Plan to Achieve Team Outcomes Content Guide

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Plan to achieve team outcomes: Content guide

Contents

Plan to achieve team outcomes: Content guide

Overview

Key terms

Why teams are important

Factors that contribute to team effectiveness

Common purpose, goals and objectives

Clear membership role and function

Mutual responsibility and accountability

Consultative approach

High level of participation

Acceptance of diversity

Cooperation

High level of trust

Team direction

Step 1: Obtain the organisation’s strategic plan

Step 2: Identify key stakeholders and their needs

Step 3: Identify the key result areas for your organisation

Step 4: Establish goals and objectives in consultation

Step 5: Establish realistic timeframes for goal achievement

Step 6: Allocate tasks, resources and accountabilities to team members

