Evaluating Team Performance Analysis
Evaluating my own performance within a team:
In one team where I was a team leader, I had an important responsibility to help build and encourage team members. I made sure that I supported all team members and motivated everyone and made them feel valued. I also made sure that I delegated tasks and trusted team members. The reason why I delegated tasks out to all team members was because as a team member, I did not want to do so most of the work myself because some team members choose to do less and give more responsibility to the team leader. In my opinion, being a team leader means that you have to take extra responsibility in making sure that all team members do not lose momentum; it means you organize the team and communicate effectively. In my opinion, what make a successful team are clearly the people within that team. Communication is vital. Team work requires you to communicate effectively with others and recognizing and understanding their viewpoints. Communication is essential to good working relationships where each individual is working towards the achievement of shared aims and …show more content…
objectives. Trust is also a key factor to ensuring success of working relationships. If the team members trust and respect one another then they will automatically work well together. If someone in my team has a good idea, I encouraged everyone to listen to these ideas. Also, if someone in my group was good at finishing and completing a task, then I made sure that they were given more responsibility in later stages of the project. This is useful in teams because it is not good to take all the credit for the work and there should be a balance. For instance, in the work place, someone who starts off as a team member might go from strength to strength and eventually they might be given a chance to prove themselves by having more responsibility. This could lead to a positive change, such as a pay rise or a new position at work.
I also made sure that I emphasize strong performance. Firstly, the individuals contribution to the team; this can be measured by how the individual works with other team members. For example, this can be shown by the extent to team meetings, whether they volunteer for team projects and how they communicate with each other. For instance, in one team which was for a flood campaign, during the tasks, our group would come together every 45 minutes and have a group meeting which enabled each of us to share our ideas and another member to add to those ideas. This can be very beneficial in teams because it provides support.
Secondly, an individual’s results from team work. The work carried out by a team member that contributes to the final result consequently contributes to the final team product could be assessed. For example, in one team that I was in, we had to make a building out of paper and my job was to fold all the papers as quickly as possible because we had a specific time that we had to finish the task in. therefore, if I had not folded the paper correctly or fast enough, we could have lost the task.
Thirdly, team performance, this could involve looking at team dynamics. For example, how well the team works together, the effectiveness of team meetings and the ability to achieve agreement. For example, in one group we had to come up with a name of our product and we had to all make sure that we liked the name of the product. Although in my opinion, not all meetings right there and then need to have a final solution and it could be that an idea comes after so I was glad that the team could think so quickly and spontaneously. The reason why I think that people in meetings do not always come up with ideas straight away is because of the environment that they are in. They could be under high pressure, causing them not to think straight. Lastly, team results; the team performance could be measured in terms of its work results and thus this is when the team will find out if their input to the task was effective and what they could have changed and reasons for improvement.
Team leaders in the workplace play an important role in developing their team members. Everyone has talent; it just needs bringing out. When you play the team leader role, you have to try to identify particular qualities of your team members. These have to be built for the sake of the team. In addition, while I was a team leader I had to find out about peoples aspirations. Everyone has ambitions and hopes. All too frequently they are ignored at work, leading to frustration. Therefore, if I can see a spot of opportunity in individuals they I bring it up and then it allows the team member to do what they feel they are good at. In one particular task, I allowed everyone to do what they did best. For instance, I am very confident so I took the initiative for electing myself to be the public speaker in my group and do the presentations in front of the class.
As a team leader, I wanted to make sure that everyone’s response is laughter, physical reaction and provide amusement. It would mean that team gets on and most importantly, it makes the task more enjoyable. For example, in one team, we had to do a radio advertisement and whilst we were rehearsing the advert, it was enjoyable and it gave us a chance to expand on ideas. Sometimes when a workplace has a calm and relaxed environment, teams perform better.
Recommendations for my own performance and how I could have improved:
Not being so pushy with my ideas and wanting to go ahead with them. I would say that it is a good thing to be enthusiastic but it can come out in the wrong ways and it may seem as though I am not listening to others people’s ideas because I am so focused on telling everyone my own ideas. For instance, while the teacher is telling us the task, I am already coming up with ideas, so when the group comes together I am telling them my ideas, but they still might be thinking about what the task is and they may want to start more at a basic level and brainstorm whilst I like to go straight into it and start the task. I would also say that this could be my weakness because I tend to rush things, sometimes causing errors on small things.
