Creating And Managing High Performance Teams

Print   

02 Nov 2017

Disclaimer:
This essay has been written and submitted by students and is not an example of our work. Please click this link to view samples of our professional work witten by our professional essay writers. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of EssayCompany.

Team Development

MELT

Student Name : Bulkhaira

Student ID : n8442967

Lecture Name : Robert Thompson

Submission Date : 26 April 2013

Table of Contents

Table of Figures

Introduction

Creating and managing high performance teams.

Many organisations have achieved success by replacing the traditional hierarchical boss-subordinate relationship with that of an empowered work team.

In such a team environment, people are not managed, controlled or supervised. They are led by their mutual vision of the organization's purpose and goals. Research continues to show tha teams out-perform individuals acting alone, especially when performance requires multiple skills, judgments, and experience.

A major issue in developing (and managing!) high performance teams is that most employees have never learned how to best work as part of a team. Our culture promotes independence, self-sufficiency and competitiveness at the expense of shared goals and collaboration.

This issue becomes is key to creating and understanding high performance teams.  But how do you understand, let along measure the "workability" of a team?

Perception Mapping Team's Diagnostic and Performance tools are used to measure 9 key indicators of performance:

Team cohesiveness

Team conflict

Openness of communication

Team satisfaction

Team support

Team resources

Team feedback

Role clairty

Interpersonal Tust

What was true more than two thousand years ago is just as true today. We live in a world where "business as usual" IS change. New initiatives, project-based working, technology improvements, staying ahead of the competition – these things come together to drive ongoing changes to the way we work.

Whether you're considering a small change to one or two processes, or a systemwide change to an organization, it's common to feel uneasy and intimidated by the scale of the challenge.  You know that the change needs to happen, but you don't really know how to go about doing delivering it. Where do you start? Whom do you involve? How do you see it through to the end? 

Model of consulting and change management

Change management has been defined as the process of continually renewing an organisations’ direction, structure and capabilities to serve the ever-changing needs of external and internal customers (Moran & Brightman, 2001). In recent years, change management has increasingly considered as a must in organizational structure. The recent growth of internet and technology used has already impact on the way people work and play is one reason why we need to change (Stahl & Andersen, 1996). Moreover, environmental changes that make earth fragile already make business leaders aware about the consequences. In addition, emerging economic power that shapes global economy and threats from war and terrorist attack also creates big concern for business. Finally, competitive and complex operating environment also take into account as a reason to change (Paton & McCalman, 2008).

There are several models of change management:

Kurt lewin’s change model

This model consist of three elements; unfreezing, changing and refreezing. In unfreezing stage, organizations start to create motivation to change by analysing current situation and reason for change. In changing stage, action must be taken by promoting communication effectiveness and empowering people to embrace new ways of working. Finally, in refreezing stage, after new way of things employed and established, organisation start to raise a sense if stability.

Figure : Kurt lewin's change model

Kurt lewin’s model above shows how to make an organization move from one point into another point by creating and motivating reasons to change. Then, implementing the change and encourage people to get involve in change action. The reason is to stabilize the operation at a better level of performance by establishing new way of things (Schein, 1996).

McKinsey 7S model

McKinsey 7S model is seven internal aspects of an organization that need to be aligned if it is to be successful. This is a way of thinking about development and remodelling of organizations. It can be used to improve company’ performance, examines the effect of future change, aligns departments and process and determine how best to implement a proposed strategy (Karlof & Lovingsson, 2005).

Figure : McKinsey 7S model

Each element is connected to each other. The figure above shows the interdependency of the elements and indicates how a change in one affects all the others.

Strategy: the plan devised to maintain and build competitive advantage over the competition.

Structure: the way the organization is structured and who reports to whom.

Systems: the daily activities and procedures that staff members engage in to get the job done.

Shared Values: called "superordinate goals" when the model was first developed, these are the core values of the company that are evidenced in the corporate culture and the general work ethic.

Style: the style of leadership adopted.

Staff: the employees and their general capabilities.

Skills: the actual skills and competencies of the employees working for the company.

Kotter’s 8-step

John Kotter’s 8-step change model contains eight overlapping steps. The first three are all about creating a climate for change. The next three about engaging and enabling the organisation and the last about implementing and sustaining change (Kotter, 1996).

