Team building is seen in almost any industry. There is a noticeable shift in focus on groups and teams rather than the individual within an organization (Beukes, 2005). Let us first define the difference between groups and teams. Groups are made up of members who have influence over each other, but do not necessarily depend on other groups members to accomplish goals, while teams are made up of members who depend on each other to complete a common goal (PSU WC, 2023). Because of the interdependence experienced by members of a team, the team itself must be carefully constructed by leaders to minimize conflicts that may hinder the completion of a team’s purpose. We have all experienced being on a team, whether at work, in a classroom setting, or extracurricular activities. Think on a time when a member of the team did not pull their weight in completing their given task. How did this impact you? How did this affect the cohesiveness of the team as a whole? Did the leaders of the team respond to the issue, and if so, how did they resolve the matter? We will discuss the various stages of team building and the importance of team leadership.
Tuckman (1965) developed the model of team development that is best known and includes five stages. The first stage is called forming, where the individuals meet and begin to situate themselves within the team while maintaining conflict avoidance. The second stage is storming, where individuals may generally forego social politeness and begin to establish a power hierarchy, from which conflicts can arise. Norming is the stage where team members become more comfortable with each other, proper etiquette for handling conflicts is established, and roles within the group as well as goals are solidified. The performing stage marks the point when the team begins to actually put in the work to complete the tasks that were delegated and behaves as one cohesive unit towards achieving the goal. The final stage, adjourning, which references when the team disbands, occurs when the goal has been reached. Of course, there is the concept of reforming, which can replace the adjourning stage, especially if new members are added to the team or if the goal of the team has been altered (PSU WC, 2023). Teams formed strategically by leaders may experience a higher rate of success in achieving their goals. Thomas (2000) addresses the five criteria that are important to consider when selecting team members:
- Qualifications
- Availability
- Interest level
- Chemistry
- Balance
Along with these criteria, a team should also be diverse in experience and skills in order to encourage different viewpoints. Teams made up of members sharing the same ideas may cause tunnel-vision, and may not produce the best outcomes. An example of this would be the disaster of the Challenger, NASA’s space shuttle. In this case, the project teams had little diversity, as members shared similar experience and skills, which could have led to groupthink, and therefore were unable to identify faulty parts, which ultimately resulted in the fatal launch of the shuttle and the deaths of the crew on board. This begs the question of whether the Challenger would have been successful in its launch had the project teams overseeing the construction and the launch were made up of more individuals with varying experiences and skills.
Team leadership is necessary to maintain a team’s task functions, such as making decisions, solving problems, and completing the tasks, as well as a team’s maintenance functions, which include creating a positive climate, promoting teamwork, and addressing team conflicts (PSU WC, 2023). Team leaders are not only motivators, but they are also a model for acceptable team-oriented behavior (Northouse, 2021). Team leaders are not always the supervisors or managers to whom we report, but can be other team members who help establish the trajectory of the team’s goals. This is seen more in self-managed teams than in traditional teams (Zaccaro et. al., 2001). Teams created by a professor for group work may fall into this self-managed team category, where one or more members set the tone for how the assignment will be completed. By moving through Tuckman’s (1965) stages, members can build trust and confidence with one another, allowing for leaders within the group to emerge. In my company, my team is structured more traditionally, although the role of my manager in relation to my specific department is one of guidance rather than instruction. This form of leadership helps to build autonomy within my department to make crucial decisions with the assurance that we will be supported by our manager. Therefore, team leadership can influence and be responsible for the outcome or performance of a team. Strong team leadership can foster positive outcomes while weak team leadership can deteriorate a team’s motivation to complete the goal at hand.
Project-based organizations have seen a significant upward trend over the years, which has yielded many studies to understand teams and team leadership (Majeed et. al., 2023). Further studies may identify ways in which team performance can be enhanced through team leadership, thereby increasing team mindfulness, which is described as “a shared belief among team members that team interactions are characterized by awareness and attention to present events through experiential and non-judgmental processing of within-team experiences” (Yu et. al., 2018). Team leaders and members alike should strive to enhance team cohesion, as the degree of cohesiveness directly affects the outcomes of the team itself (Majeed et. al., 2023). Therefore, just like the adage, “There is no I in TEAM”, so too should team members look beyond passing judgment on others, and rather focus on each member’s strengths to accomplish their goals. Therefore, the next time you find yourself in a team with a member who is not pulling their weight, it may be in everyone’s best interest to take the time to identify that member’s strength and delegate tasks that play to that strength rather than becoming frustrated with the situation.
