The Team Performance Curve

If you order your cheap essays from our custom writing service you will receive a perfectly written assignment on The Team Performance Curve. What we need from you is to provide us with your detailed paper instructions for our experienced writers to follow all of your specific writing requirements. Specify your order details, state the exact number of pages required and our custom writing professionals will deliver the best quality The Team Performance Curve paper right on time.

Our staff of freelance writers includes over 120 experts proficient in The Team Performance Curve, therefore you can rest assured that your assignment will be handled by only top rated specialists. Order your The Team Performance Curve paper at affordable prices with cheap essay writing service!

The Team Performance Curve traces the development of a team from the beginning stage of Working Group through the ultimate goal of becoming a High-Performance Team. Team effectiveness increases as you move anywhere along the curve, but the performance impact may decrease if the group becomes a Pseudo-team before making it to the Potential team stage. Moving along the curve and becoming more effective and better-performing involves taking risks, dealing with problems and concerns, patience, time, and commitment.

Working Group

The first key point on the Team Performance Curve is a Working Group A group for which there is no significant incremental performance need or opportunity that would require it to become a team. It is comprised of a number of workers who pursue no collective, time-oriented goal. Usually members interact only to share information, methods, and practices and each member performs in his or her area of specialization and responsibility. There is often very little room for conflict, no set of goals, and no mutual accountability. ...Working groups rely on the sum of individual bests for their performance. They pursue no collective work products requiring joint effort.

An example of a Working Group is the members of an administrative staff whose tasks include answering phones, filing, billing, and scheduling appointments. They are all working as part of the same group, but have no common, time-oriented and measurable goal to attain. They work together to maintain a certain level of acceptable performance, but are not collaborating towards achieving a set goal.Cheap Custom Essays on The Team Performance Curve

Pseudo-team

A working group may turn in to a Pseudo-team on their quest to becoming a Real or High-performing team. A pseudo team is not actually a team, even though it may "go through the motions" and consider itself to be one. A pseudo team is a group for which "there could be a significant incremental performance need or opportunity," but it has not focused on collective performance and is not making much of an attempt to achieve it. Pseudo teams show little to no interest in creating clear, concise goals and their downfall roots from failing to shape a common purpose. These "teams" are the weakest of all teams in regards to performance impact and productivity. As stated in The Wisdom of Teams, by Jon Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith, "the sum of the whole is less than the potential of the individual parts." In other words, the team members are stronger individually than the outcome or end results that are produced.

Almost always, pseudo teams "contribute less to a company's performance needs than a working group and this is because their interactions detract from each member's individual performance without yielding any joint benefits." This type of team would only ever become a potential team if they were to define specific goals, be committed to a common purpose, and were then willing to make valuable contributions based on this premise. A pseudo team only beholds the potential of becoming a real team when its members execute the essential principals and standards of any high performing team member.

Potential Team

A potential team is a group for which there is a significant, incremental performance need, and that really is trying to improve its performance impact. They typically require more clarity about the purpose, and goals and more discipline in devising a common working approach. A potential team has not yet established a group accountability. They are very common in organizations, but are not good enough. The steepest performance increases occur between this stage and becoming a Real Team. Any movement up the slope is worth pursuing.

There should be an effort for working groups to jump straight to becoming a potential team, skipping pseudo-team altogether to remain at least as productive as they were. A group or pseudo-team only becomes a potential team if they make a good, honest effort to improve their performance impact. Those who take the risks to climb the curve will inevitably confront obstacles, some of which will be overcome and others will not be. Potential teams that get stuck should stick to the team norms and keep pushing for performance. Performance in itself has the potential to save a struggling potential team by illustrating that the team can and will work, therefore giving new motivation.

Real Team

Next we move to "real" teams. In order for a group of people working together to be considered as a real team, there are five basic elements that need to be met. The aspects needed concern the number of people working together, their complimentary skills, commitment to performance goals and a common purpose, commitment to a common approach and mutual responsibility and accountability. Only once these five aspects are met can a group of workers be labeled as a real team.

There seems to be an agreed upon notion that teams with fewer members perform better. The teams that we have read about in text or learned about during class time indicate that anywhere from two to twenty members perform best when put together. Groups of larger numbers tend to break into smaller sub-teams within a team, which leads to lack of communication and a break down of team values and structure. Larger teams face problems such as the inability to construct clear goals or clear purposes. They tend to revert to crowd behavior and have trouble finding common ground throughout their many differences. Finding adequate space for larger numbers of people also presents a problem. Many companies do not have enough unused space to house a team of fifty although finding a place to set up work space for twelve may be more reasonable.

Complimentary skills that are brought to a team are also as important as the number of people working as a team. Within the aspect of skills we can further break it down by looking at the types of skills needed. Technical, problem-solving and interpersonal skills are the three types that need to be identified and brought to each real team.

Technical skills include any formal training or specialty that team members bring to a group. An example of this could be a surgical team performing a heart transplant. This team would need to consist of medical specialists ranging from nurses to various doctors. Having a school teacher in this team would obviously not be necessary and would not contribute to a successful team operation. It is very important to match skilled team members to correct teams in order for that team to reach optimal performance.