Sometimes, when you work in the team where everyone knows each other, the team which is meant to be formal becomes informal and everyone is more relaxed and comes off topic. The group becomes less structured and when this happens, I find myself doing the rest of the teams work. Therefore, next time I am in a group where I know the people, I will try my best to motivate everyone and make sure they keep on task.
I think in some tasks, like the flood appeal campaign, making a tinned product, I could have done some more market research about what tins look like, the price of tins, place to sell them and how marketers choose their target audience and how they publicize. This is because during the task, we went from having our tinned product set at a premium price which is relatively expensive to having the tinned product sold at an economy price. This was because our target audience was students so we had to make the product cheap. Therefore, next time we could do our market research and find out what marketers do if there product reaches the decline stage and there sales begin to fall.
I don’t think in any tasks did I brainstorm a set of targets that we were working towards because we were in small teams meaning that we had more responsibility so we didn’t have time to write our ideas down. Instead I had them all in my head.
Many of the times, I implemented changes in the task and I can honestly say I myself found it very difficult with the changes because it changed the whole concept of the task and it felt as though we were starting again. Next time, I will brainstorm ideas and try not to over complicate them.
I also think I need to brush up on my ICT skills because when I had to use Microsoft Publisher and Excel, I took longer to make a poster and a business card because it was hard choosing a layout because the layout tells us where the text can go and where the pictures can go and I couldn’t get the images and text to fit into the poster as I would have liked to have done. Next time, I will ask for more help.
My leadership style in a few tasks was democratic and I think this was a downfall because everyone on the task was doing the bare minimum so I needed to be more of an autocratic leader at some times during the task and be more dominant. Sometimes it does not matter if some team members do not like you because that can happen in the workplace and I still have to remain professional.
I need to focus on the key message that I want to get across and avoid getting side tracked into irrelevant issues.
Overall team performances:
Teamwork has a dramatic affect on organizational performance. An effective team can help an organization achieve incredible results. A team that is not working can cause unnecessary disruption, failed delivery and strategic failure.
Nowadays it is almost impossible to avoid being a member of team.
If you're not on an official team at work, chances are you function within one in one way or another. So it's important for your personal and career development to know your team working strengths and weaknesses. This can also be known as “identifying talent” because it will waste time if you assign a team member to the wrong task. For example, in one team that I was in, I was the team leader and I assigned the task to the wrong person. Each team member had to make a powerpoint presentation and I asked Jassel to make the powerpoint presentation and whilst the task was going, in I did not monitor his performance and therefore the presentation was wrong. This was not good for development because it shows that I cannot trust a team member to get on with the task and we cannot develop as a team and
persevere.
A good team member will be able to advise. Work is concerned with giving and gathering information. It involves finding out what others are doing in your area of work and ensuring that you are following best practices. Information may need to be gathered from articles, reports, or books, or by meeting and talking with people. It means ensuring that you have all the information available for the team to make the best decisions and deliver results. In one of the tasks, it required us to do a lot of market research because we were coming up with a flood campaign. This means that we had to gain information from the internet and books. This had to be done in our own time which showed me what team members were committed to the task and who did not do outside research away from the team. For instance, Jassels task was to find out pricing strategies that marketers use to price tinned products. Jassel did not read through the books properly, which lead to failure towards the end of the task. The pricing strategies were mixed up and we ended up pricing our tinned product at a high price and then a low price, which means that we had to change our target audience, thus our radio advertisement was no longer valid. Innovation was my strong point. In our flood appeal campaign, we had to come up with an idea about how we will advertise our product in the future if the product does not sell well. I came up with the idea that we can do a television advertisement and as the product was going to be sold in other countries, the advert could be dubbed. This was a good idea because it would have given our product good publicity and our other campaigns (posters, leaflets) were not that strong.
Innovating is a key aspect of teamwork and involves challenging the way things are currently being done. Technology is changing so quickly that the way you are currently performing tasks may no longer be the best way. If you are not up-to-date in your practices you may no longer be delivering competitive service. Innovating is essential for all work teams. There are always better ways of doing things if you only take time to discover them.
