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.

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.

...
Wikipedia