Decision-making and problem-solving skills are often developed while working together as a team. Many members bring the basis of these skills to a group stemming from prior experiences but given the fact that each team is unique, skills in these areas are usually readjusted to suit a specific situation. Working through problems that a team faces and making decisions that affect the team and its members have to be developed when a problem is faced is essential.

Interpersonal skills like decision-making and problem-solving skills are also developed once a team is formed. Team members will bring interpersonal skills that they have developed over their lifetimes to a group, such as how to handle conflict and communication but, each team member brings individualism and with that comes the need to adjust interpersonal skills in order to compliment other team members in a way that is productive to the overall effort that is being made.

Performance goals and commitment to a common purpose is an important part of becoming a real team. This aspect originates in management. Teams are put together in order for a goal to be met. Whether it be developing a new product line or performing a surgical operation, the task at hand is always clearly defined prior to the beginnings of team work. Although this goal or opportunity is predetermined, there must be an agreement between team members that they are all equally able and willing to work towards it successfully.

As stated earlier it is very important to have a clearly defined purpose in order for a team to know what it is that they are working to complete. After this goal is defined, a team must then decide exactly how it is that they are going to accomplish it and reach success. It is not enough for a surgical team to have a goal of completing a heart transplant. They must also have a plan containing each step of the surgery, directions for each team member and a set of instructions for everyone in the group to follow. Without these instructions measuring success would be impossible and reaching a common goal would be difficult.

While working together each team member must also take responsibility for the team as a whole. Placing individual blame for failure or success weakens a team's ability to work as a group. Each member must know that all of their actions are a reflection of the real team and any problems that arise are a direct reflection of each and every group member. Going back to the surgical team, if the actual doctor operating happens to make and error and the transplant is a failure, it is the team that failed, not the one surgeon. Each member's actions must be considered as important as the next members. Without mutual accountability it is impossible for a group of people to work as a team, instead they are simply a group of individuals working together.

High-Performance Team

The last stage in the team performance curve is when a team would like to become is a high performance team. A high performance team meets all the conditions of real teams, and has members who are also deeply committed to one another's personal growth and success. That commitment usually transcends the team. The high performance team significantly outperforms all other like teams, and outperforms all reasonable expectations given its membership. (Becoming a Team. p.).

When looking at the ten attributes of high performing teams, we see that high performing teams have goals that are clear, well known and understood, and is supported by all members. Excellence is the only acceptable standard. Team members receive immediate feedback from their teammates on their progress. Each team member is provided with opportunities to fully participate in all team activities, using and developing skills and abilities. While team members can exercise self-initiative and make their own decisions on how they will perform, rewards are based on accomplishments. The team knows how to praise and recognize its accomplishments, and its members are committed to the success of one another and to the team. Everyone knows the plan, strategy and tactics to be used to achieve the goals and objectives. Rules and penalties are known in advance, are agreed to by everyone, and are considered fair, consistent and immediate. (O'Brien and Buono. Lessons from the Field.)

A high performance team is created to achieve challenging goals and solve complex problems set forth by a higher authority. This high performance team takes all its teammates and looks at their special skills and their strengths in order to achieve their goals. Within a high performance team, the members use and build upon each other strengths and knowledge to get to a place where an individual could not get to alone. (O'Brien, lecture notes).

One of the most important things a leader in a high performance team can do is encourage taking risks. Risk taking is what gets a team to the next level. It's about coming up with ideas that may seem outrageous, but the team can then use all their knowledge and work with that idea in order to come up with something great. This is how a high performance team will feed off each other. They use their skills and knowledge together to work as one. This is what will separate a real team from a high performance team. It's all in the team members and their interaction with one another.

The transition from a work group to a high performance team may be a fairly lengthy task, but in order to ensure maximum results and benefits from the team, everyone must be working as one towards the common goal set fourth by every member of the team. A high performance team must understand and consent to things such as desired outcomes, shared purposes, accountabilities, coordinated roles, efficiency and participation, quality of work, continuous improvement, credibility and trust, and have a core competence. (Chapter , Building effective teams and teamwork.)

Once a team has come to work together in such ways as listed above, they have achieved the title of a high performance team. Great things can happen to teams that work at this level. The rarity is finding members and people to lead such members to get to that desired level of performance. With the help and knowledge of everyone in the team, anything is possible and no task is too large or complex for a high performance team.

Works Cited

Katzenbach, J., & Smith, D. (00). The Wisdom of Teams, Creating the High-Performance Organization. New York. HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

Maxwell, J. (00). The 17 Essential Qualities of a Team Player, Becoming the Kind of Person Every Team Wants. Nashville, Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Maxwell, J. (00). The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork Workbook, Embrace Them and Empower Your Team. Nashville, Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Please note that this sample paper on The Team Performance Curve is for your review only. In order to eliminate any of the plagiarism issues, it is highly recommended that you do not use it for you own writing purposes. In case you experience difficulties with writing a well structured and accurately composed paper on The Team Performance Curve, we are here to assist you. Your cheap custom research papers on The Team Performance Curve will be written from scratch, so you do not have to worry about its originality.

Order your authentic assignment from cheap essay writing service and you will be amazed at how easy it is to complete a quality custom paper within the shortest time possible!