Teamwork

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.'

For me, I like to define a team as a group of people who have a same goal that come together to reach that goal and make it a reality. Whether people know it or not they always live and share their life with others as a team. There are family members at their home, work colleagues at their workplace, and teammates in their sport team. There is a team in a relationship. It is something we all need to be

Syer and Connolly 1996 believe that team members need to develop awareness of themselves and each other, and of their differences, through giving descriptive feedback. This allows appreciation of differences, good contact and improved communication. Trust, respect, team spirit and synergy may emerge. The notion of a cycle more easily depicts the kind of continuous process that teams go through and need to revisit as members are introduced or move on. The cycle suggests that skill and attention are required from the manager and from team members.

A team is something more than a collection of individuals. Teamwork is a group of people working together to achieve the same goal. The whole is more than a sum of the parts. A team can be identified by evidence of some or all of the following:

A team is a group of people working together in a related field to achieve an agreed goal, target or objective. In order to attain the overall goal activities and tasks are shared between the team members with give individuals their roles and responsibilities.

Teams are formed when individuals with a common taste, preference, liking, and attitude come and work together for a common goal. Teams play a very important role in organizations as well as our personal lives.

Teams are an integral component of organizational success. They take on many forms and functions and can have various structures. Teams also conduct a wide variety of projects with goals of innovation or mitigation. An example, from my experience, of a project that required the execution from a team was the establishment of a finished goods inventory program within a paper manufacturing company. A project of this magnitude required that a diverse and multifaceted team be assembled.

Team – a small number of people (ideally six to ten individuals) whose members share a common purpose, hold themselves individually and collectively responsible for goals, and have complementary skills and agreed-on processes for working together.

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

Teams are when people working together in a group to perform efforts and communicate with each other to combine efforts.

Teams are more than just groups of people assembled in the same area, they are a collection of individuals dedicated to a common purpose and with a series of detailed performance targets, working together with complementary skills. Teams of people are encountered in various scenarios, not just in the workplace, but also throughout life, such as sports, associations, charities and voluntary services.

What is a team/group? A team/group is a group of people who form together to complete a mutual goal such as a presentation, paper, discussing a topic or creating a new design. How does a team/group become a high-performance group/team? A high-performance group/team comes from a knowledgeable group of individuals working together to complete a common goal or task. These group/team members must use the

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.

4. Action: List and describe 4-5 action steps to turn your plan into reality and implement the plan

1. The team must have a clear goal. Avoid fuzzy, motherhood statements. Team goals should call for a specific performance objective, expressed so concisely that everyone knows when the objective has been met.