Groups and Teams

Groups and Teams

MGT 331 Organizational Behavior

University of Phoenix

February 11, 2006

Abstract

Realizing that a group can become a high performance team is important. Accomplishing this goal is invaluable, advantageous and profitable. Once able to operate from a group to the high performing team is a great step into preparation into the big business world. Leaders and members must also realize not only how to accomplish this but that some problems will and can arise from different demographic characteristics and cultural diversity. That is if one is in such a group, which the probability would be quite high.

Groups and Teams

A team is a small group of people with complementary skills working together to achieve a common goal or purpose. Empowered teams, often referred to as high-performance teams or self-directed work teams, are certainly not a new concept. In a team environment, people are not managed, controlled, or supervised. Instead, they are using each other ideas and creativity to solve problems and achieve results. The collective brainpower of a team can exceed the ability of any manager. High-performance teams are the back bone to any organization. However, the demographic and cultural diversity can impact a group's behavior by either contributing to and/or detracting from a high performance team.

Building a high-performance team

High performance teams must have the right mix of skills, including technical, problem-solving and decision making, and interpersonal, to possess creativity (Schemerhorn, 2005). For instance, compare and contrast homogeneous and heterogeneous teams. Homogenous teams are similar in respect to such things such as age, gender, race, experience, ethnicity, and culture. This type of similarity will help in building social relationships, but at the same time, will limit the group in ideas and creativity. Heterogeneous groups or teams are more diverse in demography, experiences, lifestyles, cultures, and more (Schermerhorn, 2005). The lifestyles of a heterogeneous team are to likely disagree; however, the diversity offers a rich pool of talent and varied perspectives.

Team building is participative and engages all group members in collaborative problem solving and action (Schermerhorn, 2005). When building a team, we may often ask the question "Do we have the right people with the right skills?" Building a high performing team is not only about people's skills, abilities, or knowledge (Dubin, 2005). It is about their commitment. Commitment is pledging to have strong core values. High performance teams that have strong core values will help guide their attitudes and behaviors in directions consistent with the team's purpose (Schermerhorn, 2005). For example, take a fellow employee that cares little about their company's long term performance. This teammate possesses poor core values and in time will affect the group's behavior because he or she will not hold themselves collectively accountable in achieving a long term purpose. The not-so-secret ingredient for high performance in your company is to compel the people with the right challenge to create new possibility.

Cultural diversity on group behavior

To avoid possible conflicts in groups and teams, new and old members need to know what others expect of them and what they can expect from others (Schermerhorn, 2005). This can include identifying the role of each member and the norms of the groups. The norms of a group or