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Team Work Concepts for Projects from POME by Gautam Koppala

Team Work Concepts

Teamwork means people cooperating to meet common goals. That includes all types of people doing work that calls for joint effort and exchange of information,ideas,and opinions. In teamwork,productivity is increased through synergy:the magic that appears when team members generate new ways for getting things done and that special spirit for making them happen.

Lessons can be drawn from nature regarding collective effort for get things done:bees and ants perform amazing tasks as they work in chaotic unison to achieve their community goals;lions and other predators often hunt jointly to increase the sometimes poor odds against their speedy and nimble prey;and whales parade around in circles to corral schools of fish,who in turn try to elude their marine predators by flashing back and forth in darting schools. In the case of these creatures,working together is about survival. They have learned to do it over the ages and these practices are imbedded in their DNA.

While human beings have evolved over the ages as well and have developed ways of working together,both in times of war and in peace,because of the incredible complexity of the human creature,survival-based teamwork is not as inherent as in the case of nonhuman creatures. This means that the capability of working together for teams of humans has to be developed in each new situation and must adapt to the galloping changes that mankind insists on developing. One of those changes involves the relationship of time and place of team members.

In times past,teamwork was generally developed in settings where workers shared a common workplace and time frame. In other words,people worked at the same place,during the same hours. While that situation still exists,increasingly teams are at least partially virtual,meaning that some members may never see other important colleagues of the team. Such is the case in outsourced development of IT projects,or design and construction of aircraft and ships,both of which may be scattered about the globe. This requires ways of dealing with team communications in non-traditional ways.

For instance,traditional meetings may no longer take place. Virtual meetings will increasingly use broad bandwidth for capturing video,audio,and text. And the meeting contents will be digitally tagged so the information can be accessed promptly. Even face-to-face meetings can be recorded digitally for future reference. Virtual teams,of course face some special issues that must be dealt with:the project team must be trained and ready to use the technology;trust and rapport must be established among many stakeholders,who are often widely spread geographically;and the technology chosen must meet the project needs and be sufficiently user friendly to be appealing to team members.

Yet,in spite of rampant change and technological advances,the fundamental aim of teamwork remains largely the same:getting people to work together effectively to meet common goals.

BENEFITS AND PITFALLS OF TEAMING

Teamwork offers a number of concrete benefits:

• Teamwork enhances success. Teamwork helps your group excel at what it’s doing and boosts its chances of “winning.”
• Teamwork promotes creativity. The team approach stimulates innovation and encourages people to try new approaches to problems.
• Teamwork builds synergy. The mathematical absurdity “2 + 2 = 5″becomes possible.
• Teamwork promotes trade-offs and solves problems. Teamwork creates a problem-solving atmosphere that facilitates decisions about schedule,cost,and performance.
• Teamwork is fun. Working together for a common cause creates group spirit,lightens up the atmosphere,and reduces tensions and conflicts.
• Teamwork helps large organizations as well as small groups. The team concept can be used to involve an entire company culture as well as to stimulate a small department.
• Teamwork responds to the challenge of change. Teams thrive on opportunities to improve performance and show how they can adapt and adjust in order to win.

There are also pitfalls to watch out for:

• There can be negative synergy. When the team doesn’t get its act together,then synergy becomes negative and the equation becomes “2 + 2 = 3.”
• There can be excessive independence. Ill-guided or poorly built teams wander off course and start doing their own thing as opposed to meeting overall goals.
• Time is needed to build and maintain the team. If company culture is not team-oriented,a lot of time and effort is needed to create the team spirit.
• Decision-making may be slow. Getting a group to make a decision on a consensus basis is a time-consuming task.

Why is teamwork increasingly important? One reason is that change—economic,societal,cultural,environmental,technological,political,and international—continues to take place at an accelerating rate. And change has a dramatic impact not only on individuals but also on organizations. Task forces,departmental teams,cross-functional teams,and project teams are replacing the cumbersome hierarchical organizational structure of the past in many organizations. Teamwork enables organizations to be nimbler,more flexible,and better able to respond swiftly and creatively to the challenge of today’s competitive business environment.

Several factors have speeded this trend toward team approaches to business planning and operations:

• The success of the Japanese management style,which stresses employee involvement in all phases of the work
• The rejection by newer generations of autocratic leadership
• Rapid changes in technology that create a need for quick group responses
• Emphasis on corporate quality,which requires team effort on an organizational scale.

Team building encompasses the actions necessary to create the spirit of teamwork. Research by Tuckman and Jensen1 indicates that the team-building process is a natural sequence that can be divided into five stages:

1. Forming
2. Storming
3. Norming
4. Performing
5. Adjourning.

A detailed description of the team-building process follows.

