Building and Managing Collaborative Teams



Building and Managing Collaborative Teams

This assignment contains answers to the three prime questions related to the case study 'Two Poorly Functioning Teams' by Borkman (1996). The following questions were answered after a thorough review of the case and other prescribed reading material. These are as follows:

Q1. Enlist the multiple factors that caused the poor functioning of each group.

The factors behind the poor functioning of both the teams are stated as follows:

Team A

Four of the seven members of the team were responsible for completing the assigned tasks and performing consistently throughout the semester. Along with, a differing attitude existed amongst the remaining four members of the team regarding the team's leadership. When interviewed, the members shared that either there were too many leaders in the group, which had led to a problematic leadership.

In addition, there also existed confusion amongst the team members with respect to how they were supposed to communicate and interact with one another. Where few members shared that they weren't sure if they had to communicate with the other members through internet only. Despite this in-person meetings were organized sporadically. One of the members also stated that she happened to have missed the initial meetings of the team because of different schedule, but despite that she complained about those members who attended these meetings, not informing the decisions and discussion that took place in them. This ultimately contributed towards her oblivion regarding the team's activities and decisions. The researcher also observed that the main reason for the team's failure was their inability to adopt discussion tool as their basic means of communication. This then would have become part of their norming activity, which according to Blair (n.d) is a stage where the group members are comfortable enough with another to openly share their opinions and concerns.

Moreover, other major factors contributing to the team's poor performance were overall lack of commitment and open conflict amongst the team members. As well as few members being too nice with others in order to not offend other members. The latter ended up in causing more distress amongst the group. Although, it is praiseworthy to state that despite such open friction amongst the group, the team remained committed to submitting their tasks on deadline.

Team B

The main issue with this team remained its lack of serious attitude, where till after a few weeks of being grouped, all of the members hadn't coordinated to meet or discuss about their project. This was observed when after a month of the tasks being handed out that on the initiative of one team member a face-to-face meeting was organized. The leadership of the team was assumed voluntarily by a member without any formal voting or discussion. This is coupled with undecided norms being established by the group, which ultimately resulted in inequitable division of work amongst the members causing dissatisfaction amongst many.

Conversely, two of the group members identified procrastination to be the main cause of friction amongst their ...