PERSONAL AND TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

Personal and Team Effectiveness

Personal and Team Effectiveness

Introduction

Teamwork is the dynamic, simultaneous, and recursive enactment of behavioural, attitudinal, and cognitive mechanisms (in the form of team processes) that affect moment-to-moment actions and performance outcomes. Teamwork, then, is a set of interrelated, adaptable, and flexible cognitions, behaviours, and attitudes needed to achieve desired team goals. One can argue that teams “think,” “do,” and “feel” as they perform and execute their interdependent tasks. These cognitions, behaviours, and attitudes represent the team-level competencies (i.e., the knowledge, skills, and attitudes, or KSAs) that members need in order to execute effective team functions and achieve performance greater than that predicted by the combined efforts of the individual team members.

To be clear, it is useful to think of competencies within a team as belonging to one of two types: teamwork and task work. Task work competencies are KSAs used to accomplish individual task performance the application of these skills does not require interdependent interaction within the team. Teamwork competencies, in contrast, are the KSAs necessary for members to function within an interdependent team. They occur only at the team level. Therefore, team members must possess not only individual-level expertise relevant to their own individual tasks but also expertise in the social-cognitive dynamics of teamwork. Teamwork is the process of enacting these teamwork competencies.

What is team performance? Team performance is a multilevel process that arises as team members enact their individual behaviours and individual and team-level teamwork processes. Team performance can be contrasted with the definition of teamwork provided above, which focused on the enactment of teamwork processes alone (Teamwork key part of heart failure initiative, 2011). Therefore, teamwork is nested within team performance. Team performance is the combination of both individual performance and teamwork processes.

What is team effectiveness? Team effectiveness is an evaluation of the outcomes of team performance relative to some criteria. It is a judgment of how well the results of performance meet some set of relatively objective measures (e.g., metrics of productivity) or subjective standards (e.g., supervisor or observer ratings) (Dickmeyer & Humphreys, 1984). These standards, to be meaningful, should be aligned with the goals of the team and organization.

The Need for Effective Team Management

The need for effective teamwork has become a requirement in business. Workgroups that function as teams have evolved as part of the “total quality management” concept. The evolution of teamwork within management systems was initiated with the belief that employees will be most productive when they identify with the success of an organization, and a small group will have more perceived success while fitting into a larger-scale organization (Gevers, van Erven, de Jonge, Maas & de Jong 2010). Thus, managers must be trained to take the role of a coach or facilitator and set goals for the work teams to achieve. Establishing the expectation of effective teamwork and supporting team members should increase the rate of goal attainment.

Many organizations attempt to develop their work teams in the same manner as sports ...