Figure : Kotter's 8-step change model

Step

Description activity within team

Create urgency

help the team see the need for change and the importance of speed

Needs to finish the assignment as soon as possible

Needs to deliver outstanding result to maintain GPA

Create a coalition

ensure you have support from the top management

Forming a group and know each other better through team building

Assessing the team member strengths and weaknesses

Develop a vision & strategy

leverage the evidence for change

Establish rules for all team member

Create planning and schedule for weekly meeting

Communicate the vision

confirm acceptance and understanding

Team vision confirmed and used as guidelines to work on individual and group assignment

Empower action

remove barriers to make the team successful

Building communication openness through intervention for better interactions among team member

Get quick wins

identify and broadcast early wins to maintain momentum

Leverage wins to drive change

use momentum from quick wins to continue driving change

Embed in culture

reward and encourage new behaviors to embed into the culture

Figure : Kotter's change model application

Team vision

Vision is the future you desire to create. Team vision is something that team wants to achieve in a big picture. The purpose of this is to create a sense of what could be within a team. The spirit of a vision statement will drive behaviours, creativity, commitment, engagement and determination of the member within the team. One reason why people working in a team is because they share a common goal or purposes which they believe will easily achieved if they working together (West & Unsworth, 1998).

In our team, we start working since the third week of the semester. At that time we do not even know each other’s style of learning, personality and expertise. We still try to gather some information during workshops in the class, not only about the assignment but also about each team member. A week after committing to work together we start to think as a team because we believe we share a common purpose in this particular subject. We start to develop our own team vision, every team member make up their minds to participate and brainstorming their ideas. Finally, later that week during our team meeting we established a vision; "Improve our skills and knowledge to effectively take part/lead change management initiatives to achieve the goal together".

Since we have our very own team vision, we start to work on the workshops and apply our togetherness in the process to work effectively. We are very aware about the effectiveness of the team which can strengthen our team outcomes and deliver outstanding result. There are five conditions to achieve team effectiveness; real team, enabling structure, compelling direction, supportive organizational context and expert coaching (Hackman, 2004).

Figure : Hackman's model

Compelling direction is one that represents the team vision. We believe to work together with the same purpose will lead us to the effectiveness in everything we do. Since the vision already formed we start to believe about the team performance and everybody starts contributing and supports each other’s opinion.

Team contract

A successful team is a team which can work together to achieve their goals. It means every member contribute and showing their potential to recognized as a high-performance team. There are six characteristic of a high-performance team (Thiel, 2009);

Having the same purpose

Clear roles and responsibilities in the team

An accepted leadership to guide the team

They must having an effective processes in their works

Having a solid relationship amongst member

Strong communication to facilitate cooperation

Since committed to start working on the task as early as possible, we were planning to set up certain rules within the team. The contract may include the way in which a team will operate and create what is best for the team as a whole. Creating a team agreement when a project begins is an effective way of getting a team started (Smith, 2004). In developing the rules, each team member needs to be honest to ensure the success of the team. Furthermore, each team member must encourage every team member to participate and given opportunity is equal to everybody to ensure new ideas generated.

After brainstorming and discussing, we come up with some agreed rules which apply to every team member. These rules must be put in place in every meeting we do to work as a team:

Attending weekly meetings every Thursday at 8pm and be on time

Be prepare before attending the workshops and weekly meeting

Stay focused during the meeting

Clarify any uncertainties to ensure we are on track

Each member should provide feedback

From the above contract we can see if almost all of the rules are focusing on team members’ behaviour. It more about attitude and the way the team interact to keep everybody stay in touch during the works.

In the end, we come up with our own perception about the criteria of a high-performance team. Every member is responsible for each criteria on the intervention activities later on. The criteria as follows;

Innovation (Rob)

Commitment (Bul)

Hard working (Abdul)

Team work (Jun)

Communication (Sirilada)

Diagnostic

Every week we are trying to do a survey question to diagnose our team level of positivity/ productivity (see Appendix A). The survey questions were designed by each team member related to their selected criteria. The scale of survey is from 1 (low) to 10 (high) with higher is better. According to that survey question, every week our team score is increasing which shows positive progress. Our survey question covering five selected areas that appointed to each member that includes; sense of innovation, high commitment, hardworking, team work and communication.

Figure : Team diagnosis

The figure above shows four quadrant of team performance (Team Diagnostic, 2013). Based on that diagnose and by looking at our team overall score for the survey questions, we confidently stated that our team is in blue box quadrant (High positivity/ high productivity). We always have a strong commitment to attend our weekly meeting, we always having fun during the meeting, our level of communication is outstanding, and the important thing is we always produce an outcome in every meeting we do.

Knowledge

As already explained before, my assigned criteria is commitment. In this particular context I need to monitor and maintain commitment level of team member. The depth of the commitment of team members to work together effectively to accomplish the goals of the team is a critical factor in team success. The relationships that team members have developed out of this commitment are keys in team building and team success. Teamwork involves combining skills, talent, knowledge and experience of all team members. To be the most effective teamwork needs to synergize all of those.

Commitment means acceptable of the responsibilities and duties to meet team goals and objectives. Team commitment is developed through good communication and effective decision making, as well as fostering mutual concern and solidarity between team members (Leading work teams learning resource, 2013).