To obtain the resources - people, money, and equipment (to carry out your work) you have to 'sell' what you are doing to other people. Resources to implement new ideas will only be given if your team can persuade and influence people higher in the organization. Promoting to customers or clients both inside and outside the organization is also important if you are to continually deliver what people want.
Many ideas don't see the light of day because they are impractical. The Developing activity ensures that your ideas are molded and shaped to meet the needs of your customers, clients, or users. It involves listening to their needs and incorporating these in your plans through market research. Developing will ensure that what you are trying to do is possible, given the resource constraints of your organization.
Next is organizing. Here the emphasis is on getting into action and making things happen. It involves organizing the team so that everyone knows what they have to do, how, and when. Clear goals have to be established and action taken to ensure that results are delivered on time and to budget.
Once plans are set up and everyone knows what has to be done, the team can concentrate on producing. This activity focuses on delivering the product or service on a regular basis to high standards of effectiveness and efficiency.
All teams need to uphold standards and maintain effective work processes. Your car will fail if it does not have its regular service. Teams can fail too, if the team processes are not regularly checked and maintained. Maintaining ensures that quality standards are upheld and that regular reviews of team effectiveness take place.
Limitations within teams:
Team building can have its limitations. The first problem may result from a team leader failing to identify the correct priorities for a team’s attention. The leader may choose to lead the team in a skills-based team building exercise, such as learning how to give criticism or running effective team meetings. However, if the reason why this team is not working together effectively deals simply with trust issues or personality clashes, that may be what the leader wants to address first.
The success of team building has a lot to do with the willingness of the individuals. If individuals are in conflict, this can be destructive to team building exercises and render them ineffective.
Diversity in teams is inevitable simply because people are different. Personality types and cultural backgrounds must be considered when working with others. Both passive and strong personalities may influence how a team building exercise is executed. Someone who is shy or experiences some kind of cultural barriers may be less comfortable with group bonding exercises.
Sometimes working in teams can be time-consuming because of the need for coordination and consensus. Some individuals are simply not compatible with group work. On the other hand, teams may become efficient, but perhaps less creative if they begin to experience “group think.” For example, the campaign was for a flood appeal in Pakistan and as I am from Pakistan, I suggested that the food should be halal. Another possible limitation of team building is that it may result in the organization resisting change. If there are replacements or transfers in personnel, people may be less flexible because of the strong relationships they have built.
Improvements to communication:
I will now give seven ways that a team can improve communication within their team:
Ensure that your communication is focused and provide only as much detail as the person can understand and engage.
Demonstrate active listening skills wherever possible, repeating back a summarized version or asking and clarifying questions.
Determine whether your team members process information better through verbal communication or written communication.
Check for visible confirmation that your team members are listening and engaged.
Determine if your team members need facts and figures to connect to an idea.
Ensure your verbal and non verbal communication is consistent.
Check with your team on a regular basis about how well communication is going; are there areas where there is too much information being discussed?
Limitations of the team leader role to diffuse conflict within the team:
When ignored, conflict in the workplace interferes with the creation and sustainability of a productive and efficient work environment. Whether conflict takes the form of an employee constantly interfering, or a worker deliberately attacking ideas and causing a scene, conflict can put a stop to team progress and stifle the creativity and participation of other team members. Learning how to diffuse workplace conflict during a team meeting can help the team reach its goals.
There are a few steps that you can take to resolve conflict:
Take action immediately to address conflict at a team meeting. Letting problem fester will only allow the conflict to disrupt additional progress and future team meetings. Remain calm as you try to identify the cause of the conflict and work towards a resolution.
Connect with all team members in an effort to identify the root cause of the conflict. Depending on the severity of the problem, this can be done on an individual level or in an open team environment. Refrain from making any personal attacks by sticking to the facts surrounding the conflict. Encourage honest communication and stress that your goal is to face hurdles together and work through them as a team.
Take a break if needed to avoid further conflict and tension.
Take steps to identify solutions that will help bring all sides of the conflict together. Solutions can include assigning tasks and responsibilities to ensure an even distribution of responsibility and work load.
Provide appropriate feedback and communicate with all team members on a regular basis. Regular communication can help you stay ahead of possible conflicts and diffuse them before the meeting. This also provides employees with a chance to address concerns and resolve matters in a more intimate setting.
