...High-performance is a key focal point for several businesses in view of the fact that groups and teams are becoming common amongst businesses. A high-level of performance makes up the foundation for groups and teams in the present day. The compilation of thoughts, wisdom, and skill of diverse people is better than that of one individual. From problem solving to innovation, companies have put their faith in the high-performances of groups and teams to put ones company in front the rest. This essay will discuss how a group can become a high-performance team, the impact of demographic characteristics and cultural diversity on group behavior and how demographic characteristics and cultural diversity detract from high-performance teams. Demographic characteristics typically are composed of age, gender, ethnic group, education level, and work experience. According to research, these characteristics can be categorized into two groups, visibility and job relatedness or informational. Visibility demographics consist of gender, age, plus ethnicity. Job relatedness demographics consist of differences in education levels and work experience (Jhen, K., 2000). The difference between these two groups is significant since visible demographics are not as pertinent to a certain job however; these mold individuals, insights, plus manners. Individuals frequently use visible characteristics to categorize others, which can cause antagonism, nervousness, and typecasting. The first insights made...
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...Teamwork and Team Performance - Case Study 3/23/2013 Contents 1. Group Development 3 2. Problem Identification 3 3. Retrospective Evaluation 4 4. Reflection 5 1. Group Development There are five stages of group development in which a team passes through: Forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. The group for this case study is currently, 1 week before the due date, in both the norming stage and performing stage. They have adapted to the absence of Mike and are motivated to finish the analysis in an effort to achieve a good grade. Each member has completed their part except Mike, who has just handed in notes to Christine. All of the other members have looked past any turmoil of Mike and either adapted to that or ignored him. Managing a team through these five stages will increase the overall effectiveness of that team; therefore understanding the different stages could have assisted Christine. If she knew what each stage entailed ahead of time, she could have anticipated certain issues or attempted to resolve them. In the beginning Christine should have laid out the group rules, assigned all the tasks, and allowed the members to introduce themselves and get to know one another. I think she did a good job leading them into scheduled meetings; however, Mike was just a complainer about the early meeting. When tension arose in the group, because Mike was upset seeing the group members having a good time and mingling without him...
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...High Performance Teams By: Charlene Denise Norwood Professor: Kate Spector MBA 6210 Building Relationships Abstract It’s essential for every organization to make sure that their goal is to motivate and help their employees demonstrate operating as a high performance team. Within every team, effective communication is extremely crucial between all members in order to see the success of the company. A divided team will not be able to stand against the fiery problems that arise within an organization if the foundation is not solid. In this paper I will be elaborating on communicating in teams, the organizational change, and organizational culture. Communicating in Teams Communications is the lifeblood of all organizations, so organizations are keeping pace by adopting social media and other emerging channels into their communications toolkit (McShane & Glinow, p. 260). It’s nearly impossible for an organization to stand without first laying a solid foundation of effective communication. While establishing effective forms of communication the leader has to make sure that they enjoy helping the team members develop into leaders themselves, by creating climates of support and accountability rather than blame (Pearce, 2007, para 8). Take steps to help team members grow into their jobs by learning new skills, and train them to take on more challenging tasks and responsibilities. Praise, them either privately or publicly depending on the circumstances...
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...Creating High-Performance Project And Process Teams CONTENTS 1. Executive Summary 2 2. Purpose 3 3. Discussions 3 4. Part A 3 4.1. Introduction 3 4.2. Group Theories 4 4.3. Team Theories 9 4.4. Conclusion 11 5. Part B 12 5.1. Introduction 12 5.2. Questionnaire 12 5.3. Questionnaire Scores 14 5.4. Tuckman Model: Johannesburg Central Team Score 15 6. Part C 15 6.1. Introduction 15 6.2. Team demographics 15 6.3. Team Effectiveness 16 7. Bibliography 21 FIGURES Figure 1: Approximation of the Punctuated Equilibrium Model. Figure 2: Asch Comparison Cards. Figure 3: Tuckman Model: Johannesburg Central Team Score TABLES Table 1: Relationship between Group Cohesiveness and Agreement with Organizational Goals. Table 2: Mature Work Group or Team Questionnaire. Table 3: Individual Team Member and Team Scores. 1. Executive Summary Group work and team work have especially become indispensible to the achievement of success in the world. Group work and team work have been used since the beginning of humanity. So what has changed? Competitiveness has forced a substantially, reduced cycle time requirement to turnaround capabilities and products in a much shorter period of time. An individual’s effort to achieve the required cycle time would not meet requirements on a number of levels: the requirement for various knowledge and skills, enhanced decision making by leveraging the strengths of diversity and assurance that the required quality would be met. However...
