Team Effectiveness and Team Excellence

Team leadership is an interesting and complex concept.  The saying goes “There is no I in Team,” so how does team leadership work?  How is a leader decided?  Does team really need a leader?  In my opinion, distributed, or shared, team leadership makes sense to use within a team experience.  Northouse (2013) describes distributed team leadership as “sharing of influence by team members” allowing members to step up when their skills are needed and stepping back when others take the lead (p. 289).  This team leadership process allows each member the opportunity to exert influence towards achieving a common goal, while also empowering each team member.  In my opinion, everyone has something to offer and some people have stronger skills or expert knowledge on certain subjects than others.  According to Northouse (2013) “Effective team leaders are committed to the team’s goals and give members autonomy to unleash their talents when possible” (p. 302).  Northouse (2013) describes several characteristics of team excellence: a clear goal, results-drive structure, competent team members, unified commitment, collaborative climate, standards of excellence, external support and recognition, and principled leadership.  Lacking in any of the characteristics can influence a team’s overall effectiveness and excellence.

Let’s look at these characteristics of team excellence a little further.  Establishing a clear goal is obviously an important factor to establish in a team setting, so all members can focus one common outcome.  Next, establishing a structure to complete a common goal will help each member know their role in accomplishing that task.  Another important characteristic requires team members be competent, having knowledge in multiple domains, including social skills.  Unified commitment among team members is another important characteristic, which involves creating a sense a unity within the team experience.  Establishing a collaborate climate among team members is important aspect also, which involves listening to one another and respecting each group member.  Creating a standard of excellence is an important function, which emphasizes team members performing at their highest potential and creates pressure to do well.  External support and recognition represents available resources needed to accomplish a goal and encouragement to do well.  Most importantly, the characteristic of principled leadership has been found to be consistently related to team effectiveness because of the leaders cognitive, affective, motivational, and coordination influence on the team.  (Northouse, 2013)

            Recently I had a bad team experience with an academic assignment.  It was a learning experience, but extremely frustrating.  Throughout my online educational experience I have experienced team assignments before, but I was blessed to have corporative members who already exhibited the characteristics of team excellence and shared team leadership. This one experience was an exact opposite of what I experienced in previous team assignments.  The outcome of accomplishing the common task was completed, but the team leadership process, in my opinion, was dysfunctional.  The self-nominated leader of the team did not have a good quality leader-member relationship.  I honestly was never worried about who the leader of the team was throughout the entire experience because I stated above, my team experiences have been shared team leadership where each member focuses on the task at hand offering support and feedback to one another when needed.  Communication was always comfortable and engaging.  Disagreements were intellectual discussions that would end with all members adding feedback to create one final conclusion.  In contrast, this bad team experience lacked multiple key characteristics, which allows for team effectiveness and team excellence.

Northouse (2013) explained that team failure can be a consequence of not focusing on the goal, for example, team members may have personal agenda and/or power issues.  In my opinion, my bad team experience involved issues related to not focusing on the task at hand.  The team functioning could have been improved if key characteristics were applied and followed as described by Northouse (2013).  For example, our team lacked in unified commitment because there was minimal communication between team members and there was not a “sense of unity or identification” (Northouse, 2013, p. 301).  On multiple occasions I tried to engage in discussion with members, even offered my phone number, but no feedback.  The assignment itself was quite an easy task to complete, especially with a team!  Divide the work evenly, independently work on a small portion, and collaborate.  Easy!  Establishing unity in the team would have increased team effectiveness on completing the assignment.  The team spirit would have made the assignment even easier and much more enjoyable.

Another important characteristic that was lacking in our team process, was the collaborate climate.  Obviously, without unity there was not a collaborate climate, at least not one I had experienced in team project for school.  Northouse (2013) explains that a team’s ability “to collaborate is essential to team effectiveness” (p. 301).  Specifically, the team lacked the ability to listen and understand one another, but overall respect towards one another.  Egos and pride have to be checked and left at the door when working as a team.  Why waste time not focusing on the goal?  In my opinion, all opinions, from all members, should be acknowledged and discussed as a team, no opinions should be ignored.  Furthermore, disagreements and misunderstandings can be resolved by presenting facts with references, eliminating personal opinions and biases when possible.

Another lacking characteristic in my bad team experience, involved the standard of excellence.  Establishing a standard of excellence helps team members to reach their highest level of performance (Northouse, 2013).  Think about it for a minute. When you take your final exam, do you not set a standard for yourself?  Do you work for the minimal C to pass, or do you set your standards high for A?  How much effort you put into your studying will help determine your grade outcome.  Setting you’re a standard of an, A, grade would place much more pressure on you to reach your full potential and you will put more effort into studying, right?

It makes sense to set standards high, at least I thought so, but my team experience this time showed me members felt differently based on the actions taken. For example, two of the several team members acknowledged they were not interested in submitting a rough draft for the professor to review and the other members had no opinion because they never responded. I just didn’t understand.  Why would a team not take advantage of allowing a professor to review an assignment before turning it in for a grade?  Not all professors offer feedback.

Hours before the final assignment was due, it was posted for all members to view, and there was multiple mistakes.   Mistakes are okay, of course, but not when clear instructions by the teacher were posted and were re-emphasized by team members during the entire process, only to be ignored.  I was so frustrated at this point and I wanted badly to just leave the assignment the way it was, even though I knew there was many mistakes and missing information.  I would have let my team down and myself, if I let my feelings get in the way of the goal.  No matter how I felt about the team situation, my job as a team member was to stay focused on the goal, which ultimately was meeting the teachers expectations of the assignment.

Reference

Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadership: theory and practice. (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, Inc.