Question

As a team member, what values do you adopt that may support or impede your team's function? Consider the values you contribute when you are on a team. How does consensus building (effectively or ineffectively) facilitate or impede team function?

Think of a scenario you (or someone you know) experienced as a member of an ineffective team. Address the following issues in your answer
How would you incorporate biblical principles to effectively facilitate team function?

Answer 1

Teamwork is when workers combine their individual skills in pursuit of a goal. Important teamwork skills in the workplace include helping and guiding, persuading, sharing openly and willingly, being an active participant, being flexible, and showing commitment.

Powerful ways to keep the members of your team motivated and giving their very best on the job.

1. Pay your people what they are worth

When you set your employees' salaries, be sure that their pay is consistent with what other companies in your industry and geographic area are paying. Remember: 26 percent of engaged employees say that they would leave their current job for just a 5 percent increase in pay. Don't lose great people because you're underpaying them.

2. Provide them with a pleasant place to work

Everyone wants to work in an office environment that is clean and stimulating, and that makes them feel good instead of bad. You don't have to spend a lot of money to make an office a more pleasant place to be.

3. Offer opportunities for self-development

The members of your team will be more valuable to your organization, and to themselves, when they have opportunities to learn new skills. Provide your team with the training they need to advance in their careers and to become knowledgeable about the latest technologies and industry news.

4. Foster collaboration within the team

The employees (approx 39 %) don't feel that their input is appreciated. Encourage the members of your team to fully participate by inviting their input and suggestions on how to do things better. Ask questions, listen to their answers, and, whenever possible, implement their solutions.

5. Encourage happiness

Happy employees are enthusiastic and positive members of the team, and their attitude is infectious. Keep an eye on whether or not your people are happy with their work, their employer, and you. If they're not, you can count on this unhappiness to spread.

6. Don't punish failure

We all make mistakes. It's part of being human. The key is to learn valuable lessons from those mistakes so we don't make them again. When members of your team make honest mistakes, don't punish them--instead, encourage them to try again.

7. Set clear goals

Sixty three percent of employees reported that they wasted time at work because they weren't aware of what work was a priority, and what wasn't. As a leader, it's our job to work with the members of your team to set clear goals. And once we do that, make sure everyone knows exactly what those goals are, what their relative priority is, and what the team's role is in reaching them.

8. Don't micromanage

No one likes a boss who is constantly looking over her shoulder and second-guessing her every decision. In fact, 38 percent of employees in one survey reported that they would rather take on unpleasant activities than sit next to a micromanaging boss. Provide our people with clear goals and then let them figure out the best way to achieve them.

9. Avoid useless meetings

Meetings can be an incredible waste of time, the average professional wastes 3.8 hours in unproductive meetings each and every week. Create an agenda for the meetings and distribute it in advance. Invite only the people who really need to attend, start the meeting on time, and then end it as quickly as you possibly can.

Steps to building a productive and effective team this year:
Step 1: Establish leadership.
Step 2: Establish relationships with each of your employees.
Step 3: Build relationships between your employees.
Step 4: Foster teamwork.
Step 5: Set ground rules for the team.

On the other hand, responsibilities are the specific tasks or duties that members are expected to complete as a function of their roles. They are the specific activities or obligations for which they are held accountable when they assume or are assigned to a role on a project or team.

When a team is performing at its best, we will usually find that each team member has clear responsibilities. Team role is "a tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way" and named nine such team roles that underlie team success.

It is important to think about some of the skills that will help us succeed in this different world. Here are nine ways you can contribute more effectively to make the projects you work on more successful, regardless of your specific role.

1. Understand the end goal. Since a project has a defined ending, it is important that each contributor to the effort knows the desired end result. Begin with the end in mind. This is clearly important to project team members. By understanding the desired result, you can make better individual decisions and reduce confusion and re-work.

2. Identify clear roles. Each person is an important piece in the overall project puzzle. Know your role and the roles of others. If you are a project leader, take the time to clarify these roles for everyone. If you aren't a leader, ask until you really understand how you can best contribute.

3. Collaborate. Project work is often fluid and free flowing. Once you understand your role and the roles of others you are in a position to collaborate with them more successfully. This collaboration isn't just a nice thing for you to do. It is imperative to the ultimate success of the project. Look for ways and be willing to collaborate.

4. Recognise interdependencies. The bigger the project, the more linked and interdependent are the people and the tasks. Certain steps need to be done before others can be completed. If you see only your small piece of the project, you may not realise how you finishing two days sooner might have a huge impact on several other things staying on track. Conversely if you fall two days behind on one of your tasks, the effects on the end results could be much longer delays. You aren't an island. Your work products, decisions and efforts affect many others. Recognise and work with the interdependencies between you and the others involved in the project.

5. Ask questions. Projects can be complex. Don't be afraid to ask questions to know more about any of the things mentioned above.

6. Communicate. Asking questions is communicating, but so is giving updates. Checking in with others. Co-ordinating schedules. If you are a project leader the importance of communication can't be overstated. If you are any team member other than the leader, communication is just as important. You can't leave it to the leader. Check in with others. Get their input. Find out when the pieces you will need will be completed. Update people on your progress. Communicate!

7. Break it down. Take the big project steps and break them down into definable tasks that you can get your hands around. By breaking the tasks down the work won't feel so daunting, you will find the interdependencies and you will be able to stay on track much more successfully. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Break down the overall project, and your individual steps into bite sized pieces.

