How managers can turn individuals into team players

Q1. What options do manager have to turn individuals into Team Players? Discuss each.

Normally, the managers motivates their group of Individuals, by conducting three most popular ways, including proper selection, employee training, and rewarding the appropriate team behaviors. These factors will enhance and ensure that the individuals to become very effective team players in the organization.

According to Robbins and Judge, While hiring the people, by considering three options, the individuals could be into team players, thus, ensuring the candidates Knowledge & skills whether to hire or not, furthermore, “Make them into team players” by proper training. So that, they could be improved in their problem-solving techniques, communication skills, negotiation, conflict management methods and coaching skills.

When considering into rewards , by providing promotions, pay rises and in the form of recognition make or motivate them into team players also. Although, every worker is inherently a team player. Some people prefer to be recognized for their individual achievements. In some organizations too, work environments are such that only the strong survive. Creating teams in such an environment may meet some resistance. Eventually, the countries differ in terms of how conducive they are to individualism and collectivism. Teams fit well in countries that score high on collectivism.

The aim and purpose of assembling a team by a manager is, to accomplish the major goals, than any that would be possible for the individual working alone. It is to perform, get results and achieve victory in the workplace and market place. The very best managers are those who can gather information together with a group of individuals to mould them as a lucrative team. These following key traits, helps the individuals to become a pro-active and productive team players.

Understandings

Ownership

Creativity and contribution

Trust

Common Understanding

Personal Development

Conflict resolution

Participative decision making

Clear Leadership

Commitment

Again, most of them are insisting the individuals can’t turn always into team players. Nevertheless, it is dependant upon the employees’ traits, emotions and prior experiences. Furthermore, the one or more individuals form a team, will help to understand why it is so important to work as a team towards a common goal than as an individual with individual goal. Awareness of the team development process can minimize frustration and failure and maximize growth and high achievement. There are some team development processes are able to increase their team to be effective and inherit.

Approach-Avoidance – By orientating each other and to the mission of the teams, can perform this task effectively into the organization.

Power-Control – By taking this task, the team can perform at this stage is, to realize the organization conflict struggles around the team goals.

Intimacy – Their statement like, “That’s a great idea.” Or “We really like what you are saying.” The only task this team can perform is Data Flow or open sharing without evaluation. Also agree with all those recommendations by them.

Differentiation – By sharing strengths and weaknesses and solving the problems, can leads the group into a great path. When team members are finally at the highly performing stage, where they can address problems in a different way through the eyes of the team rather than the individuals, that enables the team to tackle more challenges and reach high levels of performance also.

Closure – Eventually, by evaluating the team’s success and individual success could the team lead effectively.

Management Challenges of Creating Team Players :

Employee’s success, when they are part of the teams, is a function of how well the team as a whole performed. In that, the individuals must be able to communicate openly and honestly with one another, to confront differences and resolve conflicts, and to place lower priority

on personal goals for the good of the team. The challenge of creating team players will be a greatest commitment, where the national culture is highly individualistic. The teams are being introduced into an established organization that has historically valued for individual achievement.

Roles to do Team Members :

There are nine potential roles that work team members often can “play.” Let’s review by each.

Creator-Innovators are imaginative and good at initiating ideas or concepts.

Explorer-Promoters like to take the new ideas from the above one and finding the resources to promote those ideas. It’s often lack the patience, control and skills to ensure those ideas are implemented.

Assessor-Developers having strong analytical skills. They are at their best, when giving several different options to evaluate and analyze before a decision is made.

Thruster-Organizers like to set up operating procedures to get things done. They set goals, establish plans, organize people, and establish systems to ensure that deadlines are met.

Concluder-Producers are concerned with results like as Thruster-Organizer. Their role focuses on insisting that deadlines are kept and commitments fulfilled properly.

Controller-inspectors having a high concern for establishing and enforcing rules and policies. They are good at examining details and making sure that inaccuracies are avoided. Also, they verify all the facts and figures to make sure that are completed.

Upholder-maintainers hold strong convictions about the way things should be done. They will defend the team and fight its battles strongly supporting fellow team members. These individuals provide team stability.

Reporter-advisers are good listeners and don’t tend to press their point of view on others. They perform an important role in encouraging the team to seek additional information and discouraging the team from making hasty decisions.

Coordinators and Integrators are linkers. They dislike extremism and try to build cooperation among all team members. If forced to, most individuals can perform in any of these roles.

Eventually, Managers need to select the team members on the basis of an appropriate mix of individual strengths, and allocate work assignments that fit with each member’s preferred style accordingly.

Q2. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of Diversity on Teams :

Team Diversity :

As a team, we are aware of the team diversity and how it is tied with teams strategy in an organization. A good definition of diversity is the uniqueness of each team member brings to the resolution of the project at hand. This include differences (Organizational Demography) such as race, gender, culture, background, education and thinking styles. It also encompasses, the subtle dimensions such as experience, sexual orientation, physical appearance, and position of each member takes on the team. Let’s go through the merits and demerits.

Advantages :

In an organization, the teams who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals and approaching for which they had hold themselves is mutually accounted between the diversity on teams.

Even though, if there are many departments or teams in an industry, but their goal would be the same. So, Accordingly they are sharing more information about their task , suggesting or recommending new ideas between them (Problem solving),Implementing the solutions (Self managed, Cross functional and Virtual teams) to get success.

The teams purpose are convinced in worthwhile, meaningful and urgent. So the teams should be having rigorous mix of skills such as functional or technical, problem solving, decision-making and human relation skills. By concluding this, the team member will be encouraged through recognition, positive feedback and rewards.

By the team diversity, the organization becomes highly performed, multi skill shared from different people which are not belongs to the concern team in local (Virtual Team), and possible conflicts happening between them to inherit.

The Team diversity will produce positive synergy between the people are in the team, that will allow the organization to increase their performance and knowledge. But in groups, it quietly opposite.

The Effective use of teams creates the potential for an organization, to generate greater outputs with no increase in inputs. By diversity between the teams, they can make valuable products, providing services, negotiable deals, co-ordinate projects, offering advice and making decisions effectively.

When Diversity issues are occurring into the organization, diversity plans had been taken to do implement the solutions such as, Increased adaptability, broader service range, variety of view points ( Ideas and Experiences) to meet the business strategy effectively, More effective execution from the team to raise their productivity, profits and return on investment.

Nevertheless, their knowledge and perspective will increase between them, they have an opportunity to learn about customers & competitors of them, bringing the new directions than static work force, adaptability, Satisfaction, and by social relations build a strong partnerships with the teams always.

The people who involved into the teams, wherever the culture inclusions, difference in values and accepting their feeling in their knowledge and learning to become innovative advantages for the company.

Disadvantages :

In teams, always have the capability to quick assemble, deploy, refocus and disband. But it doesn’t overlook the motivational properties of teams, thus, causing people to lose their involvement into the work.

By using problem-solving teams they could only perceive “recommendations” for the problem caused, but not “implementations.” Consistently, it makes no sense to allow the problem solving team effectively.

While diversity may have real potential benefits, a team focused on commonly held information. So, the diverse team need to focus not on their similarities but on their differences (Knowledge and skills) to realize the creative potential.

Sometimes between the teams have inactive sense than group individuals, that not make them interest in their work, Because of irresponsible, not co-operating with team people, poor performance, not worrying about target or goal will make them lose in their image.

When managing multi cultural teams, creating conflicts over discussion, misunderstanding with communications, unwanted decision making and reducing effectiveness issues between the teams.

According to Ancona and Caldwell (1992 p323) studies states, that the team different cognitive styles, attitudes and values not managed effectively with diverse members, could create internal processes that slow decision making and keep them to do not concentrating on the task.

Sometimes in an organization, if there is new people who join as a fresh employees into the team, they need to go with training skills. Those expensive training is unnecessarily spend the company assets.

Q3. Why is situational Leadership so important – Compare Situational Leadership to Charismatic Leadership – Provide one example of each.

The Situational Leadership is a contingency theory that focuses on the followers readiness. The situational leadership theory was initially introduced in 1969 and revised in 1977 by Hersey and Blanchard. According to them, Whenever the leadership changing by the followers, that need to act effectively depends on the situations by a leader.

For example if the followers are unable and unwilling to do a task, the leaders needs to give clear and specific directions. Indeed, if followers are unable and willing, need to display high task orientation and motivation from them to follow the leader instructions. Again, if they are able and unwilling, should use a supportive and participative style. but they are able and willing, the leaders doesn’t need to do much. Eventually, these related to get a main thought of leaders and followers accomplishments varying in each situations.

These leaderships are obviously have much memory for managerial theory and practice. According to Fiedler’s Contingency Theory of Leadership, has been cautious of accepting all conclusions. Fiedler’s work is not without problems or critics. Evidence suggests that other situational variables, like training and experience have an impact in a leader’s effectiveness. There are also some uncertainties about Fiedler’s measurement of different variables. For instance, there is some doubt whether the LPC is a true measure of leadership style. “Despite these and other criticisms, Fiedler’s contingency theory

represents an important addition to our understanding of effective leadership” (Bedeian, Gleuck 508). His theory became an important discovery in the study of leadership and also made a major contribution to knowledge in the leadership area.

Accordingly his three critical dimensions of the leadership styles, making the organizations to inherit. By Position Power of hierarchy, arising who is handling the situation. So if the leader has clear and considerable position power, the follower can obtain more easier than uneasy. Using Structuring the tasks, is the same as the position power than vague and unstructured, the quality of performance can be controlled. Finally, the Leader-member relations will be the more important point view in an organization. Consequently, the group members like and trust a leader to commit success. Eventually, “the favorableness of situation” as the degree to which a situation enables a leaders to exert influence over a group. His finding divides into two types of sources,

Least Preferred Co-worker (LPC)

Assumed Similarity between Opposites (ASO)

Nonetheless, the true statement found by him: ” Leadership performance depends on the leaders own attributes in an organization. If we wish to increase the organizational and group effectiveness we must learn not only how to train leaders more effectively, how to build an organizational environment in which the leader can perform well”. The conclusion is that there is no one best leadership style and that managers can be successful if placed in appropriate situations.

Path-goal theory suggests that the leader behavior that will accomplish these tasks depends upon the subordinate and environmental contingency factors. This theory has been criticized because it does not consider interactions among the contingency factors and also because of the complexity of its underlying theoretical model, expectancy theory. Empirical research has provided some support for the theory’s propositions, primarily as they relate to directive and supportive leader behaviors.

Eventually, the theory suggests that the key contingency factor affecting leaders’ choice of leadership style is the task-related maturity of the subordinates. Subordinate maturity is defined in terms of the ability of subordinates to accept responsibility for their own task-related behavior.

The major proposition of situational leadership theory is that the effectiveness of task and relationship-oriented leadership depends upon the maturity of a leader’s subordinates .Situational leadership theory has been criticized on both theoretical and methodological grounds. However, it remains one of the better-known contingency theories of leadership and offers important insights into the interaction between subordinate ability and leadership style.

Studies attempted to identify “distinctive characteristics of the setting to which the leader’s success could be attributed” (Hoy & Miskel, 1987, p. 273). Hencley (1973) reviewed leadership theories and noted that “the situation approach maintains that leadership is determined not so much by the characters of the individuals as by the requirements of social situation” (p. 38). According to this research focus, a person could be a follower or a leader depending upon circumstances. Attempts were made to identify specific characteristics of a situation that affected leaders’ performance.

Hoy and Miskel (1987) listed four areas of situational leadership states, “structural properties of the organization, organizational climate, role characteristics, and subordinate characteristics” (p. 273). Situational leadership revealed the complexity of leadership but still proved to be insufficient because the theories could not predict which leadership skills would be more effective in certain situations.

Charismatic Leadership :

A charismatic leader is someone who sways followers with a dynamic, magnetic personality, usually through inspiring speeches. According Robert House’s Leadership theory states that “the followers make attributions of heroic or extra ordinary leadership abilities when they observe certain behaviors”.

When comparing with situational leadership, the leader characteristics varying independently, thus, vision and articulation, personal risk, sensitivity to follower needs and unconventional behavior. If a leader has charismatic traits, can manage his follower’s in a successful way. According to robbins “The leaders are made and born too”. Furthermore, they are like to be extraverted, self confident and achievement oriented. Again, If any critical issues or problems occurs within the organization, they will handle the situations very carefully, to overcome those limitations to make it into lucrative.

Attributions of charisma are the result of an interactive process between leader, followers, and the situation. Charismatic leaders arouse enthusiasm and commitment in followers by articulating a compelling vision and increasing follower confidence about achieving it. Attribution of charisma to the leader is more likely if the vision and strategy for attaining it are innovative, the leader takes personal risks to promote it, and the strategy appears to be succeeding. Other relevant behaviors have also been identified, but they vary somewhat across the different theories. Some leader traits and skills such as self-confidence, strong convictions, poise, speaking ability, and a dramatic flair increase the likelihood of attributed charisma, but more important is a context that makes the leader’s vision especially relevant to follower needs.

Martin Luther King, Jr, is a great example of a charismatic leader. His charismatic leadership is to contrast it with his thought leadership. The former is the triumph of style over substance while the latter is just the opposite. For thought leadership, substance or content is king! People follow charismatic leaders almost regardless of the content of their message while thought leaders have to provide hard evidence (solid content) to influence people.

However, the situational and charismatic leadership are most significant factors in the management hierarchy. Without leaders, the followers can´t build an effective management. At the mean time, the leaders can´t be without them. According to the various researches, the Leadership is varying depends on their abilities, personal involvement, skills (Charismatic) and of course their situations.