Many different types of teams have been identified by social scientists. Managers may encounter the diverse types of challenges while managing different kinds of teams. Challenges associated with Cross-Functional Teams might be different from that of a Geographically Dispersed Team or a Virtual Team. This article explores some common categories and subtypes of teams.
Teams are organized in different ways; teams may be suited to different purposes and can be classified based on their dependence, authority, location, purpose, time, and many other attributes. If you understand the taxonomy of teamwork you'll be a better leader and a better team player.
An independent team is a team where all team members are able to perform the same basic tasks independently. They may be able to help each other, perhaps by offering advice or by providing moral support, but each individual's success is primarily due to each individual's own efforts. For example, Chess players do not win their own matches merely because the rest of their teammates did, and math students do not pass tests merely because their neighbors know how to solve the equations.
In an interdependent team, no significant task can be accomplished without the help and cooperation of any of the members; within that team members typically specialize in different tasks and the success of every individual is inextricably bound to the success of the whole team. An interdependent team benefits from getting to know the other team members socially, from developing trust in each other, and from conquering artificial challenges.
Formal teams or groups are created deliberately by managers carrying out specific tasks to help the organization achieve its goals. The most prevalent type of formal group is the command team, which includes a manager and all employees who report to that manager. Another type of formal team is the committee, which generally lasts a long time and deals with recurrent problems and decisions. Some formal teams are temporary. They may be called task forces or project teams. These teams are created to deal with a specific problem and are usually disbanded when the task is completed or the problem is solved.
Informal teams or groups emerge whenever people come together and interact regularly. Such groups develop within the formal organizational structure. Members of informal teams tend to subordinate some of their individual needs to those of the team as a whole. In return, the team supports and protects them. The activities of informal teams may further the interests of the organization. Saturday morning games, for example, may strengthen the player’s ties to each other.
Along this dimension, teams can be divided into work teams and improvement teams.
Work teams are primarily concerned with the work done by the organization, such as developing and manufacturing new products, providing services for customers, and so on. Their principal focus is on using the organization’s resources to effectively create its results. Work teams are responsible for the actual act of creating tangible products and services. The actual workers on an assembly line would be an example of a production team, whereas waiters and waitresses at a diner would be an example of a service team.
Improvement teams are primarily oriented towards the mission of increasing the effectiveness of the processes that are used by the organization. For example, most companies nowadays have quality teams who focus on improving the quality of operations across the company or processes.
A team is any group of people organized to work together interdependently and cooperatively to meet the needs of their customers by accomplishing a purpose and goals. Teams are created for both long term and short term interaction.
Some teams are only temporary and are established for a specific project with a finite life. A product development team, an executive leadership team, and a departmental team are long-lasting planning and operational groups. Short term teams might include a team to develop an employee onboarding process, a team to plan the annual company party, or a team to respond to a specific customer problem or complaint.
Other kinds of teams are permanent and stay as long as the organization is operating. For example, teams focusing on providing effective customer service tend to be permanent parts of many organizations.
In some organizations, teams may cross over various functional units (e.g., marketing, finances, human resources, and so on). Such arrangements are often difficult because of ambiguities regarding authority. By contrast, some organizations use teams that are intact with respect to the existing structure of the organization. Companies like General Motors are structured such that people work together on specific products all the time and do not apply their specialty to a wide range of products.
Functional or departmental Teams: Groups of people from the same work area or department, who meet on a regular basis to analyze customer needs, solve problems, provide members with support, promote continuous improvement, and share information.
Groups of people who are pulled together from across departments or job functions to deal with a specific product, issue, customer, problem, or to improve a particular process.
Groups of people who assume responsibility for self-direction in all aspects of work are called self-managing teams.
Executive Team:
An executive team draws up plans for activities and then directs these activities. An example of an executive team would be a construction team designing blueprints for a new building and then guiding the construction of the building using these blueprints.
Command Team:
The goal of the command team is to combine instructions and coordinate action. In other words, command teams serve as the “middle man” in the task. For instance, messengers on a construction site, conveying instructions from the executive team to the builders would be an example of a command team.