FIVE CLASSIC TEAM-BUILDING STAGES

Stage 1:Forming

In this stage,the manager and the group focus more on tasks than on teamwork. They organize the team’s structure,set goals,clarify values,and develop an overall vision of the team’s purpose. The manager’s role is to direct these efforts and to encourage group members to reach consensus and achieve a feeling of commitment.

Stage 2:Storming

This stage is less structured than the first stage. The manager broadens the focus to include both accomplishing tasks and building relationships. As the social need for belonging becomes important to group members,the emphasis is on interpersonal interactions:active listening,assertiveness,conflict management,flexibility,creativity,and kaleidoscopic thinking. The group completes tasks with a sense of understanding,clarification,and belonging. The manager relies not only on actual authority but also on leadership skills,such as encouragement and recognition.

Stage 3:Norming

In this stage,the team-building process is more relationship-based than task-oriented. Since recognition and esteem are important for group members,the manager relies on communication,feedback,affirmation,playfulness,humor,entrepreneurship,and networking to motivate the team. Group members achieve a feeling of involvement and support.

Stage 4:Performing

At this point,the team is operating very much on its own. Management style is neither task-nor relationship-oriented,since the team members are motivated by achievement and self-actualization. The manager’s role in this phase is to serve as mentor/coach and to take a long-range view of future needs. Team members focus on decision-making and problem solving,relying on information and expertise to achieve their goals.

Stage 5:Adjourning

Management concern in this wrap-up stage is low-task and high-relationship. The manager focuses on evaluation,reviewing,and closure. Team members continue to be motivated by a feeling of achievement and self-actualization.

THE TEN RULES OF TEAM BUILDING

The five team-building stages show how teams evolve over time. That process can be accelerated by applying the following ten principles of team building. Each principle helps create the spirit that gets people to work together cooperatively to meet goals:

1. Identify what drives your team. What is the driving force that makes teamwork necessary? Is it an external force like the market? Is it internal,like organizational demands? Is it the needs of the group itself? Is the leader the only driver? Or is it perhaps a combination of these factors?
2. Get your own act together. Are you a bright and shining example of teamwork? Could you shine even brighter? Polish your interpersonal skills and show your teamwork talents on a daily basis.
3. Understand the game. All teams play games. Do you know the game and how much you can bend the rules? Each game of business is different and rules need to be rethought.
4. Evaluate the competition. First,know who the real market competition is. Then size it up so that your team can become competitive with a larger outside opponent.
5. Pick your players and adjust your team. Choose qualified players who know the basics,and teach them the skills that they don’t have. Also,make sure the team players are in the right spots.
6. Identify and develop inner group leaders. Team builders learn to identify inner group leadership early on. If you want to develop the full capacity of your team,then delegating,mentoring,and coaching must become part of your daily habit.
7. Get the team in shape. It takes practice and training to get athletic teams in shape. The same is true for other teams. Start with training in the fundamentals of teamwork—things like active listening,communicating,and negotiating—and see that they are practiced on a daily basis.
8. Motivate the players. The only way to get people to do things effectively is to give them what they want. The secret is to discover what individuals really want and,as you deal with them,to relate to those desires—whether they be recognition,challenge,a chance to belong,the possibility to lead,the opportunity to learn,or other motivators.
9. Develop plans. In teamwork,the process of planning is more important than the plan. Team members must become so involved in the planning process that they can say with conviction,“This is our plan.”

10. Control,evaluate,and improve. Knowing the status of things at any given time is important for teams to be successful. Sometimes that’s a tough task. To make sure you maintain the right spirit,involve your team members in creating your control instrument.

PLANNING FOR AND IMPLEMENTING TEAMWORK

Get People Involved

The key to successful team planning is involvement:Get people involved at the outset of your team-building effort to win their personal commitment to your plan. One simple technique for involvement includes a questionnaire in which team members are asked to assess the need for team building. A sample questionnaire is shown in Table below. In the test,team members rate the degree to which certain team-related problems appear. If the team is newly formed,the questionnaire should be answered from the perspective of anticipated problems. Then test results are tabulated and group discussion follows in search of a consensus on how to obtain team development. This consensus approach generates synergy when the team carries out the planned activities. In addition,potential differences are dealt with in the planning stage before resources are fully committed.

The right planning process produces a quality plan to which the parties involved are committed. Some methods that enhance the planning process are discussed below.

• Creativity sessions. Techniques for boosting creativity include brainstorming,brainwriting,random working,checklists,and word associations.
• Consensus planning. A plan reached through group discussion tends to yield a program that is well thought through,with a high probability of being implemented.
• Decision-making models. Formal models for making decisions can be used as a basis for planning. Some common techniques are decision trees,problem analysis,decision analysis,implementation studies,and risk analysis.

