Effective Team and Performance Management Essay - 4

Effective Team and Performance Management - Essay Example The paradigm shift in business has broadened the focus of organization beyond the achievement of its own goals and objectives to the creation of an environment where the members (in this case the employees) can also realize their individual and group objectives and desires within the organization structure. Employees are now concerned about their career paths within an organization above and beyond their monetary rewards. This career path requires the creation of programs and systems that allow for new knowledge and skill acquisition within the organization that allow for successive progression or growth of the individual alongside that of the overall organization (Berger & Berger, 2010). The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the role of team cohesion and understanding on organizational performance. It examines how leadership can better enhance the relations amongst individuals, teams and management therein increasing their collective synergistic efforts towards the realization of optimal performance and achievement of set organizational targets and objectives. It also examines how the underlying differences between individuals within the organization can lead to frictions within the organization that can dent organizational performance and progress; therein showing how such frictions can be mitigated and managed as and when they arise. The paper employs several tasks involving team and individual relations; therein using theoretical team and performance management models to evaluate the usefulness of such tasks in building capacity for achieving optimum organizational performance. Reflection Group Formation and Analysis Approach I have chosen to use the Tuckman team model (1965) in organizing my reflections on the experiences gained from the various seminar activities or tasks. This is because the model offers a simple yet conclusive four- step approach involving forming, storming, norming, and performing phases for examining and managing the group dynam ics of individuals within a team. The first stage is absolutely vital in identifying members for your team. Figure 1: Tuckman Model for reflection The selection of team members can be done based on the roles identified for members within the team (Belbin, 2004). The formation of my team comprised individuals from multicultural backgrounds: Mathew Stroud (British) Alena Linhartova (Spanish) Virginia Bath (British) Abdulaziz Mohammed Al-Hunayshil (Saudi Arabia) Chunlin Chen (China) The distribution of roles within the team was arrived at based on Belbin’s self-perception inventory model (1981) which argued that team roles existed based on distinct individual preferences in addition to being behavioral and thought style-dependent. The model implied the prevailing of a more natural role in most occasions. Belbin initially had an eight role model where the roles were arrived at based on six factors namely: personality, mental ability, current value and motivation, field constraint s, experience, and role learning. He however failed to show the degree of variation within these factors.Later on, he added a ninth role; that of the specialist. Table 1: Belbin's Team