Project (cross-functional) Teams:
A team used only for a defined period of time and for a separate, concretely definable purpose, often becomes known as a project team. Managers commonly label groups of people as a "team" based on having a common function. Members of these teams might belong to different groups, but receive an assignment to activities for the same project, thereby allowing outsiders to view them as a single unit. In this way, setting up a team allegedly facilitates the creation, tracking, and assignment of a group of people based on the project in hand. This category of teams includes negotiation, commission, and design-team subtypes. In general, these types of teams are multi-talented and composed of individuals with expertise in many different areas, with the goal of using this combination of talent to produce fresh solutions and innovative products. Negotiation teams serve to persuade, commission teams make tactful judgments and decisions about sensitive subjects, and design teams are charged with generating strategies.
Advisory teams make suggestions about a final product. For instance, a quality control group on an assembly line would be an example of an advisory team: they would examine the products produced and make suggestions about how to improve the quality of the items being made.
Action teams are highly specialized and coordinated teams whose actions are intensely focused on producing a product or service. An NFL football team would be an example of an action team. Other examples are the military, paramedics, and transportation.
These are the traditional teams which are go located in one place and work together for a common goal.
Developments in communications technologies have seen the emergence of the virtual work team. A virtual team is a group of people who work interdependently and with a shared purpose across space, time, and organization boundaries using technology to communicate and collaborate. Virtual team members can be located across a country or across the world, rarely meet face-to-face, and include members from different cultures.
Building Perfect Creative Team
One misconception around creativity is that creative act is essentially solitary. Most of the world's important inventions resulted not from the work of one lone genius, but from collaboration of a team with complementary skills. Managers should build teams with the ideal mix of traits to form a creative group and then establish the conditions that make creativity much more likely to occur.
Effective Business Communication
Communication is all about getting the message across correctly. To make this happen, you need to have good speaking skills and good writing skills. If you have these skills coupled with good listening skills and interest in reading, you have all the potential to be a good communicator. What things should the leader take into consideration to be more effective with interpersonal communication?
The development of teams is an ongoing process because the composition of the team may keep on changing. The new members may join and the old members may leave the team. The team members pass through several stages for the development of the team and there has been a lot of research to identify these stages. In this article, we discuss the common theories of team development.
“Level 5 Leadership”, this term was coined by Jim Collins in his book “Good to Great” and it is all about achieving "Greatness" as a leader. This article will explain what we mean by Level 5 Leadership and what the characteristics of a Level 5 leader are. What it takes to achieve greatness as a leader, and what are the steps and strategies that one can use to move up to this top level of leadership.
Generating Ideas using Brainstorming
The brainstorming technique was developed by Alex F. Osborn in 1957 and brainstorming means where a team of members generates a large amount of alternative fruitful ideas on a specific problem without any criticism and then evaluates each idea in terms of their pros and cons. Brainstorming techniques fall into four broad categories: visioning, exploring, modifying, and experimenting.
Team Foundation in Forming Stage
This is the first stage of team development. This is the stage when the foundation of the team is laid. During the Forming stage, team members have a high dependence on their leader for guidance. Learn the practical strategies you can use during this stage to help your team develop into a highly effective performing team.
Team Development by Building Trust
As your team begins to work together, you need to establish a way each team member can exchange ideas and build mutual trust. Successful groups are built on trust and collaboration. A free exchange of ideas, in an open environment, will allow your team to get to know each other and enable you to check on how they work together. Learn some tips to help build team trust and establish personal bonds.
In today's innovation-driven economy, understanding how to generate great ideas has become an urgent managerial priority. Managers need to encourage and champion ideas and need to help their organizations incorporate diverse perspectives, which spur creative insights and facilitate creative collaboration by harnessing new technologies. Innovation is the embodiment, combination, and/or synthesis of knowledge in original, relevant, valued new products, processes, or services.
Share Information with Your Team
Willingness to share information is the most critical and the very first step in the Journey to employee empowerment and team development. People cannot make good technology or business decisions without information. They need to understand the purpose behind what they are doing and connect with the big picture. People with information feel the need to take the risk of making decisions that enable business growth.
Facilitative Leadership is all about involving the employees in the decision-making process at all levels enhancing their sense of ownership, responsibility, and motivation. Facilitative leadership style uses a number of indirect communication patterns to help the group reach consensus and build commitment for the decision taken. To be effective in modern organizations, managers need to become facilitative leaders, learn what it means to be a one.
© 2023 TechnoFunc, All Rights Reserved