High Performance Teams

High Performance Teams

We will explore what it takes for a working group to become a high performance team. We will see how these teams are formed and how a high performance team could benefit a company and we will see how demographics and cultural diversity affect them. High performance teams are teams that get together for a specific important task. It is important for everyone that is apart of the high performance team to have the same purpose and or goals. If the teammates have different goals or motives then it can make it difficult for the team to be effective. Everyone who is participating with the team should trust or learn to trust each other. Along with trust, which may be even more important, is respect. Respect is such an important aspect in any type of team, especially a high performance team. If all of the members in the high performance team trust and respect one another, it makes it easier to achieve success.

Performance is vital in any business, so before acting on any project, a high performance team will have to create a thorough plan. Every team member should be responsible for one specific thing. For example, if one team member is assigned writing and taking notes and another member should speak for the group, acting as a spokes person. If every member is assigned a certain task to be responsible for; then everyone has more time to perfect that one job. A brain storming session is a good way to come up with a good plan that will satisfy everyone that is apart of the team. After brain storming; drawing webs, outlines, and going over goals, pros, and cons will help, the team figure out exactly what they want to do and how they plan to achieve that goal. The team members should know how important a project is to the company and stride to achieve the goals in a professional matter. Each member should contribute one hundred and ten percent of their input to the group to make the project the best that it can be. Every member of the team should be rewarded individually for performances, insights, and total input that is beneficial to the team.

Communication is the key to any productive team. Without proper communication in a high performance team, it will be very difficult for the team to be victorious on the project they are trying to accomplish. The team should be able to work together and at the same time develop their skills and talents. Each teammate should use his or her prior knowledge, skills, and inputs to make the project better. If everyone involved with the team puts everything that they have into the project, this will ensure that the team will be successful on their group project. Every little bit of information that can make the project better counts. Every high performance team should strive for perfection. No one is ever perfect but the closer you are to perfect, the better. High performance teams should make it a goal to grow or gain something during their projects everyday.

Demographics and cultural diversity is a very important component when it comes to high performance teams. The demographics are the statistics of races, genders, cultures, and environments of the people in the group. People of different races, genders, nationalities, and ethnicities can have different inputs, opinions, and ways of seeing things and they can contribute to the group in a positive way. Sociology is the study of human behavior in groups and it is common knowledge, that you are the way you are because of your experiences and environments. If one member of a group has grown up in poverty, then they will be able to see certain things from a different point of view than someone who grew up in the upper middle class. Someone could be sensitive to gender related projects because they are a certain gender or somebody from Europe could think differently than someone from the United States. Because people think differently, projects can be done while considering more