Getting to Results
Tayt Tolman
COM 516
November 9, 2011

*
Teamwork is a familiar expression to depict a group of people working together to achieve a common goal. Teamwork is used frequently when referring to sports teams performing to accomplish a purpose; nevertheless, teamwork is now a standard expression in the workplace. The success of the team is directly connected to the efficiency of the team. The workplace is a results-based culture and the performance of the team is linked to how the team attains results. According to Higgs (2007), “It appears that a number of factors are more likely to be dominant in explaining variation in team performance” (p.82). Higgs explains further that it is the individual personalities of the team members, accompanied with the techniques used by the team to become productive is what sets other teams apart (Higgs, 2007). This paper will examine the critical components of the team getting results while working as a collective and collaborative unit, the internal management of the team and its relationship to success, the effectiveness of team meetings and the technological tools that are available for teams to implement in the work environment.

The Team Working Together Teamwork begins with the individual; each individual in a team needs to be a team player, willing to work together to accomplish a bigger goal. Each person on a team has something different that he or she can contribute, and teams function best when team members are allowed to share his or her area of expertise. Teams function best when they are diverse group of people who are open to new ideas, as it is often through the conflict created by diversity, and the sharing of ideas that the best outcomes are achieved (Parker, 2002). Each team member needs to believe that he or she is free to express his or her opinions, when he or she agrees or disagrees, and to be heard. To work successfully as a team, each member also needs to respond kindly to disagreements, not creating dissention in the group. According to Parker a team is working well together when individuals stop seeing working as a team as an inconvenience and begin to see their other teammates as possessing something useful to offer to the team as a whole (Parker, 2002).
Managing Teams Management tends to look different in a team that is working together to get results. In a typical work environment a manager would be someone who decides what needs to get done and comes up with the plan to do it. However, there are rarely managers within a team environment as “the trend today is toward self-managed teams, in which workers are trained to do all or most of the jobs in the unit, they have no immediate supervisor, and they make decisions previously made by first-line supervisors” (Bateman & Snell, 2003, p. 430). The team will work together to seek out ways to improve as opposed to needing to be told by a manager the ways they need to be improved. According to Bateman and Snell (2003) “The benefits of teams are reduced when they are not allowed to make important decisions—in other words, when management doesn’t trust them with important responsibilities.” Teams will work best when the task is clearly defined but then they are truly empowered to seek results in whatever way the team deems best.
Effective Meetings:

Meetings serve an important function in any business or educational setting. In this increasingly competitive environment, members of a team or organization need to be informed of critical information regarding the organization. The advantage of organized meetings is it allows the team to see the progress of what they are doing or what others are doing in terms of everyday work or projects. Sandwith (1992) mentioned that successful meetings don’t happen by accident, “They are the result of careful planning and deductive facilitation.”
According to the article, Planning and Running Effective Meetings (2001), effective meetings boil down to three things:

1. The Meeting's Objective
An effective meeting serves a useful purpose. This means that in it, you achieve a desired outcome. 2. Use Time Wisely
Time is a precious resource, and no one wants their time wasted. With the amount of time we all spend in meetings, you owe it to yourself and your team to streamline the meeting as much as possible. 3. Satisfying Participants that a Sensible Process Has Been Followed
Once you have an agenda prepared, you need to circulate it to the participants and get their feedback and input. Planning and Running Effective Meetings (2001)