In one team where I was a team leader, I had an important responsibility to help build and encourage team members. I made sure that I supported all team members and motivated everyone and made them feel valued. I also made sure that I delegated tasks and trusted team members. The reason why I delegated tasks out to all team members was because as a team member, I did not want to do so most of the work myself because some team members choose to do less and give more responsibility to the team leader. In my opinion, being a team leader means that you have to take extra responsibility in making sure that all team members do not lose momentum; it means you organize the team and communicate effectively. In my opinion, what make a successful team are clearly the people within that team. Communication is vital. Team work requires you to communicate effectively with others and recognizing and understanding their viewpoints. Communication is essential to good working relationships where each individual is working towards the achievement of shared aims and …show more content…
objectives. Trust is also a key factor to ensuring success of working relationships. If the team members trust and respect one another then they will automatically work well together. If someone in my team has a good idea, I encouraged everyone to listen to these ideas. Also, if someone in my group was good at finishing and completing a task, then I made sure that they were given more responsibility in later stages of the project. This is useful in teams because it is not good to take all the credit for the work and there should be a balance. For instance, in the work place, someone who starts off as a team member might go from strength to strength and eventually they might be given a chance to prove themselves by having more responsibility. This could lead to a positive change, such as a pay rise or a new position at work.
I also made sure that I emphasize strong performance. Firstly, the individuals contribution to the team; this can be measured by how the individual works with other team members. For example, this can be shown by the extent to team meetings, whether they volunteer for team projects and how they communicate with each other. For instance, in one team which was for a flood campaign, during the tasks, our group would come together every 45 minutes and have a group meeting which enabled each of us to share our ideas and another member to add to those ideas. This can be very beneficial in teams because it provides support.
Secondly, an individual’s results from team work. The work carried out by a team member that contributes to the final result consequently contributes to the final team product could be assessed. For example, in one team that I was in, we had to make a building out of paper and my job was to fold all the papers as quickly as possible because we had a specific time that we had to finish the task in. therefore, if I had not folded the paper correctly or fast enough, we could have lost the task.
Thirdly, team performance, this could involve looking at team dynamics. For example, how well the team works together, the effectiveness of team meetings and the ability to achieve agreement. For example, in one group we had to come up with a name of our product and we had to all make sure that we liked the name of the product. Although in my opinion, not all meetings right there and then need to have a final solution and it could be that an idea comes after so I was glad that the team could think so quickly and spontaneously. The reason why I think that people in meetings do not always come up with ideas straight away is because of the environment that they are in. They could be under high pressure, causing them not to think straight. Lastly, team results; the team performance could be measured in terms of its work results and thus this is when the team will find out if their input to the task was effective and what they could have changed and reasons for improvement.
Team leaders in the workplace play an important role in developing their team members. Everyone has talent; it just needs bringing out. When you play the team leader role, you have to try to identify particular qualities of your team members. These have to be built for the sake of the team. In addition, while I was a team leader I had to find out about peoples aspirations. Everyone has ambitions and hopes. All too frequently they are ignored at work, leading to frustration. Therefore, if I can see a spot of opportunity in individuals they I bring it up and then it allows the team member to do what they feel they are good at. In one particular task, I allowed everyone to do what they did best. For instance, I am very confident so I took the initiative for electing myself to be the public speaker in my group and do the presentations in front of the class.
As a team leader, I wanted to make sure that everyone’s response is laughter, physical reaction and provide amusement. It would mean that team gets on and most importantly, it makes the task more enjoyable. For example, in one team, we had to do a radio advertisement and whilst we were rehearsing the advert, it was enjoyable and it gave us a chance to expand on ideas. Sometimes when a workplace has a calm and relaxed environment, teams perform better.
Recommendations for my own performance and how I could have improved:
Not being so pushy with my ideas and wanting to go ahead with them. I would say that it is a good thing to be enthusiastic but it can come out in the wrong ways and it may seem as though I am not listening to others people’s ideas because I am so focused on telling everyone my own ideas. For instance, while the teacher is telling us the task, I am already coming up with ideas, so when the group comes together I am telling them my ideas, but they still might be thinking about what the task is and they may want to start more at a basic level and brainstorm whilst I like to go straight into it and start the task. I would also say that this could be my weakness because I tend to rush things, sometimes causing errors on small things.
