 | This article contains weasel words: vague phrasing that often accompanies biased or unverifiable information.(September 2013) |
High-performance teams (HPTs) is a concept within organization development referring to teams, organizations, or virtual groups that are highly focused on their goals and that achieve superior business results. High-performance teams outperform all other similar teams and they outperform expectations given their composition. [1]
A high-performance team can be defined as a group of people with specific roles and complementary talents and skills, aligned with and committed to a common purpose, who consistently show high levels of collaboration and innovation, produce superior results, and extinguish radical or extreme opinions that could be damaging. The high-performance team is regarded as tight-knit, focused on their goal and have supportive processes that will enable any team member to surmount any barriers in achieving the team's goals. [2]
Within the high-performance team, people are highly skilled and are able to interchange their roles[ citation needed ]. Also, leadership within the team is not vested in a single individual. Instead the leadership role is taken up by various team members, according to the need at that moment in time. High-performance teams have robust methods of resolving conflict efficiently, so that conflict does not become a roadblock to achieving the team's goals. There is a sense of clear focus and intense energy within a high-performance team. Collectively, the team has its own consciousness, indicating shared norms and values within the team. The team feels a strong sense of accountability for achieving their goals. Team members display high levels of mutual trust towards each other. [2]
To support team effectiveness within high-performance teams, understanding of individual working styles is important. This can be done by applying Belbin High Performing Teams, DISC assessment, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument to understand behavior, personalities and thinking styles of team members.
Using Tuckman's stages of group development as a basis, a HPT moves through the stages of forming, storming, norming and performing, as with other teams. However, the HPT uses the storming and norming phase effectively to define who they are and what their overall goal is, and how to interact together and resolve conflicts. Therefore, when the HPT reaches the performing phase, they have highly effective behaviours that allow them to overachieve in comparison to regular teams. Later, leadership strategies (coordinating, coaching, empowering, and supporting) were connected to each stage to help facilitate teams to high performance. [3]
Characteristics
Different characteristics have been used to describe high-performance teams. Despite varying approaches to describing high-performance teams there is a set of common characteristics that are recognised to lead to success [4]
There are many types of teams in organizations as well. The most traditional type of team is the manager-led team. Within this team, a manager fits the role of the team leader and is responsible for defining the team goals, methods, and functions. The remaining team members are responsible for carrying out their assigned work under the monitoring of the manager. Self-managing or self-regulating teams operate when the “manager” position determines the overall purpose or goal for the team and the remainder of the team are at liberty to manage the methods by which are needed to achieve the intended goal. Self-directing or self-designing teams determine their own team goals and the different methods needed in order to achieve the end goal. This offers opportunities for innovation, enhance goal commitment and motivation. Finally, self-governing teams are designed with high control and responsibility to execute a task or manage processes. Board of directors is a prime example of self-governing team. [5]
Given the importance of team-based work in today's economy, much focus has been brought in recent years to use evidence-based organizational research to pinpoint more accurately to the defining attributes of high-performance teams. The team at MIT's Human Dynamics Laboratory investigated explicitly observable communication patterns and found energy, engagement, and exploration to be surprisingly powerful predictive indicators for a team's ability to perform. [6]
Other researchers focus on what supports group intelligence and allows a team to be smarter than their smartest individuals. A group at MIT's Center for Collective Intelligence, e.g., found that teams with more women and teams where team members share "airtime" equally showed higher group intelligence scores. [7]
The Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation – Behavior (FIRO-B) questionnaire is a resource that could help the individual help identify their personal orientation. In other words, the behavioral tendency a person in different environments, with different people. The theory of personal orientation was initially shared by Schultz (1958) who claimed personal orientation consists of three fundamental human needs: need for inclusion, need for control, and the need for affection. The FIRO-B test helps an individual identify their interpersonal compatibilities with these needs which can be directly correlated to their performance in a high-performance team. [8]
First described in detail by the Tavistock Institute, UK, in the 1950s, HPTs gained popular acceptance in the US by the 1980s, with adoption by organizations such as General Electric, Boeing, Digital Equipment Corporation (now HP), and others. In each of these cases, major change was created through the shifting of organizational culture, merging the business goals of the organization with the social needs of the individuals. Often in less than a year, HPTs achieved a quantum leap in business results in all key success dimensions, including customer, employee, shareholder and operational value-added dimensions. [9]
Due to its initial success, many organizations attempted to copy HPTs. However, without understanding the underlying dynamics that created them, and without adequate time and resources to develop them, most of these attempts failed. With this failure, HPTs fell out of general favor by 1995, and the term high-performance began to be used in a promotional context, rather than a performance-based one. [9]
Recently, some private sector and government sector organizations have placed new focus on HPTs, as new studies and understandings have identified the key processes and team dynamics necessary to create all-around quantum performance improvements. [10] With these new tools, organizations such as Kraft Foods, General Electric, Exelon, and the US government have focused new attention on high-performance teams.
