Team Effectiveness Meaning and Nature
Team Effectiveness Meaning and Nature: Team effectiveness (also known as group effectiveness) refers to a team’s ability to achieve goals or objectives set by authorised persons or the organisation. A team is a group of people who are interdependent in their work, share responsibility for results, and see themselves as a unit inside an institutional or organisational structure that functions within its defined parameters.
Within the confines of processes and research relating to their effectiveness (i.e. group cohesiveness, teamwork), teams and groups have established a synonymous relationship while still maintaining their independence as two separate units, as groups and their members are independent of each other’s role, skill, knowledge, or purpose, whereas teams and their members are interdependent on each other’s role, skill, knowledge, and purpose.
The assessment of a team’s effectiveness is made possible by a number of components developed from research and ideas that assist in the creation of a description of the varied nature of team effectiveness. Team effectiveness may be characterised in terms of three characteristics, according to Hackman (1987):
Output: The team’s final outputs must meet or surpass the requirements established by key stakeholders within the company.
Internal Social Processes: As the team interacts, the internal social processes should strengthen, or at the very least sustain, the group’s capacity to work together in the future.
Learning: The experience of working in a team context should fulfil rather than exacerbate team members’ particular requirements
The Characteristics of Effective Teams
Rensis Likert and Douglas McGregor were among the first authors to emphasise the necessity of effective teamwork. They discovered certain characteristics of well-functioning, successful teams.
Team Effectiveness Meaning and Nature
The following are McGregor’s nature lists:
The mood is usually laid-back, comfortable, and casual
The members of the team understand and embrace the team’s mission.
The members pay close attention to one another, and there is a lot of task-related dialogue in which the majority of the members engage.
People convey their emotions as well as their thoughts.
There are conflicts and disputes, but they are focused on ideas and procedures rather than personalities and persons.
The organisation is self-aware of its own functioning.
The bulk of decisions are made by consensus rather than by majority voting.
When activities are voted upon, the members are given specific duties that they must accept.
When all of these elements are present, the team is effectively doing its objective while also meeting the personal and interpersonal requirements of its members.
A number of authors and academics have based their work on the work of McGregor, Likert, and others in the latter phases.
Glenn Parker came up with a similar list of characteristics of effective teams, which included the following:
A well-defined aim (defined and accepted vision, mission, goal or task and an action plan.)
Unpretentiousness (informal, comfortable and relaxed.)
Participation is required (discussion and every one encouraged to participate.)
Paying attention (members use effective listening techniques such as questioning, paraphrasing and summarizing.)
Civilized dissension (team is comfortable with disagreement, does not avoid, smooth over or suppress conflict.)
Decision-making via consensus (substantial agreement through thorough discussion, avoidance of voting.)
Communication that is open (feelings are legitimate, few hidden agendas.)
Roles and responsibilities are defined clearly (clear expectations and work evenly divided.)
Leadership that is shared (While there is a formal leader everyone shares in effective leadership behaviour.)
Relations with other countries (the team pays attention to developing outside relationships, resources, credibility etc.)
a variety of styles (team has broad spectrum of group process and task skills.)
Self-evaluation (the team periodically stops to examine how well it is functioning.)
All of the factors mentioned above contribute to the formation of a successful team. We may also differentiate between high-performing teams and effective teams. High-performance teams have the same characteristics, but to a greater extent. According to Katzenbach and Smith, high-performing teams are distinguished from successful teams by their strong personal connection to one another, as well as their dedication to the organization’s development and success.