Groups and Teams

ABSTRACT

Realizing that a group can become a high performance team is important. Accomplishing this goal is invaluable, advantageous and profitable. Once able to operate from a group to the high performing team is a great step into preparation into the big business world. Leaders and members must also realize not only how to accomplish this but that some problems will and can arise from different demographic characteristics and cultural diversity. That is if one is in such a group, which the probability would be quite high.

It is important that members of a group be knowledgeable and skillful in their positions, the degree to which those members can work harmoniously and cooperatively together is equally important and will form into a high performance team. Effective team management plays a high role in building high performance teams. It should always be a question as to what management can do to actively promote successful work teams.

Skills and knowledge possessed by every member is also important for a team to become high performance. Although it is among the most important factors, however, it must be coupled with a good working relationship with every team member and good collaboration with every team member. The members who possess the good skills and wide knowledge will be a useful resource to the team if that team member can share their strengths with the other team members and vice versa. It is usually misconstrued that having skillful and intelligent team members is already enough to make a team work right. This kind of thinking is the reason why most teams, despite all of those competent members they have, fail to achieve their goals. A team should establish one common goal, not to think that way and develop a good working relationship with each member. (retrieved from: http://www.strictlysuccess.com, August 18, 2005) This can be done by self awareness exercises, like the DISC assessment and other assessments or any other kind of self awareness exercises regarding communication style differences. Then these factors and important pieces of information should be taken into full consideration before the actual project is begun. These exercise or assessments can be great ice breakers and mark the difference between a group of individuals merely assigned to a team, as opposed to functioning as a team. Aside from team members realizing to not simply assume they are the “norm” but to also ask themselves, who am I and how do I communicate the best, then this will help them and others to understand their uniqueness.

Diversity in culture and demographic characteristics can be a negative impact or be one of the team's greatest strengths, depending on how the team as a whole functions and applies these different “routes to success”. A group can become a high performing team by understanding how cultural and demographic differences influence group behavior. The groups must realize that they can benefit from their diversity to their advantage and into a high performance team.

“When differences are regarded as valued resources, as in a truly inclusive

environment, individual and group differences no longer need to be suppressed… An

inclusive organization culture enables contributions from a broader range of styles,

perspectives and skills, providing a greater range of available routes to success.”

Miller, 1998

Once people can mesh well into a great high-performance team, they will fit right into the business world. As today's extremely competitive and ever changing, business world is not meant for the slow growing or for the unprepared. It is now the goal of every organization to create a high performance organization. The high performance business is the one that can create a balance between performance, quality, customer relations and profitability. High performance organizations need high performance team savvy employees. Why is this? It is because; high performance teams deliver results and deliver them faster.

Some ways demographic and cultural diversity