GROUP PERFORMANCE

Group or Team Performance

Group or Team Performance

Introduction

The three contextual factors as may be most closely related to the performance of a team are the presence of adequate resources, effective leadership and a system of assessment and reward performance that reflects the contribution of the team. A lack of resources limits the ability to direct the team to do its job. Among the resources needed to offer the team includes such timely information, equipment, adequate staffing, incentives and administrative assistance. The team members must agree on their respective responsibilities and ensure that everyone contributes equally sharing the workload.

At one time or another, most of the people in the 21st century place of work would find themselves operating as part of a team. Teams in an organizational setting can be as simple as two people working with each other to write a technical document or white paper, or as complex as numerous businesses working jointly to bid a proposal or build the next generation destroyer for the Navy (Robbins,2006,229).

Team Development

Even though businesses at times act as if teams can be created by fiat, team development is in fact a multi staged practice. Before a team is formed, it is a set of individual entities. They may be part of a group e.g., a sales staff or they may not even know each other e.g., individuals from two or more businesses who would write a proposal collectively. Once it is decided that a team will be formed i.e., Stage 1, the team members still have a great deal of uncertainty concerning the nature of the team such as the capabilities of the other team members, its mission and purpose, what processes will best result in synergy, and the management of the team. During the forming stage of development of team, individuals in the team strive to know the answers to these and other questions. People learn to know each other better, determine each other's areas of experience and expertise, and try to discover what types of behaviours are acceptable inside the group. The forming stage is accomplished when the individuals no longer think themselves to be a random collection of individuals, but think their self as part of the team (Ream,2008,240).

According to this theory, the 2nd stage in team development is storming. This is often a stage of conflict within the team as individuals fight with the constraints putting on them as persons. For example, every semester a teacher requires her students to do a team research project. Within these wide parameters, they are permitted to divide the tasks of the group in any way they want, and are able to set up team or individual leadership, and, generally, perform the tasks of the team in whatever way they verified would best allow them in developing a project that would earn them a good score (Nahavandi,2000,96).

On the other hand, since acceptable completion of the project is essential to pass the course, these teams must use their conflict management skills ...