efficiency of a team at work
In the field of teamwork management, most of the early management concepts focused on individuals, emphasizing personal productivity and performance, encouraging individuals to develop behaviors in an implicit way such as competition, but neglecting the team and organizational environment. However, the widely accepted view is that there is no perfect person. As an individual, people can not do everything perfectly. From the perspective of work performance, we are expected to improve and endlessly pursue excellence. We seem to be caught in some kind of embarrassment. How to solve this problem becomes an important issue in the management field. So in this article, I want to introduce a few teamwork theories to help people solve the problem of team development and team efficiency in real life.
For any organization, the ultimate goal is to improve the performance of the organization and improve the effectiveness of the team. As the importance of the team becomes more and more apparent, the academic research on roles has gradually shifted to the study of team roles. Research shows that team role is an important factor affecting team effectiveness. After a long period of original research, Dr. Belbin, a British management scientist, put forward this core concept of team role through a lot of analysis and evidence and determined the team's eight kinds of role：Plant, Chairman, Resource investigator, Shaper, Team worker, Monitor evaluator, Company worker, Completer-finisher.
According to people's personality and ability, Belbin divides the eight roles into two categories (organizational roles and functional roles). Each team role has six major behavioral attributes: personality, psychology and physiology, mental abilities, values and motivations, individuals experience, and cultural factors.
After the introduction of Belbin's first theory, it has undergone continuous evolution：the eight roles are divided into four categories (emotional, willing, thinking, and decisive). In the year, Belbin updated the description of these characters and added a brand new one（Specialist）. And Belbin changed the name of the two roles: with the coordinator instead of the chairman, with the Implement instead of the company worker. So the theory now includes nine roles: Plant, Resource investigator, Monitor evaluator, Coordinator, Shaper, Team worker, Implementer, Completer-finisher, Specialists.
According to Belbin's theory, in the real world, the corporate team should improve the organizational structure, know people and do the best, and give full play to each individual's strengths. Belbin believes that the use of role theory does not necessarily promote the success of a team, but can predict whether the team will fail. For a successful team, achieving a balance of nine roles is an important guarantee.
According to the Belbin theory, there is three practical guidance.
Firstly, people need to be clear about the role of leadership. Leaders are at the core of the entire team. For team leaders, they must have a strong fighting ability and achieve the goal set by the team by integrating the team and combining their personality charm.
For leaders, it is important to know how to be good and to make up for each other. A successful team manager is to optimize the team structure and improve team performance. Therefore, in the actual operation of the team, the team manager must give full play to the strengths of each member. In combination with the development of team building, managers should pay attention to what members can do, not what they can do, foster strengths and avoid weaknesses, and enhance their strength. There is a passage on the Carnegie tombstone "A person who knows to use someone better than others to work for him rests in peace." Among Carnegie's companies, some employees have stronger capabilities than Carnegie, mainly because Carnegie has discovered the strengths and advantages of its employees and gives full play to their strengths.
Secondly，the team needs to clarify the role of each member. For a job, people who could meet the ideal standards are almost non-existent. But when they set up a team, they can be perfect. In the process of team formation, it is not a simple arrangement, but a team structure, clear division of responsibilities, optimize resource allocation, assign each member's role, complement each other's strengths, and exert the power of the entire team. For a good team, members can take advantage of the team's defined roles, create more room for development for other team members, and unlock the potential of each member. Also, a good team can find the best time to assign the tasks of each member at the right time. Besides, a good team can maintain the fundamental interests of the team, create a role for each member, and do each job carefully, in line with the overall interests of the team. In the process of team building, leaders must pay close attention to the special skills of each member and train them to become excellent members.
Finally, role transitions should be made between team members. Under normal circumstances, team building must establish a management mechanism among the members and then make collective decisions in light of the actual situation. Each member is supervised, managed, directed and responsible. According to the Belbin team role theory to promote the team to complete the task, it is necessary to enhance the sense of complementation among the members. In the actual work process, if there is a lack of roles in a team, the leader combines the characteristics of different members and takes the initiative. Achieve role transformation, optimize the team's temperament structure, and promote team building in a rational direction to achieve the specified performance goals. However, in the actual process, people have duality or multiplicity in personality and personality, which provides the necessary preconditions for the realization of team role transformation, allowing members to better play their talents. For successful teams, they can control the key roles of the team and truly recognize their own group's shortcomings and can be combined with the actual situation, develop some compensation measures to achieve the transition between the entire team role. Team role theory is based on a large number of actual teams to study the roles that successful teams need, and to define and explain these roles, providing a new idea for team management.
