Characteristics of a Highly Effective Team
Spector (2012, p.303) stated in his book that team leaders need to understand what factors that can make a group work together as an effective team to achieve common goals. In addition, the capability of a team is determined by its capacity to perform and deliver results. Therefore, the leaders put a huge endeavor to ensure the team performing well (Riklan, 2020).
Characteristics
Below are the characteristics of highly effective teams based on Riklan (2020), The Leaders Institute article:
Trust — Transparency plays important role in this characteristic. An effective team should feel safe to trust each other and the way to achieve this condition is to have a transparent environment where everyone can share information safely. All the mistakes or misunderstandings can be revealed faster and fixed faster (Riklan 2020).
Debate — People think that debate might be hinder productivity, yet in fact, a highly effective team debates positively to brainstorm ideas, concepts, and strategies. Better ideas and innovations can be generated which could lead to a significant increase in team productivity (Riklan, 2020).
Mission-Oriented — Each team member should understand the common goals even though they are working for different aspects. The team members should have the same mission. A highly effective team establishes and implements a mission statement together to achieve the common end goals (Riklan, 2020).
Result Oriented — Results are important for a team, whether it`s good or bad. A highly effective team can learn from both results and refine its success formula (Riklan, 2020).
Culture Leadership — A highly effective teamwork in a culture leadership. The team members serve each other and don’t care about taking the credit. Every member own their work and support each other even without a leader’s existence (Riklan, 2020)
Some of The Barriers to The Teamwork
Some barriers might hinder teamwork. Nguyen (2018) stated in his article there are seven barriers to effective team functioning.
Lack of team purpose and tasks — The team requires clear tasks to finish its job. Without tasks, the team will lose its purpose. Furthermore, to get better teamwork, the tasks performed should be adjusted with the team itself so that those tasks are the best for that team (West, 2008 as cited by Nguyen, 2018).
Lack of freedom and responsibility — Teams without freedom are dysfunctional due to their limitation of authority so that they can’t perform well. A team without freedom is like giving a bike to a person but tell them that they can’t ride outside the house (West, 2008 as cited by Nguyen, 2018).
Too many members or the wrong members
The larger the team size, the more complicated management methods are needed. According to West (2008), as cited by Nguyen (2018), the team should be no larger than 6 to 8 people.
An individual-focused organization
An organization that has an individual-focused system might hinder teamwork since its managing individuals, not the team. (West, 2008 as cited by Nguyen, 2018).
Team processes are neglected rather than developed
The team processes need to be developed to facilitate the team to have well-defined goals, good information sharing, debate effectively, support each other, and work together to reach their common goals (West, 2008 as cited by Nguyen, 2018).
Directive Instead of facilitative Leaders
A directive leader may demotivate team members to create innovations or generate new ideas. The role of a leader is to make sure the team performs well by providing them resources and encourage them to share their pieces of knowledge, experiences, and skills with each other (West, 2008 as cited by Nguyen, 2018).
Conflict with other teams
Other teams might feel threatened by an effective team, thus they tend to be more competitive. This might lead to conflict. Therefore, West (2008) suggested creating inter-team cooperation.
Conclusion
A highly effective team is an important part of an organization. Leaders should pay more attention to the optimal size of the team, the team processes, and implementing the 5 characteristics of a highly effective team above while considering the barriers that might hinder the teamwork.
References
Riklan, M. (2020, August 1). 5 characteristics of highly effective teams. Fun Team Building Company — The Leaders Institute. https://www.leadersinstitute.com/5-characteristics-highly-effective-teams/
Nguyen, S. (2021, March 28). Characteristics of a team and barriers to effective team functioning. Workplace Psychology. https://workplacepsychology.net/2016/12/03/characteristics-of-a-team-and-barriers-to-effective-team-functioning/
Spector, P. E. (2012). Industrial and organizational psychology: Research and practice (6th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.
West, M. A. (2008). Effective teams in organizations. In N. Chmiel (Ed.), An introduction to work and organizational psychology: A European perspective (2nd ed; pp. 305–328). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.
Note:
This article is written based on University of The People Organizational Behavior (BUS 5113) written assignment by Fristy Tania in October 2021
