Understand How To Manage A Team

Eleanor J. Sullivan and Gayle Garland define in their book that a team is a group of people with complementary skills, share common objectives and function in a harmonious, coordinated, purposeful manner, who are mutually accountable for the achievement of the goals. 1. 1.1 The key features of effective team performance are: common purpose, goals, diversity of skills and personality, communication and collaboration, trust and commitment. 1.2 Common purpose- individuals must understand and commit to their team’s purpose, if not the team will fail, the work won’t be done properly and no achievements will be accomplished. At my work place it is very important that each individual has the same purpose and working as a team we can deliver a high-quality patient care. Goals- team members have to understand and accept the process of achieving a goal to deliver the expected results. Example: a patient lost weight in the last two months, our goal is to reduce the weight lost.

I explained to my team to achieve that goal we all have to work together and I have to contact the GP who will refer to dietician, chef has to fortified the food and the rest of us we have to monitor, supervise and assist as necessary the patient at meals time. Diversity of skills and personality- to bring different people together who can offer skills and perspectives it will help bring balance to the team in terms of tasks, people, risks, rules. At my work place each individual from our team has different skills which are: handling and resolving things in a better and quicker way, entertaining and communicating with patient, good clinical skills, mental nursing skills, good observer and at details. And all this skills together make us to be a better team. Strong communication and collaboration- effective communication between team members, from the manager to the team sets the foundation for a collaboration, improve the work to be done properly without mistakes.

Before every shift starts I have a meeting with my team where everyone can say their point of view for everything that we discuss for that day, I encourage them to communicate openly if they have a problem so we can find a solution together. I have every day a meeting with all the heads of department were anyone can come and communicate problems or solutions. Trust and commitment- one of the key building a successful team is trust among team members. A lack of trust affects the individual’s ability to work well together and increasing the level of stress. I have to support and coach the existing staff to build trust and respect for the new staff.

2. 2.1 Each team to develop has to go through a process formed of 5 stages. This 5 stages were published in 1977 by Bruce Wayne Tuckman based on research he conducted on team dynamics. The five stages are:

forming,
storming,
norming,
performing,
adjourning.

In the initial stage, forming, individuals meet each other and start shearing information, but they are cautious in approaching other members until they fell they can trust all the team members. As the team starts to develop they move in to the storming stage, where conflict, competition will appear because they will have different opinions about the work, they will focus on their goals not on the team goal. In the third stage, norming, the team start to work all together, the competition slightly disappear and group structure, roles and relationships become more clear. In the performing stage, teams are working very well, at a high level of efficiency. Their focus is to reach the goal as a team in the best way, because at this stage they have gotten to know, trust and rely on each other. The adjourning stage happens when the goal is achieved.

2.2 To success as a team it is very important to work together and to overcome all the barriers which can appear. The most common barriers are: insufficient leadership skills
deficient planning
poor training
lack of communication
inadequate attitude
missing or no rewards
At my work place I went throw all this barriers, but working as a team we succeed to overcome them by knowing better each other, learning everyone’s rate of work and knowledge about the work to see where it can be improved.

To overcome all the barriers everything needs to be improved starting from the attitude, communication up to the leadership skills. 2.3 The norming stage begins when the members are no longer focusing on their personal goals, but focusing on to develop a way of working together, to be a more effective team. They start to respect each other’s opinion, value the differences between each other and working as a team seems more natural. In this stage sharing the information, communication or resolving problems it is much easier because the team members trust each other, they are not competing against each other, they are now helping and working towards a common goal. 2.4 Conflict between team members can be all the time, but is not necessarily destructive. Conflict can lead to new ideas and approaches to organizational processes, and increased interest in dealing with problems.

Conflict, in this sense, can be considered positive, as it facilitates the surfacing of important issues and provides opportunities for people to develop their communication and interpersonal skills. Conflict becomes negative when it is left to get to the point where people begin to feel defeated, and a combative climate of distrust and suspicion develops. (Ex. a conflict starts between two nurses that want to work on the same floor; they can reach an agreement to work their shifts for both of them to cover the same floor in different days what can result in a better collaboration ). 2.5 There are two major ways to resolve conflicts. The manager can resolve the conflicts trough the confrontation method which allows the conflict to be resolved in a meeting with all parts. In this meeting everybody can talk freely and honestly and all the problems can be put forward and resolved. The manager can have another approach trough the mediation method , which will lead in him intervening to resolve the conflict by explaining to each part what is the right thing to do forward from the workplace point of view and also from the relationship point of view. In this method he will never point to somebody being guilty or the other being right in the conflict.