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...PERFORMANCE AND PRODUCTIVITY: TEAM PERFORMANCE CRITERIA AND THREATS TO PRODUCTIVITY OVERVIEW This chapter is best discussed following a team exercise or case so that students have an opportunity to reflect on the success of the team. One suggestion is to ask each student to write down a method by which to assess team productivity. The students’ different responses can lead to a discussion of performance measures. Then, the instructor can ask what conditions need to be in place for teams to excel on the performance measures identified by the class. Finally, the instructor can move toward a discussion of how to design teamwork so that threats to performance are minimized. To the extent that students and the instructor can link these concepts to real experiences—a class exercise, a case discussion, or individual student analysis— the concepts will become clearer. lecture outline with Accompanying slides integrated model of successful team performance (EXHIBIT 2-1) 1 Model serves two purposes 1 Description—what to expect in terms of team performance 2 Prescription—ways to improve the functioning of teams 2 Model asserts that team context affects team’s ability to do three essential things 1 Perform effectively 2 Build and sustain motivation 3 Coordinate people [pic] [pic] team context 1 It includes the larger organizational setting within which a team does its work, the design of a team in terms of internal functioning...
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...Develop the team member background information by writing an historical, descriptive overview of the team members. This should include: An insight into the dynamics of the team and the symptoms they are experiencing. Details such as the skills of the members, relationships among participants, environmental factors, organizational support and other relevant detail. I have thought myself to be a team player throughout my life. In my personal life I enjoy helping people and stepping where I have seen or felt I was needed. I have become a communicator and am not afraid to speak up, as I may have been a number of years back. I feel that if we do not speak up then there is no room for complaints. I get very involved in areas of interest and at times this may be misconstrued as being too aggressive. I have been described as “type A” and OCD but it may be true since giving my all does not allow me to fail or make mistakes. This is a fault and something I work on and try not to project on others. I do expect people however to be respectful of deadlines if we are working together towards a goal and within a team. I do feel it is important to acknowledge others and the work they have put in when you have benefited from it. This may come from my passion of sports and once having been part of sports teams. When games are won it’s not only one person taking home the trophy. We all work hard together in order to win together. My skillsets have improved since being here at JIU...
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...creativity in leading team performance towards organizational success Assignment -2- Work Groups and Teams - By Diaeddine Elturk Executive Summary: This paper cites the work of numerous notable authorities in the business world and their work on the importance, power and effectiveness of teams in leading the organizations and people towards the targeted success. The growing understanding of the business world of the interdependencies between functions that create performance in organizations and the indispensability of collaborative efforts continue to gain recognition and lead the precipitation of this understanding in the heart of organizational cultures. Advocates of team work argue that the organization needs to be built as a team to succeed. Drucker, Katzenbach, Buchanan, Andrews, Payne and Visart are only few of the notable writers on the validity of team work that are referenced to in this paper. Hot group, Task Force, or self-managing team, regardless of the naming or formation, any group who establishes common vision and orchestrate the respective roles and actions of its members stands a better chance to achieve the targeted outcomes. The paper touches upon the five main characteristics of a team, and the three major categories they may fall under. The paper also highlights the strengths and benefits of team while warning on some weaknesses that should be observed and avoided. Diversity of cultures, knowledge, personalities within a proper team dynamics lead to creative...