You should build a team like you were putting together a puzzle. It involves:

• Individuals (like the separate puzzle pieces)
• One-on-one contacts (like pairing up matching pieces)
• Small groups (like the subsets of the puzzle)
• Large groups (like the overall picture that the whole puzzle represents).

This means that in team building,just as in putting together a puzzle,you need to view the whole range of team factors,from the characteristics and talents of the individual team members to the overall picture:the team’s immediate goals and long-term objectives and how the team fits into the larger organizational scene. Some of the concrete steps that transform groups into teams are discussed below.

Set a Good Example

Here the focus is individual. As team leaders concern themselves with developing their own skills and knowledge bases,then the other pieces of the puzzle begin to gravitate and fall into place. All team leaders communicate their management philosophies to some extent by setting both overt and subliminal examples.

The manager who trusts subordinates and delegates authority to key project members can expect others to emulate that style. Likewise,an open give-and-take approach fosters similar behavior in the team and in others associated with the project under way. Through the team leader’s own actions,team members’best behavior is called to the forefront.

Coach Team Members

Coaching requires some schooling in the “different-strokes-for-different-folks”philosophy,which assumes that people with different temperaments react differently to a standardized “shotgun”approach. Thus,each individual needs to be singled out for a special shot of custom-tailored attention in order for coaching to be effective.

A coaching session can be as simple as a chat with a subordinate who made a mistake about why something happened and what can be done to keep it from recurring. It can be a formal interview by the manager,who goes into the session with a tailor-made approach. Or it can be a formal appraisal session using classic management tools,such as job descriptions and performance standards.

Train Team Members

Training may involve small groups or the overall group or may incorporate all the stakeholders involved in the team’s efforts. Informal training sessions can be conducted in various forms,such as lectures,roundtable discussions,and seminars.

Lectures are a one-dimensional form of training. They put large amounts of information into short time frames. Lectures given by experts can bring top-quality information to the team members. When the speaker is well known,the lecture stimulates special interest.

Roundtable discussions are open-forum debates on pertinent subjects. They give participants a chance to air their views and present their opinions and ideas frankly. The goal may be to establish a consensus or to provide a basis for planning in-depth training programs.

Seminars or workshops combine the informational content of the lecture with opportunities for participation offered by the roundtable. In seminars or workshops,information is dispensed in smaller doses,interspersed with group discussions and debates. Seminars are established around a longer time frame than lectures or roundtable discussions. Two- to three-day seminars are the most popular,but one-day events are acceptable,and five-day seminars are right for more in-depth coverage.

Set Up a Formal Team-Building Program

Of the approaches aimed at heightening team synergy,a formal team-building program is apt to bring the best results because:

• The longer program duration provides greater opportunity for retention of concepts as they are reworked throughout the program.
• On-the-job application of the concepts provides timely feedback while the course goes on.
• In-depth treatment can be given to subjects.
• Enough time is available to build a consensus among participants.
• Effective interpersonal relations are developed.

The Key to Successful Teamwork

Since effective teams are all highly interactive,teamwork depends heavily on the interpersonal skills of the members. In a team setting,this personal interaction takes on a special importance because the number of relationships among members is sharply increased. Sometimes,this creates a traffic problem. Just as vehicle traffic flows more smoothly when drivers have developed their abilities,observe protocol,and behave courteously,the same is true in team situations where members have learned how to work together skillfully and cooperatively.

What are some of the skills that each team “driver”needs to operate effectively in a team situation? They include listening,applying techniques to deal with interpersonal conflict,negotiating,and influencing.

Listening

Communication,no matter how clear and concise,is wasted unless someone is listening actively to the communicator’s message. When team members know how to listen actively,overall effectiveness is boosted. Here is the attitude that represents good listening:

“I am interested in what you are saying and I want to understand,although I may not agree with everything you say. You are important as a person,and I respectyou and what you have to say. I’m sure your message is worth listening to,so I am giving you my full attention.”

Other listening pointers include:

• Maintaining eye contact;
• Not interrupting;
• Keeping a relaxed posture.

Good listening also requires the listener to focus on both the communicator’s content and feelings and then to extract the essential message being conveyed.

