Contemporary Management - Teamwork - Essay Example

"THE AGGREGATION OF HIGHLY TALENTED OR HIGHLY INTELLIGENT PEOPLE DOES NOT NECESSARILY MAKE AN EFFECTIVE TEAM" (A Critical Analysis) A team is a group of people that is jointly responsible for a common aim. If one member fails to complete the task allotted to him, it can cause obstructions in the accomplishment of the final target. Even if all the members fulfil their duties but do not work collectively, they will not be able to achieve the maximum. Therefore, when building a team for a specific task, it is important to enforce a mutual understanding and obligation to the shared target. All the members being highly qualified in their fields do not solely define an effective team, but it also includes their ability to cooperate with others and keep their company's interests ahead of their own. Belonging to a team means that you are part of something larger than yourself like the mission of your organization. Even though you are designated to a specific rank and branch of the company, you are grouped together with other employees to achieve a final target that is beneficial to the whole company including you. (Jones; George, 2003) For example, if you are the chief engineer of a construction company and you are asked to head the production of a recreational facility, you cannot enforce your own decisions over others. You have to listen to what the others have to say and consider any complications or drawbacks pointed out by the designers, accountants, workers, etc. This lack of coordination can lead to a series of catastrophic events bad for both, the company and you. No matter how qualified or experienced you are, a brainstorm of ideas from a group of lesser-qualified staff is always better than a single sharp mind. This shows that the effectiveness of a team relies more on the mutual understanding and cooperation of its members rather than their individual achievements. I hereby pronounce the title statement to be true. You may bring out the best people to find and make a team, but it may still not be the maximum. The best violinists or cellists do not make the greatest orchestra. The best players do not make the greatest sports team. Similarly, in business, the best accountants or marketers do not achieve the finest results. You may have all the right ingredients but not knowing the recipe will never result in a perfect product. (Baker, 2000). An excellent example to demonstrate this is the Apollo Syndrome, a phenomenon discovered by Dr. Meredith Belbin, which states that a group of highly intelligent people often perform worse than a group of less able people. He was one of the early discoverers of Team Building and took special measures to select candidates for his experiments. He observed their abilities and took aptitude tests to examine their skills. Although the Apollo teams were predicted to exceed every other group in the competition, they nearly always ended up at the bottom. This failure to excel above all others, including teams relatively much less qualified, was due to certain reasons mentioned below. The members spent a lot of time in destructive debates and arguments trying to convince other members to accept their ideas, and pointing out errors in other people's theories. This led nearly all the arguments to dead ends. They found it tough to reach a unanimous decision and even if they did so, the decision would not stick together. They were found to follow their own procedures without giving any heed to what the other members were doing. Due to this lack of coordination, the group was found to be tough to manage. They refrained from confrontations of each other, which made it extremely difficult to make a unanimously accepted decision. Sometimes, they realized what was going on but instead of taking the right steps, they over-compensated by putting in irrelevant effort. (Belbin, 1981) In today's world of business, concepts such as internal evaluations, promotions, forced rankings, rewards, aggressive client policies, and active union relations are a common practice, and thus force employees into competition, and individual achievements. So when people are asked to work together and at the same time, are placed in a competition-oriented environment, the result is disastrous. Later, if they are designated to work with a new team and asked to function as a team, they will not be able to bring themselves to act in that line. Teamwork was described equally important for the staff conducting routine business at hotels in Canada. Housekeeping is one of the most physically demanding jobs for the staff which includes many different tasks including repetitive tasks like bed making, cleaning and tidying, vacuuming etc. The teamwork for housekeepers can greatly reduce the workload of each housekeeper while proving distributed muscular work. The complete team can be involved not only in planning but in executing the job through job rotation thus one team can accomplish much more by allowing the workers to alternate between tasks. Good teamwork should be promoted through giving rewards to the team members. The team of Cincinnati Marriott Northeastand Hotel, received an Special Achievement Award for running a greatly managed hotel. According to the press release, this was the only Marriott team in North America to achieve the award. Awards such as these not only motivate the team to work better, they also create a sense of belonging to the team members which is important to be efficient and effective in today's challenging environment. Certain characteristics have to be present in a team in order for it to be effective. If a company assigns a team to a task, the supervisor should clearly express their expected target to the team. The members should be fully aware of their objective and should receive appropriate support from the company in terms of time, finance and human resources. They should understand the purpose of teamwork, prioritised over individual work, and the tasks to be fulfilled by the team, in achieving the company's goals. The supervisor should make sure that the members are excited by the idea of working as a team and are fully committed to accomplishing the desired aims as well as braced up to learn from the experience. The members should have the appropriate knowledge, and should be provided with full support and ample resources so that