Team collaboration and communication plan for Thirsty Beverage Corporation

Team Dynamics 

Understanding organizational dynamics within the workplace is critical for leaders and those with leadership goals. Team and power dynamics impact tactics and strategies, creative problem solving, alliance management, and social political and emotional intelligence that are required to solve problems (Park, Lew & Lee, 2018) . The diversity of team members' skills and knowledge produces a large pool of resources and generates improved team performance as well as creativity. 

The team at Thirsty Beverage Corporation (TBC) is multicultural with 73 percent Caucasian representing the largest group, 14 percent Hispanic, 8 percent African-American, and 5 percent Asian. TBC consists of a distributed team from difference cultures and underneath the surface cultural diversity influences collaboration (McKinley & Zielinski, 2019). Although we can work with people from different cultures, it is evident that understanding each other properly becomes a challenge (Park, Lew & Lee, 2018) . Cultural diversity also influences organizational communication through different beliefs about hierarchy, responsibility, openness, decision-making, communication channels, and work. 

At TBC, 70 percent of the employees are male. Thirty-two percent of the employees are aged between 26-35 years, 20 percent are between 36-45 years, 26 percent are 55 years, and above, 14 percent are between 46-55 years, and 8 percent are between 18-25 years. TBC consists of a diverse workforce, which is extremely important in improving performance and productivity. The age differences within the organization’s workforce will improve organizational performance when teams are involved in complex decision-making tasks (McKinley & Zielinski, 2019). Age diversity also brings different perspectives, experiences, styles, and expectations, thus driving innovation. The ideas and experiences of employees above 50 years at TBC on new product features and upgrades will be complemented by the experimental mindset and positive energy mindset of younger employees, driving the creativity and innovation of the enterprise. 

A workplace that constitutes Millennials, Baby boomers, Generation Xers, and the silent generation provides a unique opportunity for varied approaches and perspectives to everyday work in an enterprise. Age and cultural differences at TBC will improve organizational performance and lower employee turnover. Younger and older employees working together provides different skillsets to the enterprise as each generation has its own unique skillsets. Younger workers are beneficial to TBC because they have experience with social media and newer forms of contact. In comparison, older workers have experience with customers who may prefer traditional forms of communication. Younger workers at TBC can teach older workers how to use new technology or industry-related skills, while older employers can use their skills to offer mentorship programs to younger employees. This provides a platform for continued learning and skills building as employees of all ages can offer mentorship programs. 

Implicit bias are the labels that impact a person’s understanding, actions, and choices in an unconscious way (Filho, 2020) . Attribution bias is falsely assuming things and being quick to judge an individual without knowing their full story. People have a propensity to suppose that an individual’s actions are founded on the "kind" of individual they are rather than the social and environmental forces that affect the person (Park, Lew & Lee, 2018) . Ageism is another type of implicit bias that may affect diverse teams. Ageism affects older people than younger people. When employees are in their 50s, it becomes more difficult to find a job, change careers or move up in their careers as younger talented employees tend to be valued (Park, Lew & Lee, 2018) . These biases adversely impact team communication because messages are distorted which hinders the ability of the organization to execute its business and achieve the bottom-line. 

In group dynamics, there will be a person who is always negative, riles up other team members, and makes work-life difficult. We have employees that insist on doing everything by themselves. They are hardworking and they want everyone to know that they are sacrificing for the job (McKinley & Zielinski, 2019). These types of employees bring an imbalance to the team, are at high risks of burnout and they foster unrests within the ranks. We also have socialites who are entertaining, funny, everybody’s friend. Most of their day is spend on their phones, social media, or around the watercooler and coffeemaker (Park, Lew & Lee, 2018) . Socialites waste an organization’s billable hours on endless coffee breaks and conversions which affects the productivity of other employees (Filho, 2020) . Difficult employees spread negative communication around the workplace that results in employee conflict. 

Personal Approach 

During the interview process, my personal value proposition should inform whether I should be promoted or not. As a leader, it is imperative that I do not place too much emphasis on my strengths even if they aligned with organizational objectives (Rees, Breen, Cusack & Hegney, 2015) . Also, I should not spend too much time overcoming my shortcomings (Park, Lew & Lee, 2018) . Instead, I should focus on what I am best at and have people around me with complementary strengths. To assess my strengths and weakness, I will periodically request for honest feedback from my colleagues (McKinley & Zielinski, 2019). They may mention my strengths and weaknesses and I will raise questions about them to know where I can improve. I will also be revisiting and reviewing my strength and weaknesses list based on previous feedback, reflect, and modify them based on what I have learned. 

It is important that I accept that I may have implicit bias and that these biases may affect my interaction with diverse teams. The first step in addressing my own biases is to ask myself probing questions on race, gender, sexual orientation, and age affect my decision-making or attitude towards other people. To address my own biases, I will encourage partnership building by reframing my interactions with team members as a collaboration between equals rather than a high-status and low-status person (Park, Lew & Lee, 2018) . I will also increase my contact with individuals from different cultures by expanding my network of friends and colleague to include people from different gender identities, racial and ethnic groups, and sexual orientation. 

