The West Coast Transit Marketing Project

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)

A successful team can be represented by various characteristics which include respect for one another, a sense of purpose, commitment to the aims of the team which are demonstrated every day by each team member and regular communication between team members.

| “The top 10 features of an effective team are: * clear purpose; * open communication; * constructive conflict; * effective problem-solving and decision making; * defined roles, responsibilities and accountability; * strong relationships; * systems and procedures; * experimentation and creativity; * measurement and self-assessment; * shared leadership.” For a team to be effective, they need to have clear

Many of us have seen that "Nobody's Perfect - But A Team Can Be" and we have seen a team produce a quality and quantity of work far higher than the sum of what the separate members could have produced on their own. The success of any Endeavour hinges on the behavior, talents, balance and cohesion of this management team. There are two main points when it comes to relevance of teams, the first is the recognition that human strengths usually bring countervailing weaknesses and the second is that some combinations of these roles have a greater probability of team success than others.

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.

Classic Airlines put together a team to reduce overall costs by 15% and address several concerns including employee morale and customer retention. The team faces the challenge of convincing senior leadership to look beyond the bottom line becoming a customer focused organization. The team also faces the challenging of making changes without increasing costs, cutting salaries, or damaging the reputation of the company in the eyes of shareholders, customers, or employees. The paragraphs below utilize a problem solving process to tackle these challenges.

The rise of mass transit in the beginning seemed like a great idea everything did seem to go well and it really benefited the majority of Americans. Many people used mass transit as a faster efficient way to get around that they had never seen before. Electric trolleys as started in the article “The Rise and Fall of mass transit” were the start of the urban expansion that came about. At the time real estate owners and transit owners developed a good system to ensure economic development in the cities. In the early 1900s there was a decline in mass transit development although there was a development in automobile technology. As said in the passage entrepreneurs and private corporations came together and invested more in street cars these were the reason as to why there was such a corruption in mass transit. During this time Americans demands a better control of the mass transit system which was necessary and these large corporations had no interest in the welfare of the citizens rather only in making a large profit.

In the workplace, teams play a very important role in goal achievement. With the help and support of a team leader, the organization can become very successful as long as the team is effective and cooperative. There are many different leadership styles/theories that make each leader unique and effective in their own way. It is not just the leader though that has to be effective. The team as a whole needs to come together and being efficient. Team building strategies are very helpful and effective to bring everyone together. Although working in a team is very effective in most cases, conflicts can still arise. In order to bring everyone back together again conflict resolutions need to be put into place such as the problem solving technique.

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”.

In this paper I will discuss how a team leader assesses how big the team is needed in order to accomplish the task assigned to them. This paper will also discuss the how conflicts can arise while trying to meet their goals. Such as which person works better in certain areas. I will also talk about how a team leader resolves their problems that may accure. In addition I will also discuss if team work will take longer to complete task along with some of its advantages. I will also point out some of the resistors to team work like not have the proper tools or supplies. I will also discuss how to be proactive so

 Set limits on what members can do  Teams perform better.  Understand individual strengths and weaknesses  Optimistic role on diversity  Smaller teams are more effective  Effective with just enough people to complete task  Gives an option  Allows to have high and low performing teams  All members must share workload  Delegate responsibility  Allows teamwork

Kreitner and Kinicki (2013, pp. 307, 323) also wrote that effective teamwork depends on clear purpose, informality, members’ participation, listening, civilized disagreement, consensus decisions, open communication, clear roles and responsibilities, shared leadership, effective external relations, style diversity, and self-assessment, while high-performance teams are created through participative and shared leadership, alignment on purpose, effective communication, future-orientation, task-focus, creative talents, and rapid response. In addition, some industry articles suggested the following criteria for effective teams: diversity, clear goal, effective communication, trust, ownership, job competencies, leadership competencies, morale, and operations metrics (“Characteristics,” n.d.; “Evaluation criteria,” n.d.).

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.

Upon review on a profile of a successful company we see Southwest Airlines as a prime example. Their ability to recognize weakness in their management system and adjust strategies has allowed them to emerge as a leader in the US airline industry. Southwest is the largest US low fare carrier with low fare rates, no additional fees and excellent customer service. Southwest Airlines currently has one of the most innovative management practices in the US to date. A review of the critical elements of Southwest Airlines proves to be effective and innovative.

A team is a group of people working together to achieve the same objectives. Katzenbach and Smith state in their report The Discipline of Teams (1993) that ‘the essence of a team is common commitment. Without it, groups perform as individuals; with it, they become a powerful unit of collective performance.’ Throughout this study, I will analyse the many different advantages and disadvantages of working in teams and its effects on team members and their performance and commitment within the team. I will consider many different aspects of team work and refer to certain established theories in