Week 4: Team Effectiveness in the Workplace

Teams and their use in organizations seem to have varying degrees of success. We all know what a successful athletic team looks like. Managers often times try to translate that structure and in turn success back to the organization by organizing their employees in teams. But, what starts out as a really great idea ends up being a total disaster, at least operationally. And inevitably, you have the one individual on a team who takes the approach of, "Get out of my way and let me do this!" And, the more shy and reticent team members naturally ever so gently "fade" into the background and let the superhero try and run with the project.

For this weekly discussion, evaluate the effectiveness of teams in the workplace. Especially consider the unique challenges that teams face when trying to work effectively remotely. Here are a couple of questions to help you get started.

Assess the effectiveness of team members in working in a virtual only environment. Which individual behaviors seem to be beneficial to the overall team process? How can you tell? Which ones are deleterious? How can you tell?

Consider the following. Emotions are running wild during a current team meeting that you are attending. There are five people on this team. What would you do during the meeting to try and calm emotions and get back to team problem solving? Why?