6. TEAM BUILDING AND DEVELOPMENT

As a result of studying this material, you will learn:

–why it was necessary to develop a team-building method;

–the requirements for team members;

–stages in the development of a team;

–the rules of teamwork that are universal;

–how to organise and set up a remote team;

–how to increase the effectiveness of a remote team;

–work activity of a modern person includes 12 motivators on three levels: physiological, social, and psychological;

–the physiological level includes two motivators: material rewards and conformal working conditions. These motivators are life support conditions;

–the social level includes six motivators: social contacts, relationships, power and influence, interesting and rewarding work, recognition and the desire to achieve;

–the psychological level includes four motivators: structuring, desire for change, creativity, self-improvement.

Keywords: team-building method, remote team, KPIs motive, motivator.

Note: the world “team” is widely used in ordinary human life. A team as an association of people to achieve a goal has been known for a long time. Leadership teams are the most common. In management, experiences in creating democratic and self-organising teams have been studied and disseminated.

This lecture focuses on project-type teams, which began to emerge at the end of the twentieth century.

6.1.Team-building method

The reasons and conditions for setting up a team. The team-building method emerged at the end of the 1980s. It originated from two areas of practice-oriented knowledge: quality management and employee involvement. The purpose of using this method is to quickly improve the efficiency and quality of the organisation.

The team-building method was designed to bring people together with a sense of trust in order to improve performance and quality in certain situations. These situations arise when the overall performance of a team is directly related to the performance of each team member.

Not every situation or job involves the use of a team.

The need to create a team arises only in a certain case. This case is the presence of complex tasks. What is meant by this?

A complex task is:

–vagueness of the task content and lack of necessary components to solve it;

–lack of clear intermediate goals and objectives;

–the possibility of multiple solutions and the difficulty of predicting the consequences of a solution. Organisations that prefer to use the results of teamwork place serious demands on team members.

These demands are so high that staff is recruited from all over the world. Multinational teams are created. Employers demand a high level of professionalism and a wide range of general and vocational training. Employers do not want to waste time on retraining and additional training of personnel. These are the demands they place on the global education system. The professional communities are developing uniform professional requirements (competences). Educational institutions are building the required competences into the learning process. Over the last decades intensive efforts have

been made to harmonise and recognise the educational credentials of some countries with others.

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However, compliance with professional requirements proves to be insufficient. Disagreements and conflicts inevitably arise for a variety of non-professional reasons. Such disagreements reduce the pace and effectiveness of work. Deadlines are not met. Employers lose highly qualified professionals.

The universal competences have been developed and adopted by all participants in the common European educational space. A number of Asian countries, as well as Canada and Australia, joined later. One of the universal competences, as you know, is the ability to work in a team.

Solving problems on a global, worldwide level does not always help in individual specific cases. Teams continue to vary in their effectiveness.

Researchers and practitioners in management, psychology, sociology have conducted numerous studies. The aim of the research is to find differences between highly effective and ineffective teams; to understand: why in one team people work as a unit, in another team people can’t get down to work because of disagreements and conflicts.

Requirements for the psychological culture of team members have been developed.

What is meant by psychological culture? Psychological culture in this case implies the presence of a range of well-learned and practiced skills. Let us list the main skills.

Presence of the skill of working in joint activity is increasingly difficult for young people today to acquire. Learning activities are individual work. The competence-based approach adopted in the education system requires students to be involved in collaborative activities, participating in different kinds of projects. The organisation of extracurricular activities in universities also takes this requirement into account.

Self-management and management skills: planning, organisation, logistics, meetings, thinking through the process.

Problem-solving skills: analyse a problem situation, formulate a problem, translate a problem into a problem, find a solution to a problem.

Self-presentation and presentation skills.

One of the significant findings of research into the effectiveness of different teams has been the work of the English psychologist M.K. Belbin. He found that highly effective teams include people of all psychological types. This ensures that each stage of work is done well. Some people are known to be better at one type of work than others. In a team, people do what they know how to do with ease and quality. Some team members develop concepts and approaches (theorist), some successfully implement the most improbable ideas (doer), some provide the team with resources (resource researcher), etc.

6.2. Team characteristic

So, what is a team? A team is a small group of people (6–12). The members of a team complement and replace each other in the course of achieving the team’s goal.

A team is a group of people who are self-centred. The team members do what they are interested in. At first glance, such a characterisation is discouraging to those who are used to working in a team, how is it “working for themselves?”. It is well known that people work best for themselves, for what they are interested in. They get involved in team work because they are interested and because it is easier for them to achieve their own goals in a team. Matching the goals of the team and the goals of the team members is a prerequisite. Note: the goals of different team members may be very different. Some want to realise their idea, some want to establish new and useful contacts, some want to develop their organisational skills.

Researchers have made another very important discovery: the team has to be specially developed. A team is an artificial entity. If you gather a small group and allow it to develop naturally, there will be no team. It is like with the vegetable garden. You plant the plants you want and forget about it. The weeds will grow, the cultivated plants will not.

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6.3. Team development

Stages of team development

Teams go through a series of stages in their development. These stages should not be considered rigidly. However, the sequence of changes in the team itself is so clear that it makes it possible to identify the individual stages.

