Being on a team can be a challenge. Many times you are working
with people you have never worked with before. It is important to understand your team
members…their views, values, and goals. It is also important to realize that your
team members will have conflicting views at times. It is essential for you to learn how to
deal with conflict, and how to use this conflict to make your team an effective one. In
order to understand how to have an effective team, it is worthwhile to study and use the
following teamwork model (information taken from Organization Effectiveness Group Homepage
www.oeg.net:
"Informed cooperation is the key to effective teamwork. It's characterized by a fundamental understanding that information is essential for success and that team goals supersede individual goals. Building and sustaining informed cooperation requires a lot more than an intention and a willingness to cooperate. It requires learning enough about other team members and their particular functions so that one knows on a continuing basis how to offer help effectively. It requires that team members not wait to be asked for help, but that they be proactive in looking for ways to support one another. It sometimes means throttling back your individual performance in order to make another team member and/or the entire team more effective. It always means evaluating individual performance in the light of contribution to team goals." As you can see by the model, a team can not just achieve informed cooperation immediately. There are many steps a team must take to get there! Following is a brief description of the other aspects of this model:
- Clear Mission, Roles, and Goals: Information is crucial for cooperation. Knowing what the team is charged with doing, how it will do it, and who's responsible for what is the starting point for informed cooperation. It is also important for everyone on the team to realize that their roles are important so that they will be motivated to fulfill their roles to the best of their abilities.
- Strategic Planning: Complex tasks require that everyone think, plan, and act strategically—that everyone anticipates problems before they arise. Perform as a team with the end results in mind.
- Complete Communication: Be sure that every team member is kept up to date on the progress of the team. Do not keep any information from any team member!
- Win-Win Conflict: There will always be some sort of conflict at some point when working with other people. The key is to use conflict to attack the issues—not each other. It is okay to disagree. Disagreements usually bring about discussion, which can lead to better thoughts and ideas about the team’s project. But remember, disagreeing is not the same as attacking!
- Power Sharing: Everyone needs to feel like they have some power in the team. If the power is shared, then everyone will feel like they play a beneficial role in the team. If only one or two people have the power, then the other members will not put forth the effort to make the team a successful one. Why put forth the effort if you know your ideas won’t be listened to? Everyone needs to feel like they can make a difference!
- Continuous Improvement: Realize that everyone makes mistakes. Do not punish team members for mistakes. Rather, make sure that everyone on the team learns from these mistakes!
- Shared Values: People on effective teams share some core values (such as fairness and equality) which they believe to be related to their success. If members share these values and care about the project, they will work harder to make sure that the team is a success.
- Systems View: This simply means that everyone must think of the group as a team—not as just a bunch of individuals working together. The performance of each individual affects the performance of the whole team.
- It takes time to become a well organized, efficient team. But hopefully this model will get you off on the right foot! If you want more information on this model, check out www.oeg.net!