With that being said, Grossman (1998) commented that organizations use meetings to share necessary information and to train and coordinate efforts of their employees. He mentioned that project teams, either school- or work-based, use meetings to set objectives, allocate resources, make decisions, schedule individual components of complex projects, discuss project progress and share needed information. The article, Top of the heap: Successful Meetings (2005) mentioned that the disadvantages of meetings are time consuming and at times tedious. It went on to mention that meetings can become a tool of grandstanding, boasting, and AA format for picking on people. However, if we use meetings effectively, meetings can be a great way to explain complex and non-complex ideas and offer a great format to exchange ideas and really think them out. Meetings are a great way to communicate lots of information in a short amount of time and create a game-plan for the future ahead. In the end, our team has accomplished effective meetings by planning and creating agenda’s. Within our meetings, our team took on certain roles and task to finish our project effectively. We also allowed for team members to add any opinions or express any concerns that they may have had concerning the project. As a result, our meetings allowed us to think and share ideas and set-up specific time-lines for the success of the team project.
Effective Meeting at a Distance
As society grows we see that company’s and schools are able to expand. We find ourselves looking at working with bosses, co-workers, and professors from around the world. This has given us a chance to better marked product, improve our research, and expand our horizon to thinking outside of our remote area of living.
What has made this possible is that we have evolved in our use of technology allowing us the opportunity to have meetings, classes, and brain storm sessions without having to be face to face. This has been a huge benefit for the world. This lets the working class still work and go to school, and it also allows for companies to better expand their product to provide to areas that would not have been as easily possible as it is today.
The benefits that come with able to have this flexibility with these “Virtual Teams” are explained in the article Virtual team effectiveness: a proposed research agenda. Information Systems Journal, 9(4), 249-269, it goes on to explain the increased costs associated with maintaining office space and/or the increased costs of employee travel make the effective use of virtual teams an attractive option. The space necessary for virtual teams to operate should be merely the sum of the area of the footprints associated with members' computers. This total may be increased by the square footage associated with video-conferencing facilities, but, in any case, the physical space devoted to virtual teams should be far less than that associated with co-located teams
Other benefits are that with today’s technological advances we can have meetings anywhere from a subway station on your phone to your home computer; there are no time constraints of having to make sure we are in the office at a particular time to make the meeting.
Some of the negative results of virtual meetings are explained by Huber (1990), he explains that simple electronic communication, such as electronic mail or bulletin board systems, can be used to exchange factual or technical information. However, more advanced technologies, such as video teleconferencing, may be necessary to communicate complex or socioemotional information. In the absence of those advanced technologies, virtual activities may not be a viable option.

Technology Tools for Effective Collaboration
Instant messages to discuss project tasks and timelines;
2. E-mail attachments for sharing draft project documents;
3. Shared online calendars for setting project timelines;
4. Track-changes feature in Microsoft Word to gather feedback from group members;
5. Chat rooms in Blackboard or WebCT to have "real-time" discussions with group members;
6. YahooGroups to maintain shared files and communications within a small group;
7. Cell phones to have conference calls with multiple team members; or
8. Desktop video-conferences to communicate with off-campus learners.

Review every message you intend to send out before hitting the "submit" or "send" button.
* Don't try to be clever with your language; your goal should be clear and concise communications.
* Use spelling and grammar checkers available in most software applications. If necessary, cut-and-paste the message into your word processing program to make use of its spelling and grammar checker before sending the message.
* Important information should be near the top of the message, not somewhere down in the fifth or sixth paragraph.
* Review the To:, Cc:, and Bcc: list of recipients before sending an e-mail.
* Within the text of the message, ask the recipient questions to verify that they are clear about the content of your message (for example, "does that make sense to you?", "are you ok with those plans?", "does that work for you?," etc.).
* Never include in an online communication anything you wouldn't write on a postcard.
* Respect the copyright on materials that you reproduce (including items you find online).
* If you are forwarding or re-posting a message, do not change the wording of the original sender.
* Culture, slang, jargon, humor, idioms, and especially sarcasm are rarely effective communication strategies in online conversations (based on Watkins & Corry, 2005).
In addition, when learners receive an email, instant message, or text message (or when reading a chat room or discussion board posting) the following recommendations can be of value:
* Don't read too much into e-mails or chat discussions with other learners, or take comments too personally.
* Read the entire e-mail (not just the first few lines of each paragraph)
* Review the message more than once to ensure that you did not accidentally skip over any important information.
* Review any attached files or enclosed previous e-mails to provide the context for the message.
* If a message is upsetting, do not respond to it for at least an hour or two. Take some time to cool down and collect your thoughts.
* Ask any questions you may have about the content of the message. Cut-andpaste specific quotes from the message into your questions if there may be confusion on precise words or sentences.
* Repeat back to the sender to essentials details of the message to clarify your understanding (based on Watkins & Corry, 2005).

References
Bateman & Snell. (2003). Management: The New Competitive Landscape (6th ed.). : The McGraw-Hill Companies.

Higgs, M. (2006). How do top teams succeed? Factors that contribute to successful senior management team performance. Journal of General Management, 32(2), 77-99.

Parker, G. M. (2002). Cross- Functional Teams: Working with Allies, Enemies, and Other Strangers. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Sandwith, P. & Brauchle, P.E. & Wright, D.W. & Petrini, C.M. (1992, January). Effective communication. Training & Development

(2005, September). Top of the heap. Successful Meetings

Grossman, J. (1998, Apr.). We''ve got to start meeting like this. Inc.

Furst, S., Blackburn, R., & Rosen, B. (1999). Virtual team effectiveness: a proposed research agenda. Information Systems Journal, 9(4), 249-269. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2575.1999.00064.x

Huber, G.P. (1990) A Theory of the Effects of Advanced Information Technologies on Organizational Design, Intelligence, and Decision Making. Academy of Management
Review, 15, 47±71.