During performance evaluations, I tend to focus on gender when making decisions instead of applying agreed standards, criteria, and practices used across employees. While giving feedback to women, I focus on their attitudes and personality, in contrast to the accomplishments and behaviors. Sometimes I provide vague feedback that does not offer specific details on what they did well and what they need to improve. To address these biases, I intend to develop a rubric for evaluations (Park, Lew & Lee, 2018) . An evaluation rubric will help establish the criteria against which TBC’s employees’ performance will be assessed. The rubric will require that I apply evidence from an employee’s outcomes and evaluate whether they did or did not meet the expectations. This means that I will be less influenced by my own perceptions in providing feedback to female employees. 

While communicating with difficult employees, I will hold back and listen more to people from different cultures talk about their journeys through life., hardships, experiences, and triumphs that will enhance my empathy levels. I will also increase my interactions with people from diverse cultures at TBC and conduct more research on different cultures. I will create an environment where I can engage in dialogue and enable employees to voice their concerns and experiences, which will allow them to feel like they are making an impact on their organization. I will also identify the different communication styles among diverse teams and tailor my communication to them (Park, Lew & Lee, 2018) . Most extroverts prefer in-group settings and prefer discussing their ideas before coming to a conclusion. As a manager and leader, I will provide them with the platform to present their thoughts verbally. 

While working with challenging team members, I will focus on my breathing during tense situations. When I notice that I am getting tensed, I will shift my focus on breathing. This will help take my attention off the physical signs of panic, relieve my nerves, and keep me focused on the issue at hand. I will also concentrate on counting my breathing – inhaling and exhaling until I get to the count of 10 and then start again. Breathing will help release the tension, making me less susceptible to retaliate. 

While working with difficult team members, I will focus on self-control. When I notice that my emotions are building up, I will excuse myself to stand up or walk around, activating the thinking part of my brain. By anchoring my body, I am recognizing and acknowledging unpleasant emotions so that they will have less power influence and cause distress while working with difficult employees. 

While dealing with difficult team members., I will manage my emotions by setting clear expectations about out encounter – this includes the objectives for the encounter and emphasize the need for collaboration (McKinley & Zielinski, 2019). I will also quantify the impact of the individual’s behavior on achieving organizational objectives such as instances where they missed deadlines resulting in a project to fall behind or poor responses issued to customers resulting in loss of business. 

Collaboration Strategies 

To build a safe and open environment within the team, I will focus on identifying individual and strengths and weaknesses of my team members. To start collaborating effectively, I will build teams around individuals who complement each other. One team member should be able to complement the disabilities of another (McKinley & Zielinski, 2019). The next step will be to establish expectations and clarify objectives. With clarified expectations and objectives, teams will be able to focus on their tasks and take a collaborative approach in decision-making (Filho, 2020) . 

Taking culture and age into consideration, I will frequently reinforce organizational objectives and purpose. This will act as a reminder that their efforts and work fulfill a greater purpose, hence motivating people to think, act and work in a collective fashion. I will also encourage teams to reflect on each other’s preferred way of working such as the behaviors different people exhibit when they are under pressure or motivated. This will lead to team members being aware of their styles of working and they can begin to figure out how to use these tendencies to work more effectively as a group (Rees, Breen, Cusack & Hegney, 2015) . 

To foster my collaboration with challenging employees, I will inform them of the consequences of not working with the team towards achieving the bottom-line. I will focus on what they stand to lose if they do not change their behaviors such as the possibility of being suspended or missing out on a promised promotion (McKinley & Zielinski, 2019). I will also isolate difficult employees from the rest so that the rot does not spread. By establishing physical distance between them and other employees such as reassigning projects and rearranging desks it will become easier to eliminate cognitive loss (Park, Lew & Lee, 2018) . I will employ the use of internal social networks and cloud-based collaboration tools to avoid run-ins with difficult employees thus reducing a stressful work environment. 

References 

Filho, E. (2020). Shared Zones of Optimal Functioning: A Framework to Capture Peak Performance, Momentum, Psycho–Bio–Social Synchrony, and Leader–Follower Dynamics in Teams. Journal of Clinical Sport Psychology , 14 (4), 330-358. doi: 10.1123/jcsp.2019-0054. 

McKinley, D., & Zielinski, L. (2019). Turning conflict into collaboration: How to manage workplace disagreements.  Hfm (Healthcare Financial Management) , 112–115. 

Park, W., Lew, J., & Lee, E. (2018). Team Knowledge Diversity and Team Creativity: The Moderating Role of Status Inequality. Social Behavior And Personality: An International Journal , 46 (10), 1611-1622. doi: 10.2224/sbp.7051 

Rees, C., Breen, L., Cusack, L., & Hegney, D. (2015). Understanding individual resilience in the workplace: the international collaboration of workforce resilience model. Frontiers in Psychology , 6 . doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00073.