From a personal opinion, the ideal team is a strong and high-performing team that prioritizes good teamwork and team achievements. The team employees should have good interpersonal relationships, and conflicts between them should be handled productively rather than disruptively. Furthermore, the ideal team should have members with some sense of responsibility for the entire workflow rather than simply their portion of the process.
Team Dynamics
Communication
In the ideal team, the members have good communication skills, and they utilize them to improve the overall group's productivity. That means keeping team members abreast of work developments that affect their tasks. It also includes employing the use of the various avenues open to them – digital communication, one-on-one communications, and team meetings – to keep the team informed and timely with their tasks. Training teams to improve communication with each other improves the quality of the work produced and betters the team overall (Merckaert, 2015).
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Conflict Management
Conflict is an inevitable part of human interaction (Gilin et al., 2015). However, there are both productive and non-productive ways to handle conflict in the workplace. Conflict arising from different ideas presents a route for more innovation and creative problem-solving. However, managing this conflict wrong can create resentment, lower communication between team members, and create a hostile work environment (Gilin et al., 2015). The ideal team has undergone workgroup conflict training and conflict resolution training and can therefore understand the importance of accepting differing views as opportunities to strategize rather than opportunities to take personal offense (Gilin et al., 2015). Likewise, they are aware that keeping open communication channels even during conflict can be helpful rather than harmful.
Work Distribution
In the ideal team, the distribution of the workload is not only fair but also relevant. This means that every individual carries their own weight. It also means that the employees' work is relevant to their skill set, rather than poorly suited to them. The workload is an issue that can affect productivity in that individuals with a higher workload than others are more likely to suffer from negative stress and poor performance (Andersson et al., 2017). Furthermore, comparisons with other team members may breed resentment. Thus, it is important in an ideal team for the work distribution to be warranted, fair, and tailored to the team member's skills.
Team Leadership
One element of leadership that works well in the context of teams is empowering leadership. Empowering team leadership has been shown to affect team productivity positively. It draws upon a combination of sharing power with team members and creating a supportive and facilitative environment. Sharing power makes team members more invested in the overall team projects' results and enhances their sense of team responsibility (Hill et al., 2016). It also works extremely well on virtual or geographically distant teams. This aspect of team leadership is especially relevant in the context of modern times and social distancing.
Another element of leadership that is important in the team context is delegation. In particular, this is in reference to the dynamic delegation, which is a way for the team to have a shared, distributed leadership over the overall work process (Harris et al., 2016). By delegating, team leadership is shared, and investment in the final product is shared as well. Furthermore, inviting team members to take a bigger stake in a project improves their skills, which provides them with career development opportunities.
In conclusion, the ideal team has excellent communication and conflict management skills. These elements serve to ensure that productivity is at its peak. Additionally, the appropriate distribution of the team's workload reduces negative stress and builds further on productivity. Leadership from the context of a team should improve the investment of each member in the final product. That enhances their sense of responsibility and improves cohesion.
References
Gilin O. D., Leiter, M. P., & LeBlanc, D. E. (2015). Individual and organizational factors promoting successful responses to workplace conflict. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne , 56 (3), 301.
Harris, A., & DeFlaminis, J. (2016). Distributed leadership in practice: Evidence, misconceptions and possibilities. Management in Education , 30 (4), 141-146.
Hill, N. S., & Bartol, K. M. (2016). Empowering leadership and effective collaboration in geographically dispersed teams. Personnel Psychology , 69 (1), 159-198.
Merckaert, I., Delevallez, F., Gibon, A. S., Liénard, A., Libert, Y., Delvaux, N., ... & Slachmuylder, J. L. (2015). Transfer of communication skills to the workplace: impact of a 38-hour communication skills training program designed for radiotherapy teams. Journal of Clinical Oncology , 33 (8), 901-909.