2.6 Trust and Accountability can be developed and build in a team trough various ways the most common ways are: Defining duties. People that don`t have a clear guide of duties can easily make mistakes and their productivity falls. Making clear everyone’s duties can be effective in managing the team , increasing performance and also avoids common conflicts that the worker didn`t know he was suppose to complete certain tasks. Setting realistic time frames for task to be completed. Reducing times for each task has to be done after a proper assessment , because people tend to give up tasks that they find to struggle to complete in a shorter time , so instead of having better performance you can have undone tasks , workers under stress and conflicts. Be clear on prospective employees regarding workplace policy and what you expect from them. New employees can end up doing mistakes because they were never explained that this workplace has a different way of doing things.

Having very high expectations from the begging can result in disappointment for both the manager and employee. Avoid showing favouritism for a specific member of the team. Trust can be affected when you start treating different a certain member of the team. Equality and fair treatment have to be respected by both the manager and the team workers. Open lines of communication by having a open door policy. This is very important for workers that needs advices and also have something to report. 3. 3.1 There are various way to promote shared team vision. One of the best way to promote shared vision is to involve team members in decision making and goal setting. If a decision is embraced by team members is more effective than a decision imposed by the manager. Promoting shared team vision is also a boost in the teams trust.

3.2 Encouraging team members to come forward with their ideas and their skill that can help other members is a good approach. As a manager you will have to talk to all the members and assess their ideas , put the best forward to the team to see the results. Ask team members to take projects to improve the team results and come with a plan of action for future. 4. 4.1 The meaning of “no blame culture” can be defined trough the level of tolerance within the team for mistakes and errors produced inside the team. The manager has to empower each individual with the decision making and in the eventuality of this decision is bad to let him learn from his own mistakes. 4.2 The benefits of the “no blame culture” are :

Low rates of conflicts
Increasing level of trust
Educational role
Increased performance
More time for other tasks by eliminating the time needed for investigations 4.3 A system can be put in place to implement the “no blame culture”. This system has to be very effective in supervising team members that work in this culture. By making a procedure to record every mistake done by the team members will have the role of analysing that mistakes where corrected and they don`t repeat on the same team members. Also this system will have the ability of seeing that learning from the mistakes is a continuous process with good results. 4.4 The risks of the “no blame culture” are :

mistakes that are not controlled can lead into serious problems for both the individual and the team risks of repeating the same mistakes if the learning system is poor team members can waste time if there is an increased number of mistakes. Strategy to manage the risks of a “no blame culture” can be put in place . The manager has to ensure that the team has all the information’s and tolls to control the risks. The team has to be supervised on a regular basis to ensure that mistakes are not repeated . The manager has to make sure that the learning system is up to date and is very effective. There has to be many discussions to encourage honesty and team members to come forward with problems that are out of control . 5. 5.1 There are different styles of management and leadership which suit different situations or people. As a short comparison between styles Authoritarian leadership style keeps strict control over followers making sure that all the policy are followed.

In comparison with Paternalistic style of leadership the level of control is lower and the manager tends to protect their team members like a father. Both the Authoritarian and the Paternalistic impose their decision to the team members , the leadership style which is different is the Democratic style where the team members are involved in decision making. Authoritarian , Paternalistic and Democratic styles still have a great involvement of the management in the decision process , that is why in the Laissez-faire style the best phrase to describe this style is “hands off” where the managers delegates the tasks and the decisions to the team members. 5.2 I think that I can combine all the styles presented in 5.1 in various situations. Ex. ” One of the residents has reported a neglect situation where he asked for assistance for a long period of time with nobody attending him. In this situation after talking with the resident I see that it was not an urgent mater”.

In handling this situation I had to go through the different styles of management as it follows: Authoritarian leadership – I started an investigation according to the company policy , to see that all the procedures were followed by the team members. Paternalistic leadership – I had individual conversations with the team members , where I explained that what happened is wrong and I don`t want anything like this to happen in the future. Democratic – I had all the team members in a meeting were I asked everyone to express their opinion in how to avoid this type of incident in the future. Laissez-faire leadership – I asked a team member to resolve this complain and take all the decisions in how to make the resident and his family regain trust in our team.

Reference

– Practical Leadership and Management in Healthcare by Eleanor J Sullivan and Gayle Garland . – www.wikipedia.com
– www. projectsmart.co.uk
– www.innovativeteambuilding.co.uk