Monday, March 22, 2010

Chapter Eleven: Team Building Results in High Performance Teams

In Chapter eleven the common theme is developing teams for effective results. Toward the end of the chapter it mentions that the goal of team building is to develop high performance teams. The stronger the relationship is among the team, the more things they will be able to accomplish. They will be able to share with each other their strengths and weaknesses, as a result develop a plan that will allow them to put together their strengths and become a productive as well as a high performance team. The book mentions that “team building is more important than ever” (Kreitner and Kinicki 328).

When a survey was conducted by Wilson Learning Corporation, the respondents were asked to describe their peak experiences in work teams. When the results were analyzed, those teams that resulted with high performance had eight common attributes in common which are participating leadership, shared responsibility, aligned on purpose, high communication, future focused, focused on task, creative talents, and rapid response. Now these main attributes also make up progressive teams and ideas.

An article which I found relevant speaks about Business programs at colleges and universities presently facing wide-ranging challenges in delivering quality education. As more and more business programs find it necessary to conserve or redirect resources, successfully leading through change becomes paramount for departments and their faculty teams. This is due to the growing number of part-time faculty. The author examined the processes a school of business undertook while redesigning its program with a strong faculty team of part- and full-time members, which developed their team building. The author identifies and discusses components of leading change and achieving high performance through high communication among the faculty, leadership, shared responsibility, and future focus on the students’ educational success.

Source: Marsh, F. K. "High Performance Team: Building a Business Program With Part- and Full-Time Faculty." Journal of Education for Business 85.4 (2010): 187-194. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 22 Mar. 2010.

1 comment:

  1. It is so true that change has a big impact on teams and it is important for managers to know how to combat the negative impacts of change on their teams. Especially in today's economy, there are many business mergers occuring or 'takeovers'. Sometimes, if done correctly, the process is smooth- and people who were previously employeed keep their positions and simply learn how to tweak their work to how the new company wants. However, sometimes, such changes result in new managers taking over and, of course, where is a team without its leader? nowhere. So the new manager has to try to gain the employees trust and build up the group again or integrate himself/herself into the leader position of the existing group, which is rather a long and sometimes difficult process.

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