Designing Effective Teams: Facilitating Team Alignment
“Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.” — Andrew Carnegie
The team designs that are effective for the performance building of teams as well as the ways to incorporate diversity in the team which is helpful in bringing positive impact to the team. The hiring of individuals for positions in the team should not be solely based on qualification, experience, and talent but there are other factors that need to be considered such as quality they possess to work along with other members, being a team player, giving space to others and making others feel heard. These qualities help to build a better team, maintain a good relationship between team members, and help to increase work efficiency in the team. A team that has an optimistic outlook towards work and individuals brings a positive attitude in the team and has a good influence on each other.
At the point of task planning, the team should have a meeting where they can discuss timelines they need to meet in specific deadlines, as well as any task that can over-spill or requires more timing or any sort of dependencies, external factors, and unforeseeable circumstances should also be covered in these discussions. Taking an example of my workspace I would like to elaborate while considering individuals to be part of a team it is important to consider that they can be on board and work towards the common goal, get along with one another and be a good team player while managing their work. Designing any task required some due diligence on part of the manager and needs careful consideration and thoughtfulness while assigning work and promising timelines to clients as this requires input from team members as they are the ones putting in the effort and finishing actual work. “Team diversity refers to aggregated differences among group members that can be either relation oriented (social category diversity; e.g., age, gender, race) or task-oriented (functional diversity; e.g., education, functional background, tenure).” Including diversity in today’s world where we work with different cultures and in multi-national companies which have made the world a smaller place by bringing everyone and everything available to one another. With rapidly changing technology it has become easy to connect with colleagues who are on different continents, so diversity brings a bonus to the team as it provides an additional pair of eyes that can provide a different perspective and this type of thing plays an important role in adding value to the business. It shows clients that we think and are for one and all irrespective of any cultural differences and are accepting towards one and all.
Team identity means the goal that the team wants to achieve and how they want their future to be and the way they will attain the goal. While working part of any team, issues might arise due to indifference between members that is something unavoidable, but a proper plan or process needs to be in place to tackle such issues as it helps the team to function together and work towards the common goal irrespective of personal issues. “When employees identify with their organization, they will work for it (e.g., engage in cooperative behaviors and contribute in ways to ensure team performance) even if they do not identify with the team with which they work.” The manager also needs to keep in mind and treat everyone equally and fairly and not give any individual special treatment as this brings issues in the team, if everyone is treated same it brings trust and openness in the team and helps the team to get attached and brings a feeling of ownership to the work and company. “To build team trust, people need to understand how trust really works in teams — and to extend compassion to the complexities and challenges that naturally come with it. They need to know where trust stands in their own team, and be prepared to embrace opportunities to learn, grow, and develop and to live the conviction trust-building takes. And they need to be prepared to rebuild trust when — not if — it gets compromised.” It increases productivity and efficiency, brings personal growth along with the teams which are a win-win situation for all.
Build teams in such a way that designing the task, selecting the people, and then, managing their relationships and giving points. The team designs that are effective for the performance building of teams as well as the ways to incorporate diversity in the team which is helpful in bringing positive impact to the team. The team activities or cross-functional team events should be organized more as it helps to bring together in an outside work environment, gives more ways to know each other and collaborate. These group activities help to build trust and goodwill between the team which we lead in increased productivity by the team as workflow will become smooth as they will interact and discuss more with each other. This helps to have more open discussions; it helps to give space for correction and evolvement of individuals in the team. Individuals feel more attached in certain groups because of the dynamics they share with each other, the relationship the team has made them more attached to the team by building long-lasting relationships.
Conclusion
Attachment to teams happens due to the dynamics being shared by the members, individuals sharing a good rapport amongst themselves leads to better work quality, and issues due to conflict are very less. Whereas teams who don’t work together and work as individuals are not attached to the team due to not knowing each other. Interaction and group activity give teams place and space to know each other as people and not just colleagues, it gives them time and an open environment to talk about something other than work. That is why with the multi-cultural work environments companies are putting in efforts to the office such events and have employees interact with one another socially, as they know this will build a feeling of belongingness and happy work-life equation which is beneficial for companies.