There are a number of signals that indicate the work team is committed:

Maintaining or increasing quality

Reaching or exceeding production targets

Decreasing complaints from team members

Limited conflict between team members

Fewer workplace injuries (Leading work teams learning resource, 2013).

Building team commitment

According to Adam Cohen (Cohen, 2008), there are five ways to build team commitment; roles and responsibility, Empowerment and ownership, trust, recognition, and a sense of humor.

Criteria

Applied situation

Roles and Responsibilities

Intervention area created and selected by each team member

Empowerment and Ownership

Intervention activity conducted by all team member

Constructive feedback after intervention activity by peers

Trust

Week by week after interventions every team member gain confident while working in a team that create trust and honesty

Recognition

Interventionist appreciated after their intervention done and showing immediate impact

A Sense of Humour

In every meeting during intervention activities, because our intervention activities is set of questions and a fun game

Figure : Building team commitment

Intervention design

demonstrate discipline knowledge on intervention and intervention design. Which intervention did you use; list the steps you followed – did you design an intervention or use an off-the-shelf intervention. Show clearly how the intervention would address the diagnosis

BUILDING COALITION, finding right people to form a powerful team to work on the task

See p328 (textbook)

Intervention is a set of planned change activities performed by internal and external people, intended to help an organization increase its effectiveness. The goals of this activity are to remove barriers to effective group functioning and to develop within a group the ability to manage group process to more effectively solve future problems (Woodman & Sherwood, 1980).

In the previous section already mentioned that every team member picked one of high-performing-team-criteria that they want to observe. Since I picked commitment as a topic for my intervention I need to find and design a good intervention activity to make this activity beneficial to the group.

First of all, I will ask questions to all team members about their goal while working in a team and their understanding about the assignment. As an interventionist I will provide a piece of paper that they can use to write their answer. After all of them finish with their answer, I will collect the papers and comparing each answer in a table that can be seen by every member. The reason behind this is to make them analysing and positioning themselves among team member. This is important to make self-awareness about their ability and knowledge.

Intervention implementation

Briefly describe what you did. What factors in your view affected the implementation of your intervention

My intervention part is about commitment. In this intervention, I want to assess and observe every team member commitment to work as a team. I also need to analyse their potential to contribute to the team works and achieve team goals together.

There are three steps in my intervention activities for about 45 minute’s time (see Appendix B for details):

A question about their goal and objective while working in a team. In this question I want to know each member opinion.

Another question about their understanding of the case study. In this question I want to assess their effort onto case study, wether all of them already read the information or not. This is important to know how much work they did to gain some information. Both of the questions above written in a piece of paper and handed in to the observer. In this game I am the observer.

A team game. In this activity all of team member was given an envelope consists of pieces of papers. All of them have to form their papers into a square and the game will finish when the entire team member having a square in front of them. They can exchange the papers between them but they not allowed to talk or even giving a specific signal. The activity was timed in order to know how well the cooperation between them to solve a problem and achieving team goal together. In the end, within only four minutes, every team member having a square of the same size in front of they (see below).

Figure : Intervention activity for commitment

Intervention evaluation

what was the substance of the feedback they provided to you?

After those three activities, I made some observation notes:

And also I got feedback from my fellow team member about my intervention and my role as a leader in this particular activity, the result as follows:

Reflection

Provide your reflection on the intervention – what worked from your point of view, what did not go so well. You can think of reflection in learning terms – see Kolb’s learning functions in the self assessment –team development handout

In the end, based on the above notes and feedback, I can say, our group is really good in working as a team and all of them really excited about this kind of activities. They also has a good knowledge and understanding not only to another member but also about the task that we need to submit later this semester.

It can be seen that, work hard is a must to make change in an organization success. Planning and building a foundation is the prerequisite activities to make change easier and improving the chance of success. Patience for waiting to get the result is needed to put in place to make it right.

Organizations must pay attention to the hard side of change management to turn transformational change into reality. There are four key factors need to consider in order succeeding the change; firstly, managers must consider the duration of the change program need to complete, the process is really important to make sure the transformation success. They need to review the progress frequently to meet the requirements. Next, business leader also need to consider about team’s performance integrity. It’s the ability to complete the initiative on time. In addition, commitment also plays an important role to the change, commitment from the top management and employees affected by the change. Finally, all of the factors above not going to success without effort from all stakeholders within the organization (Todnem By, 2005).

