People have worked together to accomplish tasks and pursue goals for a very long time in human history. This is regarded as one of the oldest types of social organization in which individuals establish small groups and members cooperate for everyone's survival and mutual gain. In many aspects of human existence, such as educational institutions, commercial organizations, project undertaking, and even in modernization advancements in industries like technology and agriculture, team building has been essential (Gustafson & Kleiner, 1994).
Working as a team has a proven track record of success. Some may even say that our aptitude to work in unison is and was the key to human progression and subsistence. Even in the early industrial period, groups existed all over the workplaces. Conclusions were arrived at together, managers set up timetables and planned the workflow process together, and even the engineers came up with new products together. Therefore this proves that as there was a need for the groups then, there exists an even greater need for work groups now (Work teams and diversity, 1995).
The creation of groups is vital since it mirrors on our current growing awareness that work difficulty needs cooperation to be done. Personnel working in groups will always achieve more tasks than work done individually because the partnership is the only way to accomplish hard tasks. Diverse skills and expertise are needed to complete such multifaceted tasks.
Qualities of an effective team member
To ensure a group triumph, all the members must work together and collaborate with the leaders to ensure they meet their goals and objectives. The team members should portray some qualities for them to be deemed competent in the group. These qualities include:
Communication
There should be informal communication between the members; This is vital to accomplishing as any member should be able to communicate to the other anytime they want. The team member should be able to raise concerns and communicate them to the other team members excellently. If the team members involve only in supportive conversations, no much work will be accomplished. Fruitful team members devote between 70& to 80% of the time speaking about tasks and goals. The rest of the time is spent in declarations of unrelated topics, discrepancies or conveying other types of need.
Be a good problem solver and effective in decision-making
To solve difficulties, the team members have to have the essential know-how in the problem area; they must be self-assured in their ability to help them address the problem, experience, and knowledge related to the problem as well as the skills.
Listening skills
Keen listening is a fundamental component in communication that every single member should possess. It reduces the misunderstanding between what is said and what is said and what is understood and at the same time providing a response loop. Good listening involves the skill of the members to withhold their judgment and listen to the other person’s ideas non-evaluatively. It’s like individuals to quickly react to what they hear which leads to urgings and creates unnecessary noise. Listening allows the person to understand the message better as he can genuinely reflect on it. If the listener does not comprehend he/she can ask the communicator to elaborate more and give more information on the topicThis shows that the person is attentive.
Good self-management
This is an individual skill that every team member should possess so that they can successfully achieve their organization’s objectives. It also assists them to work well with others and succeed in team environments. Other necessary skills emanate from the trait of self-management, for example, stress management, humility, patience which is imperative in communication as one is supposed to let the others share their ideas before weighing in, and assertiveness (Balsom, Barrass, Michela, & Zdaniuk, 2010).
Motivational and avoid premature judgment
An active team member should be able to provide motivational supports and willing to help each other in their organization of work. This builds trust between the team members allowing them to share ideas and feelings and inspiring the rest of the team to fall in line. This helps to avoid issues of criticism. The members do not openly disapprove the other team members. Open criticism is a method of punishment that will constrain members from making propositions and sharing ideas openly. For the team to perform highly, every team member should have the courtesy to recognize and correct each other’s errors, be able to applause other members and finally be able to appreciate other associates for amending their errors (Katz, Russ-Eft, Moran, & Ravishankar, 2014).
Qualities of an effective team leader
The leaders coordinate and direct events of other team members, allocate tasks to the group, assess the group’s performance, organize and plan and establish a positive atmosphere. The team leader is the most important aspect of creating an efficient team. The team members depend on the head for vision, guidance, and feedback on their performance (Wheelan, 2016).
Several qualities have been associated with a team leader who desires to build an efficient team. They include, right team selection skills. The team leader is supposed to pick a team that is composed of persons with different upbringings as they tend to perform better on unstructured tasks than teams composed of individuals who have the same backgrounds. The team leader should, therefore, take into account the people's personalities, characteristics, and their background knowledge. The team leader should consider selecting a controllable team as increases in the group size leads to amplified coordination difficulty and a decrease in contribution (Kravitz, 2005). He/she should pay careful consideration to keep the team size to the slightest number of members sufficient to efficiently complete responsibilities. The display of high concern for the people makes the leader well-thought-out as a good leader (Kimble, 2011).
A confident and directive leader. In any group, the members expect the leader to be organized, instruction, confident and task oriented. Many leaders have the notion that it is best to ask associates to help structure the group. This slows the team's process and makes the members feel insecure. The leader should give a clear agenda, clearly state the team's objectives, and assign tasks efficiently. The organization will be done later as the team members become more settled (Jeanne, Behfar, & Kern, 2006).
Team leaders are supposed to help members to identify their distinctive contributions to the team. The manager should assist the members to feel competent by providing training, supervision and the necessary knowledge on the different tasks to be accomplished by all the members to ensure that everyone is on the same page. If the leaders comprehend how the groups operate, they will be able to make those groups and their members conduct themselves effectively by passing on the knowledge and skills; This is done by training and supervision to ensure the successful accomplishments of tasks (Stevens & Campion, 1994).Effective leaders adopt an open method with the primary aim of building functions and set high-performance standards. Teams with high-performance standards tend to be more successful. Trust between the members can enforce this success as they can discuss openly on their different expectations concerning the task at hand rather than just talking about the mission in general. This openness allows the leaders to ask open-ended questions and give room for honest individual answers without fear. It encourages cross discussions among the members of the group (Lennox, 2014).
Conclusion
In summary, building and leading an active team has never been an easy task for anyone. Teams are composed of persons from various backgrounds with different expertise in their areas of work and skills. The members and leaders also have variating levels of motivation. The leaders must, therefore, be very strategic and specific to build team effectiveness and must have the qualities which inspire and motivates the individual team members.The productive members and leaders’ characteristics need to be developed in time as they are not inherent. From this, it is clear that it takes deliberate development to create and lead effective teams. As team-centered environments are employed all over the world, the best practices can assist the members and leaders to develop teams that offer their organizations a significant competitive advantage.
References
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Lennox, J.M. (2014). Team-building for a better tomorrow. Journal of Property Management, 66(5), 10-11.
Jeanne, B., Behfar, K., & Kern, M. C. (2006). Managing Multicultural Teams. Havard Business School Publishing Corporation.
Katz, A., Russ-Eft, D., Moran, L., & Ravishankar, L. (2014). Team members speak out. The Journal for Quality and Participation, 5(18), 76-81.
Kimble C. (2011). Building effective virtual teams: How to overcome the problems of trust and identity in virtual teams. Global Business & Organizational Excellence, 30(2), 6-15.
Kravitz, D. A. (2005). Diversity in Teams. Psychological science in the public interest, 6(2), 1-2.
Stevens M. J., & Campion M. A. (1994). The knowledge, skill and Ability Requirements for Teamwork: Implications for Human Resource Management. Journal of Management, 20(2), 503-530.
Wheelan, S. E. (2016). Creating effective teams: a guide for members and leaders (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Work teams and diversity. (1995). Issues and Observations Publication, 15(1).
