Literature review on building team effectiveness

1. Team definition

According to Daft (1999), team is a collection of people contains with more than one individual that are working together in the term of interaction and coordination in workplace to achieve a common goal. It commonly consists of less than fifteen people but can also form in a larger amount. The members are required to have a regular interaction in order to work out the project together. This means everyone in a team should share ideas in accomplishing a specific task or project to reach the goal. The concept in a team involve in sharing work and collective responsibility.

2. Team member selection

Teams have different functions and objectives; therefore it is important to select the team members. From the organization’s perspective, it has a preference to select the member based on the personal characteristic, ability, skill, and willingness. To form the high performance team and professional team, there are requirement to have the qualify member with clear understandable personality and expectations. The selection is based on personal capability, knowledge, and certain professional qualification degree. A professional team usually requires high personal commitment in order to achieve the goals as well as member’s development and successfulness (Robbins, 2001). Moreover, all members have to be able to cohere with the team spirit in order to form problem-solving team, self-managed work team, cross-functional team or virtual team. These results in the importance of hiring qualify people with high effort and capability in building a team.

3. Key points in building effective team2

The organization must firstly set clear goals, then try to support the team to go for small wins, each member have to increase common trust between each other, accountability and set up a sense of general purpose. Responsibility to share knowledge that relates to the project and its culture it is essential to build information relationship (Myers, 1996). Then, team member have to get enough support facility, training and orientation before performing a project. This can help team members to understand the work expectation and can find out acceptable behaviors in the organizational community. And, the team leader has to try to make each member feel welcome and comfortable to be a part of the team. Quiet and shy member have to be helped out to get in to the teamwork and start interaction with others (Daft, 1999).

4. The system that analyze team effectiveness

According to Robbins, millet, Cacioppe, and Waters-Marsh (2001), the company can analyze team effectiveness by using some steps1. In addition, Hunczynski and Buchanan (2001) also state that there are two more main points in measuring team effectiveness, which are closely related such as team performance and team viability. Team performance commonly focuses in the meeting and aims to emphasize member’s responsiveness through the customers, organizational communities and others competitor or fans. It evaluates within some period of time and assessed in the quantitative and qualitative measurement. Then, team viability is a kind of social interaction that is more consider about team’s capability to form effectiveness. This includes level of cohesiveness, sharing purpose and member’s loyalty.

5. Development model

This section contains some key elements that aim to create effective team such as purpose and goal, team roles and leadership, procedures/resources/technology; team processes; relationships and values; development and learning; and environmental/organization fitness (Robbins, millet, Cacioppe, and Waters-Marsh, 2001).

5.1 Purpose and goals

Effective flow of communication is a basic requirement to set organizational goals. Team must clarify the mission and have to be consistence on its destination. That means it has to be achieved in the face of market competition, possibility of having limited resources, and conflict among managers (Daft, 1986). It is essential that goals and task be related to performance. Understandable and challenging goals that provide each member evaluation program can stimulate team member to work hard to conduct a best performance.

5.2 Team roles and leadership

There is some classification about the team frameworks that each member is expected to be responsible and work hard. Meredith Belbin does a research about a self-perception index, she innovates eight different roles in team play. From the top, it starts with the chairperson or coordinator, company worker, shaper, resource investigator, monitor evaluator, team worker, plant or originator, and finisher. Then, according to Margerison, these roles have to be contributed by explorer-promoter, thruster-organizer, and reporter-adviser in order to develop teamwork in the firm.

5.3. Procedures, resources and technology

The need of setting up procedures in describing the knowledge into know how is essential as to control the standard of the outcomes, working conditions, technical expertise, decision making procedures, resources allocation and technology. Moreover, regular evaluation and reward can add more value in the team, in this case trust and fairness is the main point on its distribution. Then, the use of technology has developed a globalization in the term of business trade. Communication is becoming more virtual and world is getting smaller. This results in a better decision-making approach.

5.4. Team process

Each member has to be able to share information within the team through regular basis such as briefing or meeting in the café and set up a notice board that indicates about important issues in the current project to remind each other. This action is essential to do a decision-making. It also requires each member to be participate in framework, try to make it fun or do not be a robot as well as having excellent communication skill and able to solve a problem. Team leader in this case is expected to have facilitation skills and ability to lead and control meetings. Finally, specific review on both good and bad action of reaching goals from each member can maintain a better working environment and member’s relationship.

5.5. Relationship and value

Respect is essential which implies seniority and experience. Interpersonal relationships among team members indicate the team effectiveness. This means that each member is expected to be honest and try to communicate as mush as possible in order to understand each other in the term of trust to avoid conflict or dislike situation. In addition, it provides challenge in which the people are motivated to give personal ideas that can contribute useful information.

5.6. Development and learning

It determines the relationship level among members. The organization must provide orientation and training to improve member’s skill. Members are expected to work in harmony and be able to help each other in the term of learning.

5.7. Environmental or organizational fit

The team has to act on behalf of the organization benefit and is require to fit within the organization in order to play a major role. This will determine the team’s performance and satisfaction of the member.