In Great Britain, high-performance workplaces are defined as being those organizations where workers are actively communicated with and involved in the decisions directly affecting the workers. By regulation of the UK Department of Trade and Industry, these workplaces will be required in most organizations by 2008 [11]
Industrial and organizational psychology "focuses the lens of psychological science on a key aspect of human life, namely, their work lives. In general, the goals of I-O psychology are to better understand and optimize the effectiveness, health, and well-being of both individuals and organizations." It is an applied discipline within psychology and is an international profession. I-O psychology is also known as occupational psychology in the United Kingdom, organisational psychology in Australia and New Zealand, and work and organizational (WO) psychology throughout Europe and Brazil. Industrial, work, and organizational (IWO) psychology is the broader, more global term for the science and profession.
Virtual management, is the supervision, leadership, and maintenance of virtual teams—dispersed work groups that rarely meet face to face. As the number of virtual teams has grown, facilitated by the Internet, globalization, outsourcing, and remote work, the need to manage them has also grown. The following article provides information concerning some of the important management factors involved with virtual teams, and the life cycle of managing a virtual team.
Leadership, both as a research area and as a practical skill, encompasses the ability of an individual, group, or organization to "lead", influence, or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations.
A team is a group of individuals working together to achieve their goal.
Group dynamics is a system of behaviors and psychological processes occurring within a social group, or between social groups. The study of group dynamics can be useful in understanding decision-making behaviour, tracking the spread of diseases in society, creating effective therapy techniques, and following the emergence and popularity of new ideas and technologies. These applications of the field are studied in psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, epidemiology, education, social work, leadership studies, business and managerial studies, as well as communication studies.
Organization development (OD) is the study and implementation of practices, systems, and techniques that affect organizational change. The goal of which is to modify a group's/organization's performance and/or culture. The organizational changes are typically initiated by the group's stakeholders. OD emerged from human relations studies in the 1930s, during which psychologists realized that organizational structures and processes influence worker behavior and motivation.
Team building is a collective term for various types of activities used to enhance social relations and define roles within teams, often involving collaborative tasks. It is distinct from team training, which is designed by a combine of business managers, learning and development/OD and an HR Business Partner to improve the efficiency, rather than interpersonal relations.
Within the realm of communication studies, organizational communication is a field of study surrounding all areas of communication and information flow that contribute to the functioning of an organization. Organizational communication is constantly evolving and as a result, the scope of organizations included in this field of research have also shifted over time. Now both traditionally profitable companies, as well as NGO's and non-profit organizations, are points of interest for scholars focused on the field of organizational communication. Organizations are formed and sustained through continuous communication between members of the organization and both internal and external sub-groups who possess shared objectives for the organization. The flow of communication encompasses internal and external stakeholders and can be formal or informal.
Team management is the ability of an individual or an organization to administer and coordinate a group of individuals to perform a task. Team management involves teamwork, communication, objective setting and performance appraisals. Moreover, team management is the capability to identify problems and resolve conflicts within a team. Teams are a popular approach to many business challenges. They can produce innovative solutions to complex problems. There are various methods and leadership styles a team manager can take to increase personnel productivity and build an effective team. In the workplace teams can come in many shapes and sizes who all work together and depend on one another. They communicate and all strive to accomplish a specific goal. Management teams are a type of team that performs duties such as managing and advising other employees and teams that work with them. Whereas work, parallel, and project teams hold the responsibility of direct accomplishment of a goal, management teams are responsible for providing general direction and assistance to those teams.
