. The expectations of team members are not the same on how the goal will be met. We all have different perceptions of life situation and interpret them differently. The lack of resources needed to complete a task can cause conflict. Differing personalities play a major role in team conflict.

It is essential that there is effective communication to build an effective team. Effective teams need to work well together and that team cohesiveness depends on building strong relationships among team members. Communication is crucial and is driven by the team leader who will work with the team to establish ground rules and work to bring the team together so that it can accomplish its goals. All teams will go through expected stages of development, from forming to storming to norming and eventually performing according to Tuckman. Navigating through these stages effectively will help teams build relationships which in turn improves communication. Effective team communication can lead to both personal and professional development. Some examples of good communication are the holding of regular catch up meetings, active listening (by management and team members), regular feedback, clear vision and goals. In contrast to the above poor communication skills can have an adverse effect on team working. If team members are not communicating amongst themselves then

Refer to definition of team, Larson& LaFasto (1989) concludes that a team is a unit of two or more people who interact and coordinate their work to accomplish a specific goal. There are three important components in the definition. Firstly, it should be more than two people. Teams can be large groups and mostly teams have fewer than 15 team member. Secondly, people should have regular interaction and communication with each other. Third, people have a same direction and share a common goal. That means team members collectively desire to achieve a goal. It is important that teams appear characteristics in organisations to internal processes and team performance. Team characteristics can be divided into three parts: team size, diversity and member roles. In terms of team size, psychologist Ivan Steiner found that when there are five people in a team and it still add additional members will caused a decline in motivation, an increase in coordination problems, even general performance will decline (Yang, 2006). Refer to diversity, Robinson & Dechant (1997) points out research supports the idea that diverse teams can produce more innovative and creative idea to solute different problem. In a successful team, in order to maintain its member communicated healthily and to finish its task, it is necessary to have two types of roles: task specialist and socio-emotional. As a manager, managing a team should choice right type of team to accomplish task and balance the size and diversity

Eventually the team itself could splint. As a result of putting different people together, the group begins to form relationships with each other and can sometimes for smaller group. This causes the lack of motivation, anxiety and frustration resulting in the groups failure to complete the mission.

In this case, the new teams are breaking up established social relationships. Developing teams may also lack knowledge and/or the skill set required to fulfil their job role, and therefore may affect the morale, confidence and/or efficiency of the team.

Lack of commitment – Team members never buy it to the decisions due to their opinions never truly being heard.

All with differing skills and levels of experience, to allow a service to be provided efficiently and effectively. Each member of the team has a purpose and a function within that team, so the overall success depends on a functional interdependency. There is usually not as much room for conflict when working as a team. The team also does not rely on groupthink to arrive at its conclusions.

The fourth aspect of a dysfunctional group is lack of communication. I believe that this is by far the most important aspect of a good team. Without good communication it is hard to maintain accountability, trust, and to express opinions. The key to success in all the ice breaker games was being able to communicate with your team effectively in a manner that everybody you were working with understood the point you were trying to make. We have learned that communication is more than just verbal it is also nonverbal, such as the body language and hand gestures that you use. In my group’s ice breaker game and presentation we tried to demonstrate that non verbal communication was important through the use of video as well as when we required our groups of to use charades type gestures to explain to the person assigned to draw what they were supposed to be drawing.

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.

The science of team building is an art. The uncontrollable variables are people. Just putting a group of talented individuals together for the sole purpose of goal achievement can be met with disastrous results. It can leave individuals left feeling unfulfilled and lead to costly mistakes in the long run. While team building can be considered an art, there are some methods and approaches that can assist with successful builds. While no approach is full proof, taking time to acclimate oneself with human

Effective teamwork begins with the collaboration of a variety of people from different cultures. Each member has to be courteous to his or her teammates and respect the views of one another. All participants must be willing to share their ideas, but remain open-minded, while listening to others express their ideas and opinions even though they may be different from our own. An open-minded teammate can effectively criticize, critique, or expand through discussion of ideas or views that are presented.

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.