Sometimes, when you work in the team where everyone knows each other, the team which is meant to be formal becomes informal and everyone is more relaxed and comes off topic. The group becomes less structured and when this happens, I find myself doing the rest of the teams work. Therefore, next time I am in a group where I know the people, I will try my best to motivate everyone and make sure they keep on task.
I think in some tasks, like the flood appeal campaign, making a tinned product, I could have done some more market research about what tins look like, the price of tins, place to sell them and how marketers choose their target audience and how they publicize. This is because during the task, we went from having our tinned product set at a premium price which is relatively expensive to having the tinned product sold at an economy price. This was because our target audience was students so we had to make the product cheap. Therefore, next time we could do our market research and find out what marketers do if there product reaches the decline stage and there sales begin to fall.
I don’t think in any tasks did I brainstorm a set of targets that we were working towards because we were in small teams meaning that we had more responsibility so we didn’t have time to write our ideas down. Instead I had them all in my head.
Many of the times, I implemented changes in the task and I can honestly say I myself found it very difficult with the changes because it changed the whole concept of the task and it felt as though we were starting again. Next time, I will brainstorm ideas and try not to over complicate them.
I also think I need to brush up on my ICT skills because when I had to use Microsoft Publisher and Excel, I took longer to make a poster and a business card because it was hard choosing a layout because the layout tells us where the text can go and where the pictures can go and I couldn’t get the images and text to fit into the poster as I would have liked to have done. Next time, I will ask for more help.
My leadership style in a few tasks was democratic and I think this was a downfall because everyone on the task was doing the bare minimum so I needed to be more of an autocratic leader at some times during the task and be more dominant. Sometimes it does not matter if some team members do not like you because that can happen in the workplace and I still have to remain professional.
I need to focus on the key message that I want to get across and avoid getting side tracked into irrelevant issues.
Overall team performances:
Teamwork has a dramatic affect on organizational performance. An effective team can help an organization achieve incredible results. A team that is not working can cause unnecessary disruption, failed delivery and strategic failure.
Nowadays it is almost impossible to avoid being a member of team.
If you're not on an official team at work, chances are you function within one in one way or another. So it's important for your personal and career development to know your team working strengths and weaknesses. This can also be known as “identifying talent” because it will waste time if you assign a team member to the wrong task. For example, in one team that I was in, I was the team leader and I assigned the task to the wrong person. Each team member had to make a powerpoint presentation and I asked Jassel to make the powerpoint presentation and whilst the task was going, in I did not monitor his performance and therefore the presentation was wrong. This was not good for development because it shows that I cannot trust a team member to get on with the task and we cannot develop as a team and
persevere.
A good team member will be able to advise. Work is concerned with giving and gathering information. It involves finding out what others are doing in your area of work and ensuring that you are following best practices. Information may need to be gathered from articles, reports, or books, or by meeting and talking with people. It means ensuring that you have all the information available for the team to make the best decisions and deliver results. In one of the tasks, it required us to do a lot of market research because we were coming up with a flood campaign. This means that we had to gain information from the internet and books. This had to be done in our own time which showed me what team members were committed to the task and who did not do outside research away from the team. For instance, Jassels task was to find out pricing strategies that marketers use to price tinned products. Jassel did not read through the books properly, which lead to failure towards the end of the task. The pricing strategies were mixed up and we ended up pricing our tinned product at a high price and then a low price, which means that we had to change our target audience, thus our radio advertisement was no longer valid. Innovation was my strong point. In our flood appeal campaign, we had to come up with an idea about how we will advertise our product in the future if the product does not sell well. I came up with the idea that we can do a television advertisement and as the product was going to be sold in other countries, the advert could be dubbed. This was a good idea because it would have given our product good publicity and our other campaigns (posters, leaflets) were not that strong.
Innovating is a key aspect of teamwork and involves challenging the way things are currently being done. Technology is changing so quickly that the way you are currently performing tasks may no longer be the best way. If you are not up-to-date in your practices you may no longer be delivering competitive service. Innovating is essential for all work teams. There are always better ways of doing things if you only take time to discover them.
