Teamwork Is the Best Way In Business - Essay Example

Teamwork Is the Best Way In Business Business organizations in the 21st century have changed their approach on how get thing done in the workplace. In the past there companies place importance on the individual contributions of its members and foster an environment in which individual work as separate entities within the organizations. This is no longer the way things get done in the corporate world. Teamwork has become the new work standard for companies worldwide. Companies realized that the united effort of its employees leads to greater workplace productivity. Working in teams allows for greater creativity and helps companies solve problems that in past they had to hire consultants to find solutions. Due to the importance of teamwork in the workplace companies have place greater emphasis on ensuring their functionality. Since human nature dictates that there is always going to be certain frictions and differences in interpersonal relationship companies need to have systems in place to deal with conflict. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and discuss different conflict resolution techniques and other practices that can be applied in the workplace to ensure the optimum production and efficiency of work teams. A group is a collection of two or more people who work with one another regularly to achieve common goals in organizational settings (Schermerhorn & Hunt & Osborn). The goal of a company is to ensure that these group formations lead to the creation of teams that become effective groups. In order for this to occur the groups have to go through a development process. The development process includes five states which are: forming, storming, norming, performing and adjuring stage. The significance of each of these stages is summarized in the table below. Stage Description Forming Get to know each other Storming Deals with tensions and defining group Norming Builds working relationships Performing Maturation in relationships and task performance Adjuring Disbanding and celebrating accomplishments (Schermerhorn, et al.). Companies have to realize that there is a series of steps involved that lead to the creation of effective teams. If a firm does not take the proper time and effort to develop their teams it have to deal with conflict in their team structure for the long run. The second stage of development process, storming, is the most important stage to resolve internal issues and conflict within the group setting. It allows the member to determine what is expected of them and to directly deal with any interpersonal conflicts in order to resolve these issues early on so that will not be a problem for the team in the future. In order for a team to work in an efficient manner cohesiveness has to be achieved. Cohesiveness is the degree to which members are attracted to a group, the sense of team spirit, and the willingness of the members to coordinate their efforts (Brookes). Achieving such a state is important because it prevent undesired work outcomes such as poor performance, absenteeism and team member turnover. Another important desired element that can help conflict in team setting is achieving team synergy. Synergy is the creation of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. If there is synergy in a group conflicting situation and issues will not last long because the member realize that the purpose and of the group have greater importance thus solution to problems or issues are typically resolved in short periods of time. The size of a group is important in order to build an effective team. A large group is subject to lot of internal conflict because it is difficult to manage because it is prone to domination by aggressive members and may divide itself into coalitions and subgroups, thus the optimum size for a group is between five and seven individuals (Schermerhorn, et al.). There are techniques that can be implemented that allow groups to communicate and express their ideas eliminating conflict and differences of opinion. Brainstorming is a technique in which the group members freely express their ideas without the presence of criticism or negative feedback. Even if companies implement the best human resource practices to prevent conflict within the teams they will occur and the managers and team leaders are responsible for finding ways to resolve these problems. Conflicts arise due to issues such as goal incompatibilities, resources scarcity, and interpersonal relationships. The way the work is structure is an element that affects the probability the manifestation of conflict. Workflow interdependencies are work designs that are subject to high incidence of conflict. In such a setting there is a high degree of dependency between the work perform by different members, thus one person does not deliver on time or their quality of work is low it affect the other person. This is a breeding ground for conflict. The manager can design internal workflows in a way that the dependency among the members is reduced which will lower the incidence of conflict in a corporation. This can be achieved applying techniques such as decoupling or buffering. Decoupling is a technique that directly deals with confliction situation by reducing the required contact between conflicting parties. Buffering creates a work output inventory so that when there two groups that depend on each others work, the inventory serves as protection in case there is a delay of work in the system. There are several ways a manager can deal with conflict in order to find a prompt resolution to the situation. Five approaches that utilize in the industry to deal with conflict are accommodation, compromise, avoidance, collaboration and authoritative command. Accommodation involves finding similarities and common grounds while at the same time playing down the different that led to the conflict. The technique can bring a peaceful resolution but it takes time for it to work. Avoidance is a method that involves ignoring the issue and letting the conflict play itself out. This approach should be used if the issue that caused the conflict is trivial and whenever a person is very emotional and need time for self-reflection in order to gain perspective. A compromise is a conflict resolution alternative that is practical and can be used in different types of scenarios. It involves starting a negotiation process between the conflicting parties so that each agrees to give up something of value to the other (Spangler). This solution can be classified as a lose-lose conflict resolution because neither party is truly satisfied is the end-result, but is willing to stop changed its position due to the bargaining process that allowed each party to gain something it wanted. There a circumstance in the leader or manager of the group has to intervene and utilize his rank to dictate a solution for the conflict. This scenario describes an authoritative command conflict resolution approach. One of the better and desired conflict resolution techniques is collaboration. Collaboration recognizes the existence a problem that must be attended immediately through some sort of problem solving mechanism. The process of finding a solution involves gathering and presenting data about the issues and openly discussing the information in a civilized manner. Working in team settings involves a commitment from all employees within an organization. Such a work structure provides companies with benefits such greater speed, quality, and creativity for problem solving. The managerial staff of a company is responsible for ensuring teams are working efficiently by preventing conflicts in the workplace. It is important to properly develop teams. Cohesiveness and synergy are two desired qualities of team units. If these two things are not present the chances of conflict manifesting itself will increase. Some of the techniques that a manager can utilize to resolve conflict are accommodation, compromise, avoidance, collaboration and authoritative command. Out of these techniques collaboration represents the most desired option because it allows for clear identification of the problem and a solution based on a scientific process. Finding resolutions to conflict in the workplace is imperative to increase the efficiency and productivity of a workforce. Works Cited Page Brookes.ac. 2008. “Characteristics of a group.” Oxford Brookes University. 10 November 2008. Schermerhorn, J., Hunt, J., Osborn, R. 2003. Organizational Management (11th ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons. Spangler, B. June 2003. “What is Compromise?” 11 November 2008. Read More