Team management

Team management is the ability of an individual or an organization to administer and coordinate a group of individuals to perform a task. Team management involves teamwork, communication, objective setting and performance appraisals. Moreover, team management is the capability to identify problems and resolve conflicts within a team. There are various methods and leadership styles a team manager can take to increase personnel productivity and build an effective team. Team management is the ability of an individual or an organization to administer and coordinate a group of individuals to perform a task. Team management involves teamwork, communication, objective setting and performance appraisals. Moreover, team management is the capability to identify problems and resolve conflicts within a team. There are various methods and leadership styles a team manager can take to increase personnel productivity and build an effective team. In any functional team, cohesion amongst team leaders and decision makers is vital. Cohesive leadership means that team leaders are acting together as a unit and making decisions as a leadership team instead of each branching off into their own work and operating individually. This will ensure that the team will be steered in one direction instead of multiple due to team leaders not being concise and consistent with their instructions. Cohesive leadership will require team leaders to have strong communication skills. There must be an effective channel of communication from the top to the bottom of the chain of command and vice versa. An effective channel of communication will allow messages to be transferred accurately without delay to the intended recipient, this will speed up decision making processes and the operations of the team. Furthermore, effective communication will increase the flexibility of an organisation and cause it to be less susceptible to changes in the external environment; as a faster decision making process will allow organisations a longer time period to adapt to the changes and execute contingency plans. When team members first come together they will all have different ideas, however the key to a successful team is the alignment of objectives within the team. It is essential that the team leader sets a common goal the entire team is willing to pursue. This way, all the team members will put in effort in order to attain the goal. If there is not a common goal, team members who disagree with the objective in hand will feel reluctant to utilise their full effort, leading to failure to achieve the goal. In other cases, team members might divert themselves to other tasks due to a lack of belief or interest in the goal. Poorly defined roles is often the biggest obstacle to a successful Team. If team members are unclear of what their role is, their contributions towards the team will be minimal, therefore it is the team leader's duty to outline the roles and responsibilities of each individual within the team and ensure that the team is working together as an integral unit. In a successful team, a team leader will first evaluate the mission of the team to understand what is needed to accomplish the task. Then, they will identify the strengths and weaknesses of their team members and assign roles accordingly. Lastly, they must ensure that all team members know what each other's responsibilities are to avoid confusion and to create an effective channel of communication. The method “Command and Control” as an approach to team management is based on the concept of military management. “Command and Control” was a commonly used system in the private sector during the 20th century. In this method, the team leader instructs their team members to complete a task and if they refuse, they will yell or punish them until they no longer refuse and comply with the instructions. The team leader has absolute authority and utilises an autocratic leadership style.There are considerable drawbacks to this team management method. Firstly, the team morale will be lowered due to team members being constantly belittled by the team leader at the slightest mistake; punishments will also lead to a lack of confidence in team members resulting in poor performance. Second, in modern organisations roles are often specialised, therefore managers will require the expertise of the employee, elevating the value of the employee. Implementing the “Command and Control” team management method will lead to a high rate of employee turnover. In addition, in large organisations managers don't have the time to provide instructions to all employees and continuously monitor them, this will impede an organisations performance as managers are not spending time on their core responsibilities. Due to the limitations and ineffectiveness of “Command and Control”, managers developed an alternative management strategy known as “Engage and Create”. In this method team members are encouraged to participate in discussions and contribute. Furthermore, they are advised to engage with other team members to build a stronger sense of teamwork and unity. This will lead to increased productivity and accountability of each team member, driving the team towards success. In the “Econ 101” method of team management, the team leader makes the baseline assumption that all team members are motivated by reward in the form of money, and that the best way to manage the team is to provide financial rewards for performance and issue punishments for failure. This method of team management uses material gains in the place of intrinsic motivation to drive team members. This is similar to Taylor's theory of Scientific Management where he claims the main form of motivation for employees is money. The main drawback of this method is that it does not take into account other forms of motivation besides money such as personal satisfaction and ambition. Moreover, by using reward and punishment as a method of team management it can cause demotivation as everyone is motivated by different factors and there is no one way to satisfy all team members, the negative effect is further compounded by punishment leading to demoralisation and lost of confidence.