BM BB-5303 Leadership 1

Leading Successful Work Teams/Team Leadership & Teambuilding

Yong Min Hui 14M5206 and Nurul Afiqah Hj Nor Amin 14M5219
The topic of leading successful team work teams or team leadership and teambuilding covered a
brief definition of the topic, stages of team buildings, characteristics of effective and ineffective
team, the importance and its criticism and its recommendation with the objectives to understand
the connection between a leader and its work team in terms of behavior and its performance.
Team Leadership
Team leadership is the management of a group of people who brought together to work to
achieve common goals. Hence in order to get everyone to work as functioning team, leader must
motivate and inspire his or her followers. Leadership of a team involves in assigning followers to
task, supporting members and overseeing projects. Team leadership situations means taking
responsibility and being able to switch gears as to keep track on the project. Leader must be
adaptable and flexible when things arent going according to the plan; the leader is responsible to
make sure everything get backs on track and having the team working together to make the
project successful. Good leaders know how to inspire their team through all types of situations,
including setbacks and challenges.
A good leader will never do all the work but also never hands off a project to team member
without following through, offering support and guidance. Team leadership is about
accomplishing goal through everyone work together, but this cannot occur efficiently unless
everyone know their role. Leaders give members specific responsibilities to suit their experience
and job description. Leader is not only responsible for outcome of project but also building
strong and effective team.
Team building
Team building is a process that develops cooperation and team work within work unit. To
constitute an effective team, its member must share common goal, have respect for each other,
and be motivated to use the strength of each member to achieve their objectives, as each member
of team plays a integral part in the success of the company.
With understaffing, outsourcing and other morale defeating activities on the rise, many
corporations realize must nurture communication within organization. Business form teams and
committees for vary purpose; therefore individuals can be members of several teams. To be

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Leading Successful Work Teams/Team Leadership & Teambuilding
Yong Min Hui 14M5206 and Nurul Afiqah Hj Nor Amin 14M5219
effective, time should establish for getting acquainted and exchange of ideas. From employees
point of view, being part of team usually provides sense of loyalty and ownership.
Teambuilding also being develop through team building exercises and events. Individuals can
practice brainstorming, collaboration, creativity, trust and feedback. Most activities focus on area
such as problem solving, organizational development and conflict resolution. Participants can
also develop leadership, interpersonal, presentation and negotiation skills. Team building event
also include companys celebration and other activities as potluck, team t-shirt or company
drawing prize. Event is better at off-site location and be flexible with back-up plan. To be
effective, it needs to have follow-up activities.
Stages of Team Building
1st Stage: Forming- Why we are here?
People will express differences as check each other out and decide whether to be part of the
group. Feeling would be anxiety and confusion. Work accomplished would be little due to
conflicts emerged, leadership, values and feasibility of task challenged. Team members would
like to feel be included and expect that opinion will be respected.
2nd Stage: Storming- Can we work together?
More conflicts emerge as members negotiate tasks. Power plays may occur example who in
charge and what action taken toward goal. Feeling would be instability and polarization. The
team must bring conflicts out in open, encourage good communication skills and affirm that
disagreement is healthy and resolvable. Team members are to develop skills, redefine goals, roles
and tasks and also learned how to work together.
3rd Stage: Norming- How will we work together?
Rules will be created, members learn to productively work together and team pride will be
develops. Norms will be established for how people treat each other; how meeting are
conducted; who will do what work and how it will be accomplished. Team members in this stage
are required to deepen skills and understanding; increase productivity; share opinions and skills;
evaluate critically and constructively.
4th Stage: Performing- How can we work smarter?

BM BB-5303 Leadership 3
Leading Successful Work Teams/Team Leadership & Teambuilding
Yong Min Hui 14M5206 and Nurul Afiqah Hj Nor Amin 14M5219
Groups become functioning team, can diagnose, solve problems and make decisions. Much work
can occur; team may become creative and tackle new tasks. Team works together or delegates
work, share leadership and responsibility. Team members are required to achieve tasks, deal with
group issues, build skills and knowledge and use time well.
5th Stage: Re-Forming/Mourning: Should we continue?
Groups celebrate achievements or disband and mourn loss of groups. Most groups reform when
goal achieved, new goals created or members and leader turnover. Once group progresses thru
stages, subsequent team building goes faster.
Factors related to Team Building
Environmental Factors: External environmental characteristic that organization is exposed to.
Design Factors: Features of task, group and organization that managers can use to create
conditions for effective performance. Example of task design factors is autonomy and
interdependence while examples of group composition design factors are size, tenure,
demographic and diversity and examples of organization context design factors are rewards,
training, supervision and resources.
Group Psychosocial Traits: Share understanding, belief or emotional tone example norms,
cohesiveness, team mental models and group effect.
Group Processes: Interaction like communication and conflicts that happen among team
members and external others.
Characteristics of Effective Team
Having strong leadership. Role of leader is not to only assign work and be role model but
to motivate team members, but also provide effective feedback and guidance. For
example, if the member is not manager of the team, that person still can offer constructive
criticism to the leader to help and create stronger team.
Team share and understand the common goals.
Diversity of skills and personality in team.

