Report on Teamwork and the Individuals Contribution

Teamwork is a huge factor in hospitality industries around the world. Most hospitality industries including tourism and hospitality industry survive off of teamwork. Teamwork in the tourism industry has great importance for more than one reason. Teamwork brings a sense of security, trust, and loyalty to employees as well as the employers. Without teamwork, morale can be lowered. If morale is lowered, then productivity could be lowered as well. Hospitality industries are aware of this fact, so they implement programs and activities to keep morale and productivity at its highest obtainable level. Teamwork in the company has great importance for more than one reason. Hospitality industries, who have embraced the concept, have reported increased performance in work production, problem solving and has stimulated new growth. This group project approach has improved employee morale and increased input when managed correctly. The benefits of teamwork can make a positive effect in the company that incorporates this type of teamwork approach. Resources must be available within the company or outsourced by businesses that will come in and train company employees to make the most effective effort. A high performance workplace focuses on increasing people’s influence on the business as well as the impact of processes, methods, the physical environment, and the technology and tools that enhance their work (Burton et al, 2005).

Andrew Carnegie defined teamwork as ‘Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.’ Another definition of team according to Katzenbah and Smith (1991) is “a team is a small number of individuals associated in some joint action, with a strong, deep seated, common sense of purpose” (Garner C. L., 1998). Team members are mutually committed, mutually supportive, and collectively responsible for the achievement of team goals and objectives. Real teams create synergy; they perform at levels above that of groups. Team members work closely and freely with each other to achieve their common performance goals. Real teams perform tasks that cannot be achieved by individuals alone (Garner C.L., 1998).

Teamwork is often a crucial part of a business, as it is often necessary for colleagues to work well together, trying their best in any circumstance. Teamwork means that people will try to cooperate, using their individual skills and providing constructive feedback, despite any personal conflict between individuals. The purpose of this report is to discuss the structure and purposes of team work in tourism and hospitality industry, also to factor which influence the effectiveness of team in the tourism and hospitality industry.

Section 2: STRUCTURE OF TEAM IN TOURISM INDUSTRY

Tourism Industry and hospitality industry are the two sides of a same coin. None exist without one. This inter-relationship helps the whole tourism industry to develop. These two industry collaborate together to work in a efficient way as a team. There are various teams working under these interrelated industries. Representatives of passenger carriers, hotel operators, licensed travel agents, tour operators, retailers and restaurant operators work together as a team to develop the tourism and hospitality industry. These things are described below in a diagrammatical form:

Fig 1.1

Fig:1.2

The above diagram 1.2 describes the relationship between the various sectors in tourism and hospitality industry and the funnel diagram 1.1 shows the contribution to the both tourism and hospitality industry.

All these sectors in diagram 1.2, behaves as an individual in the whole industry. This individual sector works together as a team profit providing numbers of employment opportunities and facilities to the guests.

Furthermore this individual sector comprises of its own team inside. Let us take a hotel sector as an example. The diagram below shows the team’s hierarchy of inside a hotel sector.

The various sectors and sub sectors inside a hotel industry are also interrelated and they are committed towards the vision of the company.

Section 3: PURPOSE OF TEAMS IN TOURISM AND HOSPOTALITY

The creation of teams has become a key strategy in Tourism and hospitality Industry. Team building is an essential element in supporting and improving the effectiveness of small groups and task forces and must be a key part of a total program of organizational change.

Hellriegel, Slocum, & Woodman (1986) state that team building is used to improve the effectiveness of work groups by focusing on any of the following four purposes: setting goals and priorities, deciding on means an methods, examining the way in which the group works, and exploring the quality of working relationships. A cycle then develops; it begins with the awareness or perception of a problem and is followed sequentially by data collection, data sharing diagnosis, action planning, action implementation, and behavioural evaluation. This style is repeated as new problems are identified.

Not all work groups are teams. Reilly and Jones (1974) list four essential elements of teams: goals, interdependence, commitment, and accountability. The members must have mutual goals or a reason to work together; there must be an interdependent working relationship; individuals must be committed to the group effort; and the group must be accountable to a higher level within the organization. Margerison & McCann (1990) distinguished four key activities in any successful team, which should be taken on by one or more members: Advising, innovating, Resolving Conflicts and Distribution of Workload.

3.1 Advising

The team is composed of different members who are pro in doing their respective jobs. A well trained member from a team can easily help his colleague to solve the problem in case of need. Sharing the different ideas, easy steps, techniques and procedures makes the team faster and increases the productivity in the industry. When team members work together as a team, they can learn the skills and capabilities of each other and advance their knowledge. This certainly can be beneficial in your professional as well as personal life.

3.2 Innovating

Team Innovation can foster a safe and open team environment. It also sparks creative solutions to pressing business challenges. Enhancing feedback, communication and meeting skills and sharpening team problem solving skills results in increase synergy, trust, and commitment to the other member in the team and the organization. Innovation in a team helps to clarify agreements, standards, and next steps which finally provide the positive momentum your team needs to succeed.

3.3 Resolving Conflicts

There are many types of conflicts that may arise in the company, which may in turn have an adverse effect on the collective output. In order to resolve business conflicts; the knowledge, understanding and expertise can be used efficiently within a team for determining solutions to the problems. This significantly helps the business to grow.

3.4 Distribution of workload:

The continuous management and allocation of resources among individual members is unique to the team situation and, according to Salas, Dickinson, Converse, and Tannenbaum (1992), is one of the criteria that define a team. Clearly, the term resources refers to generic materials, the more specific nature of which depends on the task the team is performing. The term resource allocation, therefore, refers to the process by which a team monitors the resource needs of each team member in order to achieve an optimal distribution among individual members that allows the team to maximize its collective performance. Because resource allocation is an integral component of effective team performance in any operational setting, research is needed that provides insight into resource allocation, particularly the degree to which it is influenced by factors common to complex settings.

Section 4: THE FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF TEAMS

A team should be defined as an active unit. According to Buchlozs, Roth and Hess (Garner C. L.1998) “wearing the same shirt does not make a team”. Morgan Glickman, Woodard and Salas define a team as “distinguishable set of two or more individuals who interact interdependently and adaptively to achieve specified, shared and value objectives”. Sandstorm and Associates (1999) state that effectiveness of teams start with meeting the performance expectations, of those who receive, use, or review the team’s output. Performance expectations usually stem from managers, internal and external customers, and others. Performance expectations differ depending on groups receiving services. For example, a customer usually expects quality, timeliness, low cost, and responsiveness of service. Manager expects that a team will meet customer’s expectations and that they will be productive (Angelique A., 2001). Other expectations which affect team’s efficiency are related to employee behaviour and quality of work life. On the other hand, task variety, task identity, task significance, task autonomy, and task feedback can contribute team effectiveness. Team composition like as heterogeneity, team stability and team size is also contributing factors to team’s efficiency. Heterogeneity has a positive impact on team effectiveness, especially when a task assigned to a team is diverse (Diskul P., 2001). Team stability involves the continuity of membership. According to our lecture class, the effectiveness of team is dependent of following factors:

4.1 Team composition

A team is a group of people made up of individuals who each contribute their individual knowledge and skills. Synergy, where the collective whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts, often occurs where teamwork is working well. Teams benefit because individuals often do not have all the knowledge and skills necessary. Working together is essential. Harmony and a positive attitude are critical. If the team is not working together, then the expected gains will not materialise. An understanding of the common goal/task is also critical. People have to be clear as to why the team exists and what the purpose is, Catherine A Tomczyk (2005).

If you have the right team composition and approach, team synergy can take over. But it has to be set up correctly. The team members have to be willing and ready to participate. In the absence of any of the above features teams will fail.

4.2 Control:

According to James R. Evans and William M. Lindsay (2008), a group needs to establish procedures that can be use to guide or regulate its activities. For example, a meeting agenda serves to guide group activities during a meeting. Schedules or when specific actions will be taken also regulate team activities. Team development and team-member commitment is facilitated through maximum involvement in the establishment of agendas, schedules and other procedures. Of course, the team should determine how it wishes to maintain control. In meeting situations, control most often is achieved through the appointment of a chairperson whose responsibility is to facilitate the procedure established by the team. Some teams find that they do not need a formal leader; each member regulates his or her own contributions and behaviour as well as those of others.

4.3 Collaboration:

Collaboration entails finding the right group of people (skills, personalities, knowledge, work-styles, and chemistry), ensuring they share commitment to the collaboration task at hand, and providing them with an environment, tools, knowledge, training, process and facilitation to ensure they work together effectively. By Jean Binder (2007), collaboration, when done well, isn’t a competitive exercise. With encouragement from the leader or manager, team members will feel comfortable offering ideas that might sound like useless but might ignite a brainstorm.

Collaboration at work develops rapport with team members, builds an effective team which is mutually beneficial for the employer and staff, and overall development of tourism and hospitality sector.

Communication.

Effective communication skills empower an individual to inspire and influence others in order to reach the desired outcome, no matter how difficult the situation may appear to be. An individual with effective communication skills not just has an edge over his/her fellow colleagues/friends/acquaintances etc. but also carries out his/her job with a lot of confidence, ease and perfection. Communication makes the bridge between the team members and creates synergy within the team. Through communications; team members achieve organizational goals in more efficient manner. From the point of view of Judith Davis Hoover, (2002), communication is not only an item of academic curiosity. It focuses on businesses that feature teamwork as a key component of their managerial philosophy.

Part 2 Section 1: ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Dr Meredith Belbin (2010) defined a team role as “a tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way” and named nine such team roles that he argued underlie team success. Designating specific roles and responsibilities among members of a team helps promote cohesion within the team.

Designating specific roles and responsibilities in a team promotes effectiveness. This can be done by valuing the strengths of each team member to promote unity. According to D. Johnson and F. Johnson (1997) there are five keys to a productive team: positive independence, individual accountability, primitive (face-to-face) interaction, appropriate use of social skills, and group processing.

Section 2: LINE OF AUTHORITY AND THEIR PURPOSES

Line authority is represented by the chain of command; an individual positioned above another in the hierarchy has the right to make decisions, issue directives, and expect compliance from lower-level employees. Staff authority is advisory authority; it takes the form of counsel, advice, and recommendation. People with staff authority derive their power from their expert knowledge and the legitimacy established in their relationships with line managers. Functional authority allows managers to direct specific processes, practices, or policies affecting people in other departments; functional authority cuts across the hierarchical structure. For example, the human resources department may create policies and procedures related to promoting and hiring employees throughout the entire organization.

Chester Irving Barnard (1938) defines authority as the character of communication by which an order is accepted by an individual as governing the actions that individual takes within the system.

The most fundamental authority within an organization reflects existing superior-subordinate relationships. It consists of the right to make decisions and to give order concerning the production, sales or finance related behaviour of subordinates.

In general, line authority pertains to matters directly involving management system production, sales, finance etc., and as a result with the attainment of objectives.

People directly responsible for these areas within the organization are delegated line authority to assist them in performing their obligatory activities.

Section 3: CONCLUSION

As from the discussion above, we can conclude teamwork as one of the most important factor in developing the hospitality and tourism sector. different ideas of different individuals, working hand in hand is only the easiest and most secure path to achieve the target for the industry. Furthermore, the cooperation of the lowest and the highest position in the hierarchical system of tourism and hospitality industry; the leadership of the leading person and the devotion of the staffs makes the successful and professional team. And the professional team can easily carryout all the task within an organization. The main target for all the business including hospitality industry is profit through customer and staff satisfaction. And most of the team are successful to achieve this target. Individual effort to complete a task and achieve the success is almost zero but many individual efforts can challenge any sorts of obstacles to achieve the mission.

Section 4: BIBLIOGRAPHY

Binder J C (2007), Global project management: communication, collaboration and management, Gower Publishing Limited

Daft R L(2008), Organization Theory and Design, Cengage learning

Fatout M (1992), Models for change in social group work, Walter de Gruyter

Evans J R and Lindsay W M (2008), Management & Control of Quality, Thomson South western

Heinemann G D and Zeiss A M (2002), Team performance in health care: assessment and development, Kluwer Academic / Plenum Publishers

Hoover, J D(2002), Effective small group and team communication, Harcourt College Publishers

Journal article by Julie M. Urban, Jeanne L. Weaver, Clint A. Bowers, Lori Rhodenizer; Human Factors, Vol. 38, 1996

Katzenbach J R, Smith D K (1993), The wisdom of teams: creating the high-performance organization, Harvard Business Press

Robbins SP, Organizational behavior: Global and Southern African Perspectives, Pearson Education South Africa (pvt) Ltd.

Tomczyk A C (2008), Project Manager’s Spotlight on Planning, SYBEX Inc.

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