Week 9 - Team working

Team working is the process of working collaboratively with a group of people, in order to achieve a goal. It is often a very important part of a business as it is often necessary for colleagues to work well together in order to co-operate, use their individual skills and provide constructive feedback, despite having any personal conflict between individuals.
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/teamwork.html

Bruce Tuckman developed a model in 1965 about team development. This influential theory proposes that when a team comes together to fulfil objectives, they go through a series of stages that eventually lead to a ‘mature’ stage that leads to the team being finally effective.

The main stages of Tuckman’s theory are:

Forming: This is the beginning stage of the team where the group is not actually working as a team and is undeveloped. The people in the team are working as individuals rather than a team. The attitude of the whole team is most likely to be friendly as they are starting to get to know each other and begin with the work rather than being argumentative and controlling.

Storming: Compared to the first stage where everyone is being friendly with each other, this stage is when the team passes through some conflict in order to achieve their objectives. The attitude of the people in the team becomes more aggressive. This relates to both the people inside the group and with competition to other teams and with any rules and requirements for the team. With the tension being caused, this can lead to some of the team feeling de-motivated and not wanting to take part in the tasks that they are meant to be doing or any other tasks that are allocated to them.

Norming: This stage could also be considered as consolidating. This stage is where the members of the team are beginning to realise the potential that they have and are starting to act upon it. By acting on the realisation they will have developed a process to overcome any conflict and focus on the work ahead of them. They will most likely do this by setting rules and meetings in which the team members have the confidence to tell each other what to do and not feel like they are raising an issue of conflict.

Performing: The team is now very much open and flexible. In this stage of the theory, all the team members are working together perfectly as they have spent enough time together and have gotten to know each other in a way that allows them to work together without creating any problems and without the tension that was present in previous stages. The team may challenge each other but they do this in a way that does not cause conflict but rather placing a priority on the development of the weaker team members.

Mourning: This is the final stage of the theory where the team comes to an end as the work is completed.
http://www.teambuilding.co.uk/belbin-team-role.html [accessed on 14/02/2010]

A time when I have worked in a team and felt successful is when I did my last marketing assignment. Compared to any other group work I have done at university, this group work felt much more comfortable as we all managed to work together nicely and all put the effort in. My previous experiences of working as a team have led me to become a bit wary of who I should be working with but this time, the team worked together better as we all got along with each other anyway so working on an assignment together was quite easy as we understood what we were all like.

The first assignment for People and Organisations was team work. This piece of team work was not as successful as the most recent team work I have done. Tuckman’s theory could be related to my team in which there was no set routine of stages that we went through. As the team began we thought we were confident and could get everything done efficiently however, this changed quite quickly when one of the team members took control and there was no other input from anyone else. This could be argued to be due to a lack of communication or because of a controlling personality in the group. We went from Forming to Norming and then Storming, and then after that there was not a clear stage. Once the work was done there was no clear closure as I was asked for my part and once that was handed in there was no discussion about the work whatsoever.

When looking at ‘The Times Top 100 Companies to work for’, I have found a company who has identified that teamwork is a major contribution to the success of their company.

The company is:
Office Angels – Teamwork is encouraged in this recruitment consultancy as groups are competing for rewards that can include holidays to Dubai, New York and Barbados. “Employees feel a strong sense of family within their teams, giving 86%, the top positive score nationally, for this statement. They believe colleagues care about each other (87%), say working together gives them a buzz (82%) and that team-mates are fun (89%).”
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/career_and_jobs/best_100_companies/best_100_tables/