However, as the actual managers of the company, these theories do not clearly give us guidance on how to assign team roles and determine the effectiveness of role assignments. A number of people find themselves as many kinds of roles, and at the same time, many people know they just mostly like a kind of roles like a specialist or a shaper. They don't know how to use the results to effectively assign team roles. Some teams, after selecting a role, are not free to convert roles, which is not conducive to the team members to discover the potential of other characters they have.
And this theory does not take into account the impact of the team's macro-environment, so below I introduce a famous group development theory.
Bruce W. Tuckman, a professor of psychology, proposed a team development phase model in 1965: Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing. He reviewed more than 50 research on team development, which came from different environments (mostly treatment teams and training teams in a certain period of time). He found amazing agreement, so he proposed the above team development theory. This model is used to identify key factors in team building and development and to explain the development of the team.
In 1977, he and Jensen joined the fifth stage on the basis of the original: Adjourning. This model has had a profound impact on the later theory of organizational development.
Tuckman's theory is that at each stage, the team will pay attention to the problems specific to that stage, and this will also affect the behavior of members.
The forming team is still not stable. Members try to find their place in the team and determine the various procedures and specifications of the team.
The conflict occurred during the storming period, and members began to resist the influence of the team and escape the obligation to perform. Members often confront each other because of their differences, and dealing with conflicts has become the focus of attention.
The norming period has agreed on the team structure of the role structure and appropriate behavior, and the cohesion and identity have increased.
Performing team members can be proficient together, achieve team goals together, and work patterns change. Finally, the team disbanded during the adjourning period.
However, The limitations of the Tuckerman team growth theory are also obvious.
Firstly, the model is mainly used to describe small teams and ignores the background of the organization;
Secondly,no time frame guidance is given on the stage of development. This is a model combining subjective and objective.
Thirdly, The stage characteristics described by the model are not reliable because it mainly considers human behavior, and when the team moves from one stage to another, the behavior characteristics of the team members are not obvious. They are also likely to overlap. In the process of the actual application, we will find that many teams are not obviously at a certain stage, and the topics that appear at one stage will still appear in other stages. So it is difficult to have a full application of the Tuckman theory. When individuals and groups have some problems that are not properly resolved, even if the entire team moves forward to the next stage, for individuals, they will face the problems left over from the previous stage. In fact, the team development trajectory is not necessarily linear as Tuckman's description but may be circular. Therefore, the team has another angle to develop over time: the cycle phase theory.
The cycle phase focuses on the factors that govern the interaction of the team over and over again.
It has been pointed out that the task-oriented work and emotional expression must be balanced so that members can create better and better relationships(Robert Freed Bales, 1965). Teams often waver under these two concerns, sometimes seeking closer unity and sometimes wanting to strengthen their work orientation. Equivalently, in this team, everyone has a good relationship and can force the work to work without hurting their feelings.
My point is that both Tuckman's theory and the theory of the cycle phase should be concerned.
It is necessary to grasp the general trend of team development and remind yourself that there are many old problems that will appear cyclically. How to balance the rules formulation, trust cultivation, rebellion and differentiation, and responsibility awareness, not only on the surface but also on the surface. Yes.
Whether it is in the order of the sequence or the cycle, it can help us understand the development process of the team, and there is no contradiction between the two.
Although a team has to go through different stages, the basic themes to be dealt with in each stage are also inextricably linked to teamwork.
But the problems behind these themes can never be completely resolved, so they will definitely appear again later.
So, for the team, if a team goal is achieved, the project is completed, and the team members have to go their separate ways. For those mature and united and efficient teams, there is an emotional connection between the members, but for the average team, many problems are not solved.
For the individual, he will encounter the same problem in the next team. Escape is never the best way.
To sum up, when researching the team, we always have to start from two perspectives: group perspective and personal perspective. Through the above analysis we can know，the Tuckman model does not take into account the personal character characteristics of team members. So we need to combine the Belbin Team Roles theory.