References
Beukes, C. (2005). Project teams do not just happen – they are built. Journal of Contemporary Management, 2(1), 98-113.
Majeed, M., Irshad, M., Khan, I., & Saeed, I. (2023). The impact of team mindfulness on project team performance: The moderating role of effective team leadership. Project Management Journal, 54(2), 162-178. https://doi.org/10.1177/87569728221140807
Northouse, P. G. (2021). Leadership: Theory and Practice (9th ed.). SAGE Publications, Inc. (US). https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/books/9781071834473
Penn State University World Campus. (2023). Lesson 9: Team Leadership. PSYCH485: Leadership in Work. https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/canvas/sp23/22311–16647/content/10_lesson/printlesson.html
Thomas, M. (2000). Building and managing a winning project team. Manage, 52(1), 4.
Yu L., Zellmer-Bruhn M. (2018). Introducing team mindfulness and considering its safeguard role against conflict transformation and social undermining. Academy of Management Journal, 61(1), 324–347. https://doi-org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.5465/amj.2016.0094
Zaccaro, S. J., Rittman, A. L., & Marks, M. A. (2001). Team leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 12(4), 451-483. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1048-9843(01)00093-5
Very interesting read, I would have liked a bit more detail on the Challenger, particularly on how groupthink could have played a role in the demise of the Challenger. I did a bit of digging myself into the disaster that was the Challenger and found that the cause of the catastrophe was a faulty O-ring in one of the boosters of the rocket. For any given space mission there are hundreds of people that work behind the scenes before and during the flight to ensure a successful flight. Obviously, there is a lot at stake during a space flight and it is imperative to have every moving part working in unison, otherwise, something as small as an O-ring can cause a catastrophe. There must be strong leadership and excellent teamwork and any small error can result in the loss of life and hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not millions). Teams as defined in the lesson commentary have a single mission or goal, and the individual members all must interact with one another while working on achieving the goal or task (PSU WC, 2023, L.9 P.2). In my opinion space flight might just be the ultimate example of teamwork and team leadership, and is an excellent example of team leadership theory in action.
As for the claim that the project teams have little diversity, it is important to note that for each mission engineers, medics, psychologists, and physicists work in unison behind the scenes to safely send astronauts into orbit and bring them home safely. While groupthink may be an issue on smaller teams (such as a team of payload engineers), I am skeptical that it is present on a large scale as these teams have so many individuals from different professions. From what I’ve found regarding the Challenger NASA engineers proposed redesigning some components that worked in the same are as the O-rings but received no response from project managers. In addition, the project managers deemed it not important to perform additional tests to see how the O-rings would behave in cold weather. Coincidentally, the day of the launch of the Challenger was the coldest Launch of a spacecraft that NASA had to date (Ketcham, et al., 1986, P. 5). This caused the O-rings to be brittle and resulted in the catastrophic failure of the Challenger and death of the flight crew.
With so many moving parts and a large amount of individuals it takes to pilot a successful space mission communication between different components of the team can be difficult to achieve. In large teams such as this, the leaders may not have the time or bandwidth to meet with individual members, causing leaders to be more directive (PSU WC, 2023, L.9 P.3). This can allow for details such as a faulty O-ring design to fall through the cracks, and not be addressed. Leaders of large groups may be more focused on the overall goal, and choose to address issues that may be more pressing. Hackman and Walton (1986) suggest that effective teams have 3 components: clear, engaging direction, enabling a performance situation (which includes a team structure that fosters task work, and available coaching/assistance), and adequate material resources (PSU WC, 2023, L.9 P.6). In a large group, individual coaching/ assistance may not be realistic, as stated before, sometimes leaders may have less time to spend coaching or providing assistance to their team members. That said, some of the world’s best and brightest individuals are involved with sending people to outer space to and I assume that they (for the most part) follow the criteria that Thomas 2000, examined. Thomas’s five qualifications for a team include qualification, availability, interest level, chemistry, and balance. With the degree of intelligence and how highly sought out the members are, the team members on space missions
References
Ketchup Robert. J. I, Report of the Presidential Commission On the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident. June 6, 1986). P.9)
Pennsylvania State University World Campus (2023). PSYCH 485 Lesson 9: Team Leadership
Leadership. Retrieved