Management by objectives (MBO), also known as management by planning (MBP), was first popularized by Peter Drucker in his 1954 book The Practice of Management. Management by objectives is the process of defining specific objectives within an organization that management can convey to organization members, then deciding how to achieve each objective in sequence. This process allows managers to take work that needs to be done one step at a time to allow for a calm, yet productive work environment. In this system of management, individual goals are synchronized with the goals of the organization.
Teamwork is the collaborative effort of a group to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in an effective and efficient way. Teamwork is seen within the framework of a team, which is a group of interdependent individuals who work together towards a common goal.
The forming–storming–norming–performing model of group development was first proposed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965, who said that these phases are all necessary and inevitable in order for a team to grow, face up to challenges, tackle problems, find solutions, plan work, and deliver results. Tuckman suggested that these inevitable phases were critical to team growth and development: he hypothesized that along with these factors, interpersonal relationships and task activity would enhance the four-stage model that is needed to successfully navigate and create an effective group function.
Conflict management is the process of limiting the negative aspects of conflict while increasing the positive aspects of conflict. The aim of conflict management is to enhance learning and group outcomes, including effectiveness or performance in an organizational setting. Properly managed conflict can improve group outcomes.
Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation (FIRO) is a theory of interpersonal relations, introduced by William Schutz in 1958. This theory mainly explains the interpersonal interactions of a local group of people. The theory is based on the belief that when people get together in a group, there are three main interpersonal needs they are looking to obtain – affection/openness, control and inclusion. Schutz developed a measuring instrument that contains six scales of nine-item questions, and this became version B. This technique was created to measure how group members feel when it comes to inclusion, control, and affection/openness or to be able to get feedback from people in a group.
Collaborative methods are processes, behaviors, and conversations that relate to the collaboration between individuals. These methods specifically aim to increase the success of teams as they engage in collaborative problem solving. Forms, rubrics, charts and graphs are useful in these situations to objectively document personal traits with the goal of improving performance in current and future projects.
A team leader is a person who provides guidance, instruction, direction and leadership to a group of individuals for the purpose of achieving a key result or group of aligned results. Team leaders serves as the steering wheel for a group of individuals who are working towards the same goal for the organisation.
Organizational conflict, or workplace conflict, is a state of discord caused by the actual or perceived opposition of needs, values and interests between people working together. Conflict takes many forms in organizations. There is the inevitable clash between formal authority and power and those individuals and groups affected. There are disputes over how revenues should be divided, how the work should be done, and how long and hard people should work. There are jurisdictional disagreements among individuals, departments, and between unions and management. There are subtler forms of conflict involving rivalries, jealousies, personality clashes, role definitions, and struggles for power and favor. There is also conflict within individuals – between competing needs and demands – to which individuals respond in different ways.
Cross-cultural psychology attempts to understand how individuals of different cultures interact with each other. Along these lines, cross-cultural leadership has developed as a way to understand leaders who work in the newly globalized market. Today's international organizations require leaders who can adjust to different environments quickly and work with partners and employees of other cultures. It cannot be assumed that a manager who is successful in one country will be successful in another.
The task-relationship model is defined by Donelson Forsyth as "a descriptive model of leadership which maintains that most leadership behaviors can be classified as performance maintenance or relationship maintenances". Task-oriented and relationship-oriented leadership are two models which are often compared, as they are known to produce varying outcomes under different circumstances. Task-oriented leadership is a behavioral approach in which the leader focuses on the tasks that need to be performed in order to meet certain goals, or to achieve a certain performance standard. Relationship-oriented leadership is a behavioral approach in which the leader focuses on the satisfaction, motivation and the general well-being of the team members.
Adaptive performance in the work environment refers to adjusting to and understanding change in the workplace. An employee who is versatile is valued and important in the success of an organization. Employers seek employees with high adaptability, due to the positive outcomes that follow, such as excellent work performance, work attitude, and ability to handle stress. Employees, who display high adaptive performance in an organization, tend to have more advantages in career opportunities unlike employees who are not adaptable to change. In previous literature, Pulakos and colleagues established eight dimensions of adaptive performance.