8. Look at the past. If a version of this project has been done in the past, look for the lessons learned to improve your results this time. Think too about other projects you have been involved in. Even if the project was smaller or larger and the goals were very different, there are likely lessons you learned that you can apply - things you did well that you would want to repeat, and things you could have done better that you can correct on this project.

9. Look to the future. Take a little time to document the best practices and ideas that work for you during the project. Whether this is a formal task for everyone on the project, or just your own notes to help you to continuously improve, investing a little time now will make your contributions to all future projects more valuable and efficient.

Team members help each other succeed to accomplish the company's goals and provide their expertise on different projects and duties. Each team has specific roles and are typically structured in a functional way.

The skills which are needed to take on task-focused team roles include:

• Organising and Planning Skills. Being organised is essential to getting tasks done.
• Problem-Solving.
• Decision-Making.
• Communication Skills.
• Feedback Skills.
• Persuasion and Influencing Skills.
• Skills in Chairing Meetings.
• Conflict resolution.

A strategic leader can utilize decision-making teams as a powerful asset in successfully coping with the enviornoment. Such teams improve their decision making by using a process of consensus, a process useful when developing national security strategy, military strategy, or strategic planning in other public or private sectors. Knowing how to forge consensus for policy development and implementation is critical to successful management and leadership.

A high performing team can be a positive force in assessing strategic situations and formulating national policy.

LONG-TERM VISION. Effective strategic leaders employ a strategic team to help them in the visioning process. This team "sees" the strategic environment from various frames of reference, visualizing the effectiveness of proposed strategies over time. Teams help leaders to understand a complex situation and gain insight into how to achieve long-term objectives, allocate resources and integrate operational and tactical decisions into strategic plans.

TEAM BUILDING. Successful strategic leaders use their knowledge and skills to structure and lead high performing teams. Strategic teams that perform with unity of purpose contribute to the creation of strategic vision, develop long-range plans, implement strategy, access resources, and manage the implementation of national policy. Given the nature of the strategic environment and the complexity of both national and global issues, strategic leaders must use teams. They cannot do it alone.

CONSENSUS STYLE. Effective strategic leaders know how to get everyone involved in policy making and build consensus in the process. Within large complex organizations, whether public or private, consensus is the engine that sustains policy decisions. No strategic leader can succeed unless he or she can build such consensus. Thus, the search for consensus among peers, allies, and even competitors becomes a requirement for shared commitment to a national policy, and to corporate, business policy.

CHALLENGES TO DECISION MAKING TEAMS

Strategic decision makers regularly use teams to solve urgent problems such as in the drug wars where both civil and military assets, and federal and state resources are jointly employed. Most strategic-level decision-making teams exist for brief periods to resolve a major problem or to develop national policy and strategies to meet future challenges. While these teams carry great responsibilities, they are often "ad hoc" in nature.

A team leader has two overriding responsibilities: First, the leader is accountable for the effective functioning of the team. The leader monitors team performance and takes action to improve team effectiveness. Teams tend to perform best when responsibilities are shared and leadership tasks are distributed among members. Empowered team members are more likely to take responsibility for team success. Second, the leader is responsible for developing a stable leadership structure. Many decision-making teams tend to be more effective when the framework for leadership is clear. These teams tend to work more efficiently, have fewer interpersonal problems, and produce better outputs. Common observations of the strategic decision making process that contribute to the leadership challenge include:

• Diverse Team Membership. There are often several agencies involved, each having different terminology, goals, and priorities. Members may lack understanding of various agency roles and contributions to the issues. And, members have different perceptions about how the government works.
• Low Team Authority. The framework for getting things done is either ambiguous or nonexistent. Nobody is in charge of the process. The "lead agency" concept is confusing and agencies are designated without specific guidance. Standard military formats and structures are not useful.
• Lack of Policy Guidance. Strategic-level decision-making teams often are not given clearly defined policy guidance from above due to politics or concerns about media scrutiny. This often leads to involvement in undesirable arenas.
• Internal Politics. Bureaucratic bias impedes team performance. Team member mindsets emphasize agency goals and programs at the expense of overall government objectives. There is a strong preference for agency autonomy due to narrow budget constraints and rigid resource controls. A powerful bias against adapting and integrating operations precludes coordinated implementation.
• Lack of Integration. Sub-groups produce uncoordinated products because they work in parallel, even when dealing with sequential tasks. There is no coordination mechanism to integrate subgroup work while in development. In the end, the team staples together disconnected subgroup products for implementation.
• Organizational Inertia. There is strong inertia toward familiar situation assessments and courses of action. Members resist change or divergence from existing policies.
• Gaps and Ambiguities. In interagency teams, the economic component and the private sector often have no spokespersons. The resource dimension security is often lacking, and team assessments in this area are absent, weak, or wrong.

Given these difficulties, it should be no surprise that team meetings can be a journey into foreign territory for each team member. By adopting a "consensus style" of leadership, some of these problems can be eliminated.

CONSENSUS IN STRATEGIC DECISION MAKING

Decision making at the strategic level hinges on the ability of decision-making teams to forge consensus for action. No team can succeed unless it is strong enough to sustain decisions through bureaucratic politics, interest group resistance, media criticism, and implementation. Consensus acts as the "power plant" within the national security decision making system, or the private sector, to sustain policy decisions through implementation either in the government bureaucracy, or in the market place.