the task is carried out perfectly. They should have the skills to communicate clearly to their colleagues so that everyone is aware of the proceedings. This allows everyone to express their thoughts and ideas openly, thus preventing any misunderstandings. If a team is responsible for the project in question, they should be offered collective prizes and rewards instead of individual ones. This will enforce them more into teamwork and thus produce better results. Lastly, the team should be under a proper leadership in order to keep the group focused on the target to be achieved with minimal distractions. (Heathfield, 2008) You must have noticed that the above-mentioned characteristics of a successfully effective team had very little to say about the intelligence of the members but a lot about team spirit and collaborative work. I am not saying that highly intelligent people do not contribute to teamwork; but there have been a lot of cases where these highly talented groups ended up in disaster. This shows that even if a team does not have the sharpest minds, appropriate cooperation amongst the members can lead to results, better than those produced by the intelligent ones. An excellent example to demonstrate the performance of effective teams comprising of the above characteristics is the success of Intercontinental Hotels around the world. In 2005, the Intercontinental Hotels Group commended its Asia Pacific branches on performing well above expectations. Held in Kuala Lumpur, the conference was themed "Together We Make a Difference", already indicating the vital part played by teamwork in its huge success. The CEO of the Intercontinental Hotels Group pointed out that the Asia Pacific team has successfully worked together as a unified team to outstand in the competition and have built a respectable reputation on basis of their commitment, excellent skills, and collaborative work. (Yap, 2005) Behind all this success, there is also the hand of a very important personnel related to any kind of project in progress, the manager. Members of a team may exhibit all the required characteristics for an effective team, but it will still not be able to function properly in the absence of a personnel manager. We all know, from our daily experience, the importance of leadership in every aspect of life. Similarly, nothing can be achieved perfectly if employees do not receive appropriate guidance while trying to accomplish their goals. Due to this reason, managers are designated to every department of a company, which may be a bank, brokerage home, hospital, hotel, etc. It is the duty of a manager to convey information between the company and the work union. Also, he is involved in using skills of the employees effectively and making their jobs more fruitful. In addition, he is often responsible for hunting and hiring staff, developing pay-grades, evaluation of employee performance and training juniors. (Mills, 1990) Nowadays, supervision and guidance of various teams is also an important phase of the manager's job. If we talk about hospitality organisations like hotels, managers there have a lot of work to do. A hotel is a place for all kinds of people, and therefore is directly in sight of the whole world. So, in order to keep up the standards and attract tourists and travellers from all around the world, the manager has to be in constant thought of implementing the latest ideas in the hotel. A bright mind may come up with a bright idea, but just one. On the other hand, a group of ordinary employees will provide a variety of thoughts, and thus, a lot of options to choose from. This allows selection of ideas that are most suitable to add to the hotel's attractions. The new concepts can be regarding designs of hotel rooms and the lobby, variety of food and restaurants, provision of different facilities, and the overall mood created by the hotel staff. It is the job of the manager to oversee all these proceedings and bring the hotel up to a competitive standard. All these measures are necessary for the survival of a hotel as it is in direct view of the media through seminars and political conferences being held in the facility. So obviously, if the hotel needs expansive renovation, it cannot be done without collaboration of all the aspects of the hotel with each other. Thus, successful teamwork is definitely required here for successful results. At this point, we have come to know that enforcement and management of effective teams in hospitality organisations like hotels, hospitals and tourism agencies, is very different from and a lot harder than in other companies like banks and factories. As a result of all this discussion, I hope I am able to demonstrate the credibility of the title statement, "The Aggregation of Highly Talented or Highly Intelligent People does not necessarily make an Effective Team". Let's make it simple; nurses may not be more intelligent than doctors, but during an epidemic, a group of less talented nurses can make a much larger difference than a more talented doctor. Works Cited 1. Baker, Wayne E. (2000). Teams as networks. Training Today. [Internet] Available from: Humax Corporation. http://www.humax.net/teams.html [Accessed 17 Feb. 2008] 2. Belbin, Meredith. (1981). Management Teams - Why They Succeed or Fail. [Internet] Available from: Team Technology. http://www.teamtechnology.co.uk/tt/t-articl/apollo.htm [Accessed 17 Feb. 2008] 3. Heathfield, Susan M. (2008). Twelve Tips for Team Building: How to build Successful Work Teams. [Internet] The New York Times Company. Available from: About Inc. http://humanresources.about.com/od/involvementteams/a/twelve_tip_team.htm [Accessed 17 Feb. 2008] 4. Jones, Gareth R.; Jennifer M. George. (2003). Contemporary Management. McGraw Hill Company. 5. Many Errors by Medical Residents Caused by Teamwork Breakdowns, Lack of Supervision. Press Release. (22 Oct. 2007). [Internet] Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/news/press/pr2007/teambreakpr.htm [Accessed 17 Feb. 2008] 6. Mills, Daniel Quinn. (1990). Personnel Management. The World Book Encyclopaedia. Vol. 15. World Book Inc. 7. Yap, Charles. (15 Dec. 2005). Intercontinental Hotels Group Honours Asia Pacific's Top Performing Hotels and People. Special Report. [Internet] Available from: Hotel Online. http://www.hotel-online.com/News/PR2005_4th/Dec05_IHGAsiaAwards.html [Accessed 18 Feb. 2008] Read More