SUBJECT: Team Work Environment, Barriers, Empowerment, and Elements of Problem Solving.
Teamwork is fundamental to an organization. It involves the association of individuals working on a joint task. My last recollection from my previous employment about how staff acted and reacted to the situation, whether in teams or groups, made me realize that collaboration has various benefits. Some of the benefits include improving efficiency, innovation, self-monitoring, group cohesion, healthy competition, and individuals learning from each other. Although teamwork faces various barriers, it has been a central aspect of our organization with multiple benefits. This memo exploits the nature, obstacles, environmental elements influencing teamwork decision making, problem-solving, and teamwork motivation.
I noticed throughout my career that this particular agency always had self-managed teams, not like other sub-agencies within my agency. According to Munro and Laiken (2003), self-managing includes employees making decisions based on the supervisor’s preceding decisions. Employees are, therefore, responsible for all the organizational operations. Since there were supervisors that were on top of every employee like an eagle with keen eyes, the atmosphere was always unpleasant, making employees severely anxious. I also observed that there is the specialization of tasks, including the planning of operational tasks and managing rotation among the team members. Chapter 5 explains how, through a corporation, there is a smooth and effective in organizational operation. As such, this has led to the significant ownership of tasks, products, and services and has enabled our organization to operate cost-effectively and increased flexibility among team members to work in place of an absence of an individual team member.
Although being in teamwork is beneficial, we experience several barriers. SHRM (2020) identifies organizational barriers, including trust, skills, decisions, and formation. Mutual trust encourages the sharing of ambition and goals among members. The partial belief among team entity hinders high performance in an organization and requires an intervention (Munro & Laiken, 2003; SHRM, 2020). With no trust, individuals cannot share ideas with their group members, thereby undermining the group’s effort. The dominance of an individual or a few individuals to the rest of the group is also an effective teamwork performance barrier. I was always seen as someone who was able to resolve any issues, but other employees were not happy with such attention and would always show it indirectly to me. This has discouraged the minority individuals’ participation in group discussions with an understanding that their ideas are not welcomed.
Furthermore, according to Munro and Laiken (2003), leadership, decision making, conflict, goal clarity, relationship, and atmosphere are observable barriers in organizational teamwork. Firstly, in our organization, there is poor leadership participation. Leadership should involve equal participation. Failure to apply democracy to encourage all members’ participation is a teamwork challenge. Chapter 6 sustains the need to have open and transparent verbal communication in a team (Levi, 2015). Besides, the team members tend to make quick irrational decisions, and they employ infrequent lines of communication. The teamwork also features the inability to manage conflict among members, absence of clarity on the organizational goals and ambitions, the weak relationship among members, and general negative culture. Some of the issues I encountered or should I say the majority of the employees had when things went wrong was as the employees knew what the solution was since it was self-managed teams, we were unable to resolve any issues. Still, we had to follow strict rules and regulations. These setbacks affected the employees, but this was not relevant to anyone, what was important was to follow orders, just like the military.
Despite the barriers, the team features various empowerment elements, including the corporation, communication, and leadership. SHRM (2020), identifies corporation as a motivational factor which incorporates mixed motive. A mixed-motive features the urge to maximizing rewards and minimizing cost. Chapter five further identifies competition as the encouragement of problem-solving, social relations among team members, simplifying the complex and ambiguous task, and supportive communication. Another essential motivational factor in our organization is communication. Chapter six explains how integrating both verbal and nonverbal communication enhances the sharing of information among team members. Communication plays a central role in improving psychological safety and establishing trust among team members from diverse backgrounds, thereby improving behavior and relationship among team members.
Another essential element of the organizational environment influencing problem-solving and decision making is leadership. Although competition is healthy in a team, it does not always lead to success. In this case, ethical leadership and problem-solving skills are essential. According to Munro and Laiken (2003), leadership associates the ability to manage and control goals approach, establishing confidence and commitment, maintaining the internal and external relationship, and enhancing team player skills in problem-solving. Also, the coordination of information technology reinforces the effective use of resources. Due to leadership, technology, and communication elements in our organization, there is the reinforcement of group problem solving, decision making, and empowerment.
Overall, teamwork is beneficial to our organizational performance. Therefore, there is a need for consideration for the limiting barriers.
References
Munro, C. R. & Laiken, M. E. (2003). Developing and sustaining high-performance work teams: Managing difference through an action approach. OD Practitioner, 35(4), 62-67.
Levi, D. (2015). Group dynamics for teams, 5th edition. Sage Publishing.
SHRM (2020). Developing and sustaining high-performance work teams. SHRM, 1-9.