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Leading High-Performance Teams

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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, skills, knowledge and personalities within the team.
Theory of Teams
Back in 1965, Psychologist Bruce Tuckman first came up with the descriptors “Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing” describing the growth stages of teams. It is important to review these descriptors and the leader’s role in each stage of the team building and team development to understand the complexity of

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