To obtain the resources - people, money, and equipment (to carry out your work) you have to 'sell' what you are doing to other people. Resources to implement new ideas will only be given if your team can persuade and influence people higher in the organization. Promoting to customers or clients both inside and outside the organization is also important if you are to continually deliver what people want.
Many ideas don't see the light of day because they are impractical. The Developing activity ensures that your ideas are molded and shaped to meet the needs of your customers, clients, or users. It involves listening to their needs and incorporating these in your plans through market research. Developing will ensure that what you are trying to do is possible, given the resource constraints of your organization.
Next is organizing. Here the emphasis is on getting into action and making things happen. It involves organizing the team so that everyone knows what they have to do, how, and when. Clear goals have to be established and action taken to ensure that results are delivered on time and to budget.
Once plans are set up and everyone knows what has to be done, the team can concentrate on producing. This activity focuses on delivering the product or service on a regular basis to high standards of effectiveness and efficiency.
All teams need to uphold standards and maintain effective work processes. Your car will fail if it does not have its regular service. Teams can fail too, if the team processes are not regularly checked and maintained. Maintaining ensures that quality standards are upheld and that regular reviews of team effectiveness take place.
Limitations within teams:
Team building can have its limitations. The first problem may result from a team leader failing to identify the correct priorities for a team’s attention. The leader may choose to lead the team in a skills-based team building exercise, such as learning how to give criticism or running effective team meetings. However, if the reason why this team is not working together effectively deals simply with trust issues or personality clashes, that may be what the leader wants to address first.
The success of team building has a lot to do with the willingness of the individuals. If individuals are in conflict, this can be destructive to team building exercises and render them ineffective.
Diversity in teams is inevitable simply because people are different. Personality types and cultural backgrounds must be considered when working with others. Both passive and strong personalities may influence how a team building exercise is executed. Someone who is shy or experiences some kind of cultural barriers may be less comfortable with group bonding exercises.
Sometimes working in teams can be time-consuming because of the need for coordination and consensus. Some individuals are simply not compatible with group work. On the other hand, teams may become efficient, but perhaps less creative if they begin to experience “group think.” For example, the campaign was for a flood appeal in Pakistan and as I am from Pakistan, I suggested that the food should be halal. Another possible limitation of team building is that it may result in the organization resisting change. If there are replacements or transfers in personnel, people may be less flexible because of the strong relationships they have built.
Improvements to communication:
I will now give seven ways that a team can improve communication within their team:
Ensure that your communication is focused and provide only as much detail as the person can understand and engage.
Demonstrate active listening skills wherever possible, repeating back a summarized version or asking and clarifying questions.
Determine whether your team members process information better through verbal communication or written communication.
Check for visible confirmation that your team members are listening and engaged.
Determine if your team members need facts and figures to connect to an idea.
Ensure your verbal and non verbal communication is consistent.
Check with your team on a regular basis about how well communication is going; are there areas where there is too much information being discussed?
Limitations of the team leader role to diffuse conflict within the team:
When ignored, conflict in the workplace interferes with the creation and sustainability of a productive and efficient work environment. Whether conflict takes the form of an employee constantly interfering, or a worker deliberately attacking ideas and causing a scene, conflict can put a stop to team progress and stifle the creativity and participation of other team members. Learning how to diffuse workplace conflict during a team meeting can help the team reach its goals.
There are a few steps that you can take to resolve conflict:
Take action immediately to address conflict at a team meeting. Letting problem fester will only allow the conflict to disrupt additional progress and future team meetings. Remain calm as you try to identify the cause of the conflict and work towards a resolution.
Connect with all team members in an effort to identify the root cause of the conflict. Depending on the severity of the problem, this can be done on an individual level or in an open team environment. Refrain from making any personal attacks by sticking to the facts surrounding the conflict. Encourage honest communication and stress that your goal is to face hurdles together and work through them as a team.
Take a break if needed to avoid further conflict and tension.
Take steps to identify solutions that will help bring all sides of the conflict together. Solutions can include assigning tasks and responsibilities to ensure an even distribution of responsibility and work load.
Provide appropriate feedback and communicate with all team members on a regular basis. Regular communication can help you stay ahead of possible conflicts and diffuse them before the meeting. This also provides employees with a chance to address concerns and resolve matters in a more intimate setting.