Once again, the team is formed consciously and purposefully. The process of developing the team itself does not lead to a top-quality team.

Formation is the first stage. The team is recruited as a working group. At this point, there is no difference objectively or subjectively to a normal working group. People work side by side rather than together. Everyone does their own work. The overall result of the work is equal to the sum of the work done by the individual participants: “1 + 1 = 2”.

The members of the working group start looking at each other. At this point, there is a clear surplus of energy, an over-exuberance, a heightened enthusiasm. People are eager and ready to start working intensively. They already call themselves a team. But there is still a long way to go to become a full-fledged team. A team is built on trust in each other, and trust takes time. The process of building trust generates risk. Trust is the result of mental activity. A person must be intelligent, have a good understanding of people, and be capable of reflection in order to trust. People gathered will have to overcome internal contradictions and doubts.

If people are left to themselves, they begin to group together in small groups based on sympathies, interests not related to the professional sphere.

The role of the leader at this stage is crucial. He or she should introduce people to one another, clarify objectives and procedures which are relevant to the actions of the team. Roles and responsibilities should be allocated.

The organisational part of the work during the formation phase always takes a long time. Team members receive objectives in general terms. Such goals need to be made concrete and discussed. The team members give their opinion on how they understand the overall goal and what tasks need to be done in order to realise this goal. This is one of the most critical moments. It is quickly discovered that everyone understands the overall goal in his or her own way. Parallel to the public discussion, team members mentally relate the goal to their personal goals and expectations.

The working group gradually moves to pseudo-team status. The productivity of a pseudo-team tends to decrease. There are usually two reasons: ambiguity of goals and failure to manage interpersonal interactions. These reasons “move” the team building process to the next stage.

Burbling is the second stage. This is a period of intrapersonal and intragroup conflict. Conflict is an inevitable and necessary condition. If the leader tries to suppress the conflict, it leads to latent conflict. Open conflict is necessary. Hidden conflict is dangerous. It will be an obstacle to the development of the team and a new leader may emerge.

The conflict may show some aggression towards each other. People will be stressed. This is all very unpleasant.

It is considered appropriate at this stage to invite conflict management practitioners. They are able to provide an open exchange of views in which all points of view are allowed. They are able to steer the development of the conflict in the right direction, to focus on the important aspects. This is an emotionally intense phase. If it is led by specialists, the conflict is usually over quickly. However, the team members themselves come out of the intra-group conflict in different ways. Some will refuse to work in the team, some will try to prolong the conflict and rekindle it. At this point, there is a distribution of roles within the group. This distribution of roles may not be the same as that suggested by the leader in the first stage.

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The status of the team is changing. It is now a potential team.

Discussion and conflict inevitably lead to the conclusion: all people are different and need to agree somehow to do the same thing together. This requires rules. No community has ever been without rules, written or unwritten. Groups elaborate their own norms and rules.

Normalisation is the third stage. This stage, like the previous one, is emotionally charged. After all, people can adhere to a variety of rules. It is sometimes impossible to agree on general rules. Transferring the rules of the outside world mechanically to the group is not productive, and neither is transferring the group norms to real life.

The rules of team communication

Each group develops its own rules, but there are rules that are universal. It is desirable that these rules end up in the arsenal of group rules.

Rule one: “Here and now”.

This rule directs group members to discuss what is happening in the present moment. Focusing on the present promotes reflection and self-reflection skills.

Rule Two: “Sincerity and openness”.

The more honest and frank the judgment, the more successful the group as a whole is. However, it should be remembered that people have great difficulty in mastering this rule, because in real life it can bring serious problems for the individual.

Rule three: “I” (it’s me).

It is customary in a collective to use the word “we”: “We think...”. The “We” rule is synonymous with collective responsibility, in other words the absence of personal responsibility. The “I” rule is a claim to personal responsibility. The person says: “I don’t understand”, “I believe”, “I think”.

Rule four: “Activity”.

Members of the group have to make it a rule to be active, i.e., to actually participate in the discussion, the decision-making, the reflection.

Experience shows that time spent on forming common norms and rules pays off in a big way. Finally, it is time for a real team.

Functioning is the fourth stage. Team members consolidate, become a community. A value-based unity becomes the main obstacle to conflict. A good psychological climate is created, everyone is focused on work, and the energy is directed towards achieving high results.

The manager’s job at this stage: to evaluate the effectiveness of the team as a whole and of the individuals in particular. This is necessary for remuneration. Actions of the manager: approval, listening to useful comments, reducing the number of instructions.

Labour productivity increases markedly: “1 + 1 = 3”. In a highly efficient team, labour productivity reaches incredible heights: “1 + 1 + 1 = 9”.

Change (parting) is the fifth final stage. Sooner or later, the work for which the team was created comes to an end. This happens when the team is at the peak of its cohesion, effectiveness.

Team members begin to feel regret, to think about the way forward. Once again, a situation of uncertainty emerges. Whether a new task will be set for the team and, if so, whether they will be able to cope with it. Some begin to look for a job elsewhere.

The job of the manager at this stage is to support people emotionally and to encourage team members to keep in touch with each other even when the job is at its final stretch.

You have noticed that the manager’s role in working with team members changes each time the team development stages change. The manager’s role also changes depending on the content of the work itself.

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