The achievement of organizational behavior is through engagement with staff and replacement of behaviors. Team-based structures and strategies are becoming more relevant in institutional transformations and growth. Innovation and competition in the global workplace are redirecting decision-makers to the role of teams. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has created faster and easier ways of connecting with team members and enhancing goals accomplishment (Lipnack & Stamps, 1997). Teams bridge the gap between an employee and a department or organization. Organizational growth revolves around teams and building effective strategies that utilize the contributions of groups is the new approach in business and management structures.
Goals Identification and Alignment
Developing effective teams involves among other things goal identification and alignment. This strategy can be interpreted as shared vision. If the vision or goal is not shared and understood, there will not be an efficient team. Divided goals disorganize and de-energize teams. Each employee is an important target carrier of the team. Having a sound knowledge of a goal and accepting it is important to a working team (Cohen, Fink, Gadon, & Willits, 1995). The teams that share the same purpose do work together and own the goal together. Organizational ownership of vision is distributed efficiently and uniformly. Each member of a team has a sense of belonging and ownership of where the team is going. Thus, when one member or a few see themselves as drivers of the vision to the exclusion of others in the team, commitment drops and team energy dwindles. The purpose of being in a team is to aggregate the effectiveness of each member. Thus, goals identification, clarity, alignment is essential in building effective teams.
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Over-Engagement
Another important strategy is the avoidance of over-engagement. Teams with leaders who over-engage lack the ability to delegate and grow an active team. Emotional considerations of team members are a vital point in lifting a group's enthusiasm. Over-engaged leaders do not pay attention to the emotional needs of their members. And allowing team members to learn from their mistakes is important in team developments. Thus, organizations should embrace innovation, change, and failures. If one expects a significant level of cooperation from members of a team, solutions must be collaboratively arrived at so as to foster unity and goal ownership.
Appropriate Roles
Selecting the right team and appropriating roles is a strategy for building effective teams in the organization. Skilled personals constitute each team. Identifying and developing the skills is critical to team development. Every skill is for a specific task, a factor in personnel management. A team with a clarity of function enhances performance. Members of a team with identified roles tend to show more commitment. People who are positioned in their area of competence experience fulfillment when tasks are completed. Placing people in wrong positions affects performance outcomes, weakening the overall strength and productive capacity of a group.
Pressure Coping Assistance
Providing coping mechanisms for members of a team is another strategy that builds effective teams in organizations. Competitions and goals setting have inherent potentials for pressure or stressors. If one demonstrates to members that they are valued and appreciated, it boosts their work morale. Organizations that treat its employees as the most valuable asset transform the employees into an efficient workforce. People appreciate gestures of care. Showing them that you care about their wellbeing creates a working environment that gives people liberty to communicate issues that may affect the organization positively or negatively. The organizational culture of talking beyond contracts and job description creates a sense of belonging to a team.
Accountability and Trust
Ensuring that there are accountability and trust-building is other strategies that build effective teams. To build trust in organizations, people need to create value in their lives. When organizations develop the value of employees, they reciprocally develop confidence in the team. This act of value creation is also applicable to team building. The commitment level becomes very high when trust becomes prevalent among members. Accountability is more about aligning one's acts with their words. Organizations and teams must work according to their set visions or goals. Leaders need to build trust and value to get active groups. The absence of confidence and value reduces the energy and performance.
Train, Incentivize, and Clarify
Training, incentivizing, and clarification of purpose are other strategies. Training improves teams but clarifying the purpose for training adds more value to a training exercise. Leaders of groups have the responsibility to inspire organizational goals that will appeal to the personal aspirations of members. Members' hopes, values, and quality of life have to be captured in a training design. Thus, a team leader will inject inspiration and purpose while the combined team building activity will drive the team towards goals realization. Incentivizing members of a group improve their morale and commitment. Research indicates that about 80% of employees’ motivation is by perks and money. This motivation is of things such as benefits, office, holidays, salary increment, and promotion. The remaining 20% comes from things that have no relationship with money and the perks. Tapping into things such as independence through delegation, life and work purpose, satisfaction, can be an effective team building strategy.
Stages of Development
The classic team development model of Truckman (1965) is incorporated into new technology, bringing a virtual angle to the methods and phases of team development. The Truckman’s model has four stages: the forming, storming, norming and performing. Most organizations skip the storming or norming phases which lead to poor team development. Leaders play very crucial roles in the different stages (Abudi, 2010). The implication of these phases is that differences, issues of task assignment, emotions, goals, resource allocations, and values are communicated and discussed.
References
Abudi, G. (2010). The Five Stages of Project Team Development. Retrieved from http://www.pmhut.com/the-five-stages-of-project-team-development
Cohen, A. R., Fink, S. L., Gadon, H., & Willits, R. D. (1995). Effective Behavior in Organization, 6th Edition, IL: Homewood, IRWIN/McGraw-Hill, Boston.
Tuckman, B. W. (1965). “Developmental Sequence in Small Groups.” Psychological Bulletin 63.