BM BB-5303 Leadership 4
Leading Successful Work Teams/Team Leadership & Teambuilding
Yong Min Hui 14M5206 and Nurul Afiqah Hj Nor Amin 14M5219
Each member has minimum level of Emotional Intelligent and Spiritual Intelligent.
Effective team passes not only technical skills but also emotional intelligent. It is
important as it turns out that individuals are socially aware, the whole group puts in better
quality work. In team work, social sensitivity trumps sheer intelligence alone. Hence for
team members to work well together, leader should look at how well-tuned is the
emotional intelligent of each individual in the team.
Team member will make time for humor.
Team members communicate proactively and collaboration within the team.
Trust and commitment is there between each of the member in team.
Finally, highly effective team will stand the test of time. They will know how to celebrate
achievements and how to read just their efforts after defeats. All will start with this handful of
characteristics of highly effective team. Whether a manager or just part if a team, always offer
feedback to colleague to try and become better team.

Characteristics of ineffective team

Characteristics of an ineffective team can be distinguished in terms of several situations. Moxon
(1993) distinguished the situation with its characteristics in table 1 below.
Characteristics
Atmosphere

Tense, Stiff, Fragmented, closed groups

Decision making

Forced and emphasis on power,

Criticism

dissonance present within group

Tension producing, often appears to involve personal hostility, tends

Leadership

to be destructive
Single-Leader dominated

Team processes

Discussion on the performance effectiveness or operation is avoided,

involves personal traits and motives when it comes to conflict

BM BB-5303 Leadership 5
Leading Successful Work Teams/Team Leadership & Teambuilding
Yong Min Hui 14M5206 and Nurul Afiqah Hj Nor Amin 14M5219
People relationships

Suspicious and partisan based on need or liking, competitive

Motivation

Coercion and pressure, personal goals ignored, individual achievement

valued without concern for the group

Table 1: Characteristics of ineffective team

The importance of successful team building

Figure 1: the importance of building successful team work

Based on figure 1, (Rupar & Rupar, 2009) has identified the factors that are unavoidably
connected to teamwork. Therefore these factors are all interconnected in order for team work to
be motivated. The research further stated that the importance of team work to generate ideas and
conflict solving are to achieve a certain goal so when the mutual co-operation of the entire team
is achieved, there is better quality of work and with this better operations and greater success at
all levels.
In terms of conflict solving, Sosik, Avolio & Kahai (1997) found that team leaders who engaged
in participative leadership had team members who generated more problem solutions than team
leaders who displayed directive leadership. However, these effects only apply for moderately
structured tasks. This suggests that leadership in team information processing will depend in part
on the nature of the team task.
Another research done by (Medinschi & Colta) emphasized on establishing ownership of shared
goals for the success of a project is one crucial factor in team building because of the process that
team building improves collective performance.

BM BB-5303 Leadership 6
Leading Successful Work Teams/Team Leadership & Teambuilding
Yong Min Hui 14M5206 and Nurul Afiqah Hj Nor Amin 14M5219
(Munir, Malik, Ejaz, Alam, & Abbas, Nov 2012) stated that teambuilding has significant impact
on team performance. It suggests that organizational team building efforts are obligatory to boost
employee morale which will in turn increase the employee retention. As team building has many
sub dimensions, factors such as individual contribution, team evaluation and team-coordination
were used in a study conducted by (Zia, 2011) and it proved that the three factors play roles in
enhancing employee morale and employee retention.
Another factor such as trust has a significant relation with building successful team. (Erdem,
Janset er al 2003) stated that to develop trust is not a one persons duty but the duty of whole
organization and will increase the quality of the output from the organization.
Lastly, it is concluded that teamwork is effective for the dynamic development of an
organization. One way to improve the development is to have a team building intervention. This
way, the most important trait in a team can be develop which is vulnerability. (Kipp & Kipp,
2000) mentioned that vulnerability is very important as it is a sign of trust by admitting that they
are stuck, worried or frustrated.
Critics
True collaboration, however, is a problem that plagues companies when trying to develop a
teamwork environment. It becomes a problem because, in reality, individuality is rewarded more
often than team participation.
Furthermore, a survey carried out by Vodafone UK and YouGov suggests workers feel that some
organized team building activities can be a waste of time and embarrassing. Majority of the
employees feel like team building activities such as being folded and lead by colleagues are an
ineffective method to build a successful team but however social events such social events such
as going out for a drink or a meal, followed by volunteering and charity work are much more
effective in developing a team.
The manager of Vodafone Company further stated that companies should instead focus on
providing a more supportive atmosphere at work, enabling better team communication and
offering tools for flexible working as their top three priorities.