Change leadership

Leadership characteristic

A leader must have a comprehensive package to be a good leader in the organization. A transformational change within an organisation is driven by a leader (Waddell, Cummings, & Worley, 2011). A leader must have excellent interpersonal and communication skills, bringing value to the organization, strong creativity and flexibility and finally a confidence feeling in everything he does(Stahl & Andersen, 1996). During my role as an interventionist, I can say I am a creative person, I spent time and energy in preparing the materials that I need for intervention activity. I really focus on that particular item and hoping to bring something valuable for the team development. I also demonstrate communication skill in delivering the intervention as well as confidence. In the end of the intervention activity, I asked the team member for the feedback and all of them agreed if creativity is my strongest point in this situation. They also appreciate the way I am presenting the contents that interesting and fun. In the end, they all agree if their commitments to work together and deliver outstanding result are now high (see appendix B).

Leadership styles

Nowadays, a leader not only having just one leadership style but sometimes they must change into another style to accommodate ever-changing environment. There are six leadership styles in an organisation (Goleman, 2000):

Styles

Description

Impact

Coercive

Demands immediate compliance

Negative

Authoritative

Mobilises people towards a vision

Most strongly positive

Affiliative

Creates harmony and builds emotional bonds

Positive

Democratic

Forges consensus through participation

Positive

Pacesetting

Sets high standards for performance

Negative

Coaching

Develops people for the future

Positive

Figure : Goleman's leadership styles

Based on my role during intervention activity, I can say my leadership style is more into democratic and sometime turning into affiliative style if required. I am trying to get consensus in every movement that we do to get support from all team members. I always asking all members to share their idea and thoughts about the activity and giving feedback in the end. Moreover, I also tend to create harmony within the team by aligning people opinion to avoid conflict when sharing their ideas. I believe every team member is unique and each of them can bring value to the team. My changing leadership style is also an example of situational leadership model where different leadership styles will applies depending on the situation (Hersey, Blanchard, & Natemeyer, 1979).

Figure : Situational Leadership

From the diagram above we can see that leadership can change subsequently based on the situation occurs. The table below will explain my situational leadership model.

Behaviour types

Applied situation

S1: Telling

As an interventionist I have to direct people about what they have to do during the intervention activity, what rules have to be followed and what requirements they must pay attention to.

S2: Selling

Before the intervention I asked all team member about their readiness and after the intervention I asked for their feedback about the intervention activity and my role as an interventionist

S3: Participating

Encouraging each team member to do their best during the intervention to complete the task and achieving our team goals in building a good relationship within the team

S4: Delegating

During the intervention, all participant free to do what they think necessary as long as accordance with certain agreed rules and my role is do the observation and try to keep the activity on track

Figure : Situational leadership application

Conclusion

Change management is… resistance to change (O'Toole, 1995)

It important in organisation

Team development

Team contract and diagnosis

Team intervention and reflection

According to Burnes (2004) change is an ever-present feature of organisational

life, both at an operational and strategic level. Therefore, there should be no

doubt regarding the importance to any organisation of its ability to identify

where it needs to be in the future, and how to manage the changes required

getting there. Consequently, organisational change cannot be separated from

organisational strategy, or vice versa (Burnes, 2004; Rieley and Clarkson,

2001). Due to the importance of organisational change, its management is

becoming a highly required managerial skill (Senior, 2002). Graetz (2000: 550)

goes as far as suggesting ‘Against a backdrop of increasing globalisation,

deregulation, the rapid pace of technological innovation, a growing

knowledge workforce, and shifting social and demographic trends, few would

dispute that the primary task for management today is the leadership of

organisational change

Leadership, by contrast, is about coping with change. Part of the reason it has become so important in recent years is that the business world has become more competitive and more volatile. 

Faster technological change, greater international competition, the deregulation of markets, overcapacity in capital-intensive industries, an unstable oil cartel, raiders with junk bonds, and the changing demographics of the work-force are among the many factors that have contributed to this shift. 

The net result is that doing what was done yesterday, or doing it 5% better, is no longer a formula for success. Major changes are more and more necessary to survive and compete effectively in this new environment. More change always demands more leadership.

leadership creates the systems that managers manage and changes them in fundamental ways to take advantage of opportunities and to avoid hazards

Creating vision and strategy

Communicating and setting direction

Motivating action

Aligning people

Creating systems that managers can manage and transforming them when needed to allow for growth, evolution, opportunities, and hazard avoidance



rev

Our Service Portfolio

jb

Want To Place An Order Quickly?

Then shoot us a message on Whatsapp, WeChat or Gmail. We are available 24/7 to assist you.

whatsapp

Do not panic, you are at the right place

jb

Visit Our essay writting help page to get all the details and guidence on availing our assiatance service.

Get 20% Discount, Now
£19 £14/ Per Page
14 days delivery time

Our writting assistance service is undoubtedly one of the most affordable writting assistance services and we have highly qualified professionls to help you with your work. So what are you waiting for, click below to order now.

Get An Instant Quote

ORDER TODAY!

Our experts are ready to assist you, call us to get a free quote or order now to get succeed in your academics writing.

Get a Free Quote Order Now