Team

Team is a group of people with a common objective. But there is a difference between work group and work teams. A work group is a group that interacts mainly to share information and to make decisions. Work groups do not engage on collective work that requires joint effort. So their performance is merely the summation of each group member's individual contribution.

A work team engages in collection work through co-ordinated effort. A work team's performance will be more than the summation of each team member's individual contribution.

When tasks require multiple skills, judgment and experience teams performance better than single individuals. Employee talents can be well utilized if they are formed into teams. Teams are more flexible to changing events than any other forms of groupings.

Teams have the capability to assemble focus and disband. Teams facilitate employee participation in decision making. Studies have shown that team's makes people work together with a sense of committed to one another. Businesses which employ teams in their organization have shown best results.

Types of Teams

There are three types of teams. They are:

1. Problem solving team: These teams consist of 5 to 12 employees from the same department who meet for a few hours every week to discuss ways of improving quality, efficiency and work environment.

In these teams, members share ideas or offer suggestions on how work process can be improved. But these teams are bit given the authority to implement their decisions.

E.g. Quality circles are problem solving terms of 8 to 10 employees who meet regularly to discuss quality problems, study the course of problems and recommended solution.

2. Self managed terms: These are the teams consisting of 10 to 15 people who will take on responsibilities of supervisors. The work of the team includes planning, scheduling of work, making decisions and taking action on problems. These teams select their own members and have the members evaluate each other's performance. These forms do their own scheduling, establish production targets, set pay scale etc.

E.g. Companies like Xerox, general motors have these self managed teams.

3. Cross functional team: These are the teams made up of employees in the same hierarchical level but from different work areas, who come together to accomplish a task. People from diverse areas within an organization exchange information, develop new ideas, and solve problems and co ordinate complex projects. Since members are of different background and different experience, it takes time to build trust and team work. E.g. Automobile manufacturers have such cross functional terms.

Team Building

Team building is a process of forming teams to accomplish work tasks. Team building uses high interaction group activities to increase trust and openness among team members. The activities included in team building and goal setting, development of interpersonal relations among members, role analysis (to clarity each member’s role and responsibilities).

Another important team building activity is to analyze key processes that go on within a team to identify the way work is performed and how these processes can be improved to make the team more effective.