BM BB-5303 Leadership 7
Leading Successful Work Teams/Team Leadership & Teambuilding
Yong Min Hui 14M5206 and Nurul Afiqah Hj Nor Amin 14M5219
Recommendations

Figure 2: level of team work

According to figure 2, high level of communication, integration and commitment towards

teamwork and their utmost involvement is crucial in order to execute plan of work whether if its
a major or minor plan. Recommendations by (Tarricone & Luca, 2002) stated that in order to
build a highly effective team;
1) Leader is to develop strategy and share goals with its team to increase their commitment
because successful teams are engaged and aim to achieve at the highest level
2)

Team members need to create an environment where together they can contribute far
more than as individuals. A positive interdependent team environment brings out the best
in each person enabling the team to achieve their goals at a far superior level.

3) Fostering a caring work environment is important for leaders to create as the ability to
discuss issues openly with team members will resulting in the ability of team members to
work effectively.
4) Regularly celebrate team members accomplishments

BM BB-5303 Leadership 8
Leading Successful Work Teams/Team Leadership & Teambuilding
Yong Min Hui 14M5206 and Nurul Afiqah Hj Nor Amin 14M5219

5) Leader is to create appropriate team composition in the creation of a successful team.

This can be done by developing staffing procedures in terms of human resource
management such as recruiting, training, organizing and replacing.
6) Effective leadership is essential for team success including shared decision-making and
problem solving. Team members need to be accountable for their contribution to the team
and the project by defining a procedure for members to make decision and solve
problems.
7) Define a clear and consistent mechanism for better communication among team members
for open communication and positive feedback. For example, by creating reports to
update the company on teams progress and distribute reports to the appropriate
personnel.
Conclusion
Many researchers have proved that leading successful work teams is crucial in an organization as
it has significant impact to the team performance and the organization as a whole. Further
research can also examine more on the importance of the roles of leaders in building successful
teams that cover all aspects in an organization.

Works Cited
Erdem, Ferda, Ozen and Janset. (2003). Cognitive and Affective Dimensions of Trust in Developing Team
Performance. Team Performance Management: An International Journal, 9(5.6) 131-135.
F.kipp, m., & ann kipp, m. (2000). team performance &managment. of team and team building , 138-139.
Medinschi, S., & Colta, S. A. The Importance of Team Building for the Success of A project. Timisoara:
Univerity of Timisoara.

BM BB-5303 Leadership 9
Leading Successful Work Teams/Team Leadership & Teambuilding
Yong Min Hui 14M5206 and Nurul Afiqah Hj Nor Amin 14M5219
Munir, Y., Malik, M. E., Ejaz, F., Alam, A., & Abbas, A. (Nov 2012). Cross Sectional Examination of
Team Performance and Impact of Organizational Change on Team Building. Far East Journal of
Psychology and Business , 9 (2), 48-56.
Peter Moxon, Building a Better Team (Aldershot, England: Gower Publishing Company, 1993), 10206,
133-34; Glenn Parker, Team Players and Teamwork (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996), 1929; Thomas
Quick,Successful Team Building (New York: AMACOM, 1992), 4-5.
Sosik, J.J., Avolio, B.J., & Kahai, S.S. (1997). Effects of leadership style and anonymity on group potency
and effectiveness in a group decision support system environment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82 (1),
89-103.
Tarricone, P., & Luca, J. (2002). Successful teamwork: A case study. HERDSA , 640-646.
Rupar, B., & Rupar, M. (2009). Importance of Team Work for Non Profit Organizations. Retrieved March
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2015,

from

Society

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Social

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Systems:

tech.ac.jp/PDF/PUBLIC_MANAGEMENT/SESSION_C4/pms_09_Rupar.pdf

http://management.kochi-