Paper
Best Practices in Team Interactions
February 15, 2013
Team interaction is now being used by many organizations to enhance productivity and diversity of skills from a group of individuals (Majchrzak, Malhotra, Stamps & Lipnack, 2004). Team interaction allows individuals to work on interdependent tasks and we share responsibility for the ending outcome. In this paper I will discuss the best practices from three perspectives: organizational best practices, team leadership best practices and team member best practices (Staples, Wong & Cameron, 2004).
One of the benefits in working in a team is the diversity amongst the individuals. The appropriate diverse mix of skills was identified in the case studies and has been identified in the traditional team literature (Cohen, 1994). Team interaction allows for different backgrounds, experiences, thoughts and ideas all shared amongst one team. Its always interesting to work with team members from a different location. This gives each individual an opportunity to learn about different cultures and trends. The traditional team literature suggests that team building activities and training members how to work in teams is important because they ensure that employees develop the knowledge required to contribute to organizational performance (Cohen, 1994). Policies must be designed in such a way that team members are recognized, supported, and rewarded for their work (Duarte & Snyder, 2001).
Team interaction requires leadership best practices as well. To succeed, teams must turn their purpose and vision into action by assigning roles and responsibilities (Fisher & Fisher, 1998). Teams should always create a roadmap to identify their goals and expectations. Team member need to focus on due dates and focus on meeting their individual tasks to contribute to the bigger picture. In the virtual team case studies, 64% of team members recognized this need to carefully set realistic, clear goals and timelines
February 15, 2013
Team interaction is now being used by many organizations to enhance productivity and diversity of skills from a group of individuals (Majchrzak, Malhotra, Stamps & Lipnack, 2004). Team interaction allows individuals to work on interdependent tasks and we share responsibility for the ending outcome. In this paper I will discuss the best practices from three perspectives: organizational best practices, team leadership best practices and team member best practices (Staples, Wong & Cameron, 2004).
One of the benefits in working in a team is the diversity amongst the individuals. The appropriate diverse mix of skills was identified in the case studies and has been identified in the traditional team literature (Cohen, 1994). Team interaction allows for different backgrounds, experiences, thoughts and ideas all shared amongst one team. Its always interesting to work with team members from a different location. This gives each individual an opportunity to learn about different cultures and trends. The traditional team literature suggests that team building activities and training members how to work in teams is important because they ensure that employees develop the knowledge required to contribute to organizational performance (Cohen, 1994). Policies must be designed in such a way that team members are recognized, supported, and rewarded for their work (Duarte & Snyder, 2001).
Team interaction requires leadership best practices as well. To succeed, teams must turn their purpose and vision into action by assigning roles and responsibilities (Fisher & Fisher, 1998). Teams should always create a roadmap to identify their goals and expectations. Team member need to focus on due dates and focus on meeting their individual tasks to contribute to the bigger picture. In the virtual team case studies, 64% of team members recognized this need to carefully set realistic, clear goals and timelines
References: Cohen, S.G. Designing effective self-managing work teams. In M.M. Beyerlein & D.A. Johnson (Eds), Advances in interdisciplinary studies of work teams, Vol. 1. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1994, pp. 67–102. Duarte, D. L., & Snyder, N. T. (2001). Mastering virtual teams: Strategies, tools and techniques that succeed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Retrieved March 1, 2008, from NetLibrary database. Fisher, K., & Fisher, M. D. (1998). The distributed mind: Achieving high performance through the collective intelligence of knwoledge work teams. New York: Amacom. Lipnack, J. & Stamps, J. (1997). Virtual teams: Reaching across space, time, and organizations with technology. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Majchrzak, A., Malhotra, A., Stamps, J. and Lipnack, J. (2004) ‘Can absence make a team grow stronger?’ Harvard Business Review, vol. 82, no. 5, pp. 131–7. Staples, D. S., Wong, I. K., & Cameron, A. (2009). Effective Virtual Teams. In M. Khosrow-Pour (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, Second Edition (pp. 1272- 1278). Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference. doi:10.4018/978-1-60566-026- 4.ch202