Dealing with Interpersonal Conflict

Interpersonal conflict can occur whenever two or more people get together. It’s an inevitable part of team dynamics. There are five basic techniques for dealing with interpersonal conflict:

1. Withdrawing (pulling out,retreating,or giving up)
2. Smoothing (appeasing just to keep the peace)
3. Bargaining (negotiating to reach agreement over conflicting interests)
4. Collaborating (objective problem solving based on trust)
5. Forcing (using power to resolve the conflict)

Application of these techniques depends on the situation. Effective team members recognize that conflict is inevitable and rationally apply appropriate conflict resolution modes in each given situation. Here are some of the applications:

• Use withdrawing when you can’t win,when the stakes are low,to gain time,to preserve neutrality or reputation,or when you win by delay.
• Use smoothing to reach an overarching goal,to create an obligation for a trade-off at a later date,to maintain harmony,to create good will,or when any solution will do.
• Use bargaining (also called conflict negotiation) when both parties need to be winners,when others are as strong as you,to maintain your relationship with your opponent,when you are not sure you are right,or when you get nothing if you don’t make a deal.
• Use collaborating when you both get at least what you want and maybe more,to create a common power base,when knowledge or skills are complementary,when there is enough time,or where there is trust.
• Use forcing when a “do or die”situation exists,when important principles are at stake,when you are stronger (never start a battle you can’t win),to gain status or demonstrate power,or when the relationship is unimportant.

Negotiating

Team members are likely to find themselves dealing with both third-party and in-house situations that call for major negotiation skills. The type of negotiation that tends to be effective in team settings is called principled negotiation. This is negotiation in which it is assumed that the players are problem solvers and that the objective is to reach a wise outcome efficiently and amicably.

Principled negotiation also assumes that the people will be separated from the problem,that premature position-taking will be avoided,that alternative solutions will be explored,and that the rules of the negotiation will be objective and fair. This means focusing on interests rather than on positions and implies fully exploring mutual and divergent interests before trying to converge on some bottom line. The tenet invent options for mutual gain—calling for a creative search for alternatives—is also fundamental to principled negotiation.

Influencing

In team situations,individual authority lags well behind the authority of the group. Therefore,effective teams depend on the ability of members to influence one another for the good of the common cause. Influence management includes the following principles:

• Play up the benefit. Identify the benefit of your proposal for the other party (items such as more challenge,prestige,or visibility,or the chance for promotion or transfer). Then emphasize that benefit in conversations so that the message is communicated.
• Steer clear of Machiavelli. Avoid manipulation. Concentrate on influencing with sincerity and integrity.
• Go beyond “I think I can.“ Successful influence managers don’t waste time questioning whether things can be done. Their efforts are aimed at how the task will be performed and what needs to be done to make it happen.
• Put an umbrella over your moves. Effective influencing hinges on strategic planning,to give direction and consistency to all influencing efforts.
• Tune in to what others say. Successful influence managers learn to identify others’expectations and perceive how given actions contribute toward fulfilling those expectations.
• Size up your plans for congruency. Make sure there is a fit between proposed actions,testing your plans for consistency,coherence,and conformity.
• Remember:“Different strokes for different folks.“ Be sure to adapt your approach to fit each person’s individual characteristics. Size up your targets and adjust your presentation to individual needs.
• Watch your language! Be careful with what you say and how you say it. Screen out pessimism and other forms of negativity,putting positive conviction into what you say to increase the impact of your message.

When team members are schooled in these basics,teamwork is likely to come about rapidly. Synergy is generated as people work together to meet common goals.

Gautam KOppala,

POME Author

About the Author

GAUTAM KOPPALA,With over  a decade,track record of successful leadership,excellent results through strategic skills in driving revenue and profit growth. Demonstrated ability to identify and trouble shoot critical issues impacting productivity,cost,distribution,marketing,Strategic positioning,sales and financial operations,with innate ability to build and maintain strong client relationships in operations. Expert in distilling and managing processes,enhancing internal structures,and promoting multi-skilled team competencies via nurturing mentorship and inspirational leadership. Engagements have spanned operational,strategic,technological and change management roles. Academically,I am a cum laude graduate with a Bachelor of Technology degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering (B-Tech E.E.E.) and a post graduate in Masters in Human Resources Management (M.H.R.M.) and Masters of Foreign Trade (M.F.T.). As you will see my Post Graduation’s were been studied part-time,as well as working full-time as an Engineer. I feel that this demonstrates my ability to maintain dedication,motivation and enthusiasm for a project management over a long period of time. In addition,balancing full-time work with study has perfected my time-management and organizational skills. I believe that my college degrees and gamut certifications in combination with my extensive broad-based work experience along with my drive,resourcefulness and determination,would make me an excellent candidate for a senior management position with any company. Highlights of my background include Operations related Commercial,Supply chain,Sales with a magnificent experience in Project management,technically oriented towards Automation and Security Systems in Industrial and Building sectors. Presently,writing a book on Projects and Operations Management (comprise of 12 volumes,6K pages),and awaited for the reputed publications. These books can be checked in Google books and other search engines too.

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