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...TEAM AURORA We are team ‘B9’, a name that we decide to combine to our new team name, Aurora. B-class stars, as quoted from Wikipedia, and as an analogy to our new team: “Class B stars are very luminous and blue. […] As B stars are so powerful, they only live for a relatively short time. Thus, due to the low probability of kinematic interaction during their lifetime, they do not, and are unable to, stray far from the area in which they were formed.” While this highlights our cohesion, our team ‘literal” name, Aurora, defines our dynamism and diversity: “An aurora is a natural light display in the sky predominantly seen in the high latitude regions. Auroras are caused by charged particles, mainly electrons and protons, entering the atmosphere from above causing ionization and excitation of atmospheric constituents, and consequent optical emissions.” Our team, though being composed of individuals with different backgrounds, believes in the strengths and cohesion of our opinions and skillsets: 6 different personalities, 6 different backgrounds, for only one goal: working together delivering on our promises and creating values for our pairs. As the new team B9 we have decided upon a few guidelines: * What are the General objectives of the team? Do you have any learning or social goals beyond task accomplishment? How do we know we are being successful at this? Our common goal is to achieve excellence through in-depth collaboration, resulting in both individual achievements:...
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...High Performance Teams Waseem AL Rousan J3 M2 Assessment1 30675904 Waseem Al Rousan High Performance Teams Content J3 M2 Assessment1 30675904 Waseem Al Rousan Contents Introduction: ................................................................................................................................................. 2 What is a group ............................................................................................................................................. 2 Team Development Stages: Group Formation Theory (Tuckman’s 4/5 Stage Model) ................................. 3 Group performance theories ........................................................................................................................ 3 The T7 Model of Team Effectiveness ........................................................................................................ 3 Rubin, Plovnick, and Fry Model—The GRPI Model of Team Effectiveness .............................................. 4 Katzenbach and Smith Model—Focusing on Team Basics........................................................................ 6 High performing team case study/Umniah’s IT Infrastructure team ........................................................... 6 Team Performance Measurement and Management .............................................................................. 8 Team Behaviors and Values ...........................................................................
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...High Performance Teams 1 High Performance Teams High Performance Teams Introduction In today’s business world many companies have moved away from a vertical management structure, to one which is more of a horizontal management style. This successful movement in management strategies has inspired many organizations to change to a more 2 horizontal management style which incorporates teams or groups. This paper will analyze how a group can become a high performance team, and an explanation of what components are needed to build a successful high performance team will be discussed. Finally, an evaluation of how the business and ethical considerations of globalization may affect team dynamics, with a brief personal example strengthening the evaluation will be covered. Groups Groups are important for an organizations performance, morale, and innovation. Groups are made up of two or more individuals to achieve a common goal (Shermerhorn, Hunt, & Osborn, 2008). Groups can be anything from people coming together to make investments to a social group that plays cards together. Groups in organizations will usually work together for an ongoing basis and interact when ever needed. Now that organizations have gone away from the top heavy vertical management style to a flat management style composed of groups, people need to learn how to work together better in teams or groups. High Performance Teams Becoming a high performance team not only takes dedication, but an outstanding...
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...High Performance Teams A high performance team is defined as (Field, 2011)” a group of people with specific roles and complementary talents and skills, aligned with and committed to a common purpose, who consistently show high level of collaboration and innovation, that produce superior results. The high performance team is regarded as tight-knit, focused on their goal and nothing else.” A high performance team is a rare group of individuals that can break boundaries, accomplish projects with almost unrealistic expectations and are committed to a higher expectation than regular teams. These teams have a strong identity of what they are trying to accomplish and they are a tight knit group that realizes that completing their objectives are more important than internal politics that might hinder the performance of the team. They all realize that their goal is one that is noble and performance of the team is greater than that of the individual. Members of these teams leverage each other’s strengths to help produce a more effective learning environment that produces a higher outcome than that of an individual group. There is a high level of comradery and fun within the group. Within that level of comradery is a level of trust and diversity that helps to coordinate success with the team efforts. The team needs to understand exactly what they are trying to accomplish. According to David Thiel (Thiel, 2009)there are five key factors that make up a high performance team: Clear:...
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...self-directed, high-performing teams Some of the difficulties that managers may have when establishing self-directed, high- performance teams is that the team is not provided with a vision and directions. High performance teams are psychologically bound together by the team goals they work which help them to achieve their future aspirations. The manager is the team leader and should guide the team in the right direction. This vision can be articulated in various ways through images, words and experiences. The more experiences you can provide your team members with of the future, the more likely they are to understand where you want to take them and how they could get there. Managers need to discuss the expectations and establish objectives with the team. A manager needs to adjust their leadership styles to help their team members. Most team members need strong direction by the leader. This will help the team become stronger. Other difficulties managers have in establishing high performance team is not paying attention to the development needs of the team members. Some managers do not know what knowledge each team member needs to have to get the job done. Managers need to inspire, encourage, support and nurture the team’s personal development. Identification of the successful characteristic of establishing self-directed, high performing teams Some of successful characteristics of establishing self-directed, high performing teams are listed below: Susan...
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...she was disliked by other senior managers when she got promoted to managerial position from technical lead in just six months. She clearly states her distastes towards the egotistic attitude among the management and how she faced many push backs from other managers. The company has a performance rating policy according to which if an employee scores below three out of a highest scale of four, then he should attend a performance improvement plan (PIP) which is certainly the first step towards firing that person. Susan clearly states she wasn’t a fan of PIPs because she felt it was condescending. The bottom line of this case is the ethical and practical issues that Susan has to face in making a decision to terminate two poorly performing managers, Terry and Phil working in her group. Terry had worked previously in a company as an engineer on turbine design and was not hired to the company through the normal hiring process. Even though he failed in the interviews, somehow he managed to secure a position in the company by influencing the higher ups. The reason behind his hiring was that he was the scuba instructor of the CEO and vice presidents of the company. Based on his past performance in her group, Susan gave him a 2.5 score, which also means that he is the next possible candidate for termination. This big decision of...
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...High Performance Teams – Larry Allen For our organization to become and remain successful, our teams must perform at a high level. We are committed to empowering and equipping our teams to successful, to become high performing teams. This approach is outlined well by Howard M. Guttman, in his article in CEO Magazine, Leading High-Performance Teams – “Horizontal, high performance teams with real decision-making clout and accountability for results can transform a company” (Guttman, 2008). Individuals perform better when they a part of a high performing team, and high-performing teams make successful organizations. Our organization’s application of Guttman’s concept of horizontal teams, are staff functioning not as hierarchical groups, but organic cross-functional, high-performance teams. As a new manager, you are leader not of only those that report to you, but you are a though leader. Think of yourself as a leader who happens to have people reporting to you, because that is exactly what your new role entails. Your first few days as a new manager can be a little intimidating, but be assured you’re not alone. Perhaps you can recall your first few days of high school. Those beginning days were likely not very productive. Most of your time, energy, and focus was probably spent figuring where your locker was, how to get to class, and not doing something to embarrass yourself. Likewise, the early days of leading your new team can be equally unproductive as team members...
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...Leading high-performance teams The team working is an important concept of the society wherein few people work together towards a common goal. In American culture, working in teams often considered contrary. Marvin Weisbord, author and organizational development expert, mentioned that, “Teamwork is the quintessential contradiction of a society grounded in individual achievement.” Still building, leading and organizing successful teams considered as a critical leadership task. It is always challenging to have people work together closely to achieve specific tasks in any team environment. The team is “a group of individuals who work together to produce products or deliver services for which they are mutually accountable.” -- Mohrman et al. The team is “a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.” -- Katzenbach and Smith The team is “two or more people who must coordinate their activities to accomplish a common goal.” -- Shonk High Performance Teams are always working collaboratively and effectively across the organization to accomplish given team tasks and objectives, delivers the competitive results quickly enough to remain as top performers. There are challenges such as team conflicts, obtaining maximum results from the teams and managing highly diverse teams – maintaining teamwork mentality as well capitalizing on the diversity of talents...
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