Throughout my work experience in the service industry, effective teamwork has been a huge part of my job description.

Working in a restaurant requires that all staff members work effectively together to ensure guest satisfaction. One part of our theoretical model that I apply at work is the commitment to the team. Many of the staff members and I feel a sense of affective commitment, which motivates us to remain part of the organization (Colquitt, Lepine, Wesson, 64). We stay at our job because we want to and feel some sense of emotional attachment. As a team, we have developed bonds that allow us to work well together and optimize our work performance. We all put forth extra effort when we working because we want our team as a whole to do well. Many of us would say that we are all part of the family, and that helps us feel a sense of belonging to our organization and in turn enhances our abilities as a team. This is described as cohesion, which involves having emotional bonds to other members of your team. Cohesion tends to provide high levels of motivation amongst team members, which often leads to higher levels of team performance (Colquitt, Lepine, Wesson, 394). Additionally, our model includes the importance of the characteristics of the team. According to Alexander Laszlo, Kathia Castro Laszlo, and Christian S. Johnsen, a high rate of autonomy is an important characteristic to embrace when developing a high performance team (32). At my job, all of the servers are provided with an adequate level of autonomy. In order to problem-solve quickly and effectively, we are able to use a manager code, without the manager present, to adjust the customers bills when necessary. This level of autonomy helps each of us because we do not feel like we must rely on someone else in order to make the customers experience the best it can be. Also, many of our shifts go without direct supervision but it works well because we respect the level of autonomy we are given and therefore we do not take advantage of it. This also requires us to work well as a team. Since there is not always a manager present, our staff must help each other when necessary and know when to step in and assist another staff member during busy or stressful times. This is part of the action process known as helping behavior (Colquitt, Lepine, Wesson, 390). With helping behavior, team members go out of their way in order to assist other team members. For example, in the event that I have a heavy workload, the hostess goes out of her way to assist me even though it is not in her job description to do so. This resourcefulness helps our team succeed as a whole. Finally, my job places a heavy emphasis on team building exercises and team training, which are last components of our theoretical model. Once a year, every employee is required to participate in an eight-hour team building workshop. Sometimes we work collectively as a whole and sometimes we break down into smaller groups, but all of the activities are focused around overall team building. For example, one exercise involves about thirty people individually completing a puzzle. However, you may not begin work on your puzzle until the person in front of you completes their puzzle successfully. If one person does not put forth maximum effort to complete their puzzle, the rest of the group must wait on them and therefore suffer a level of process loss, which is a great example of production blocking (Colquitt, Lepine, Wesson, 384). We are also able to communicate and assist the person ahead of us with completing the puzzle. This correlates with another

aspect of the theoretical model, which is building an effective communication network. If each of us were to shout at the person working on the puzzle, it would create a lot of noise in our communication process (Colquitt, Lepine, Wesson, 384). We have to learn how to effectively communicate with each other in order to properly assist each other. Additionally, many of us at my job are cross-trained in multiple departments and positions. This training is done using positional rotation, where we actually perform the roles of other staff members (Colquitt, Lepine, Wesson, 401). This strengthens sense of teamwork by providing us with the confidence of knowing that we can assist all of our staff members with their responsibilities when they need help. Overall, these training programs build great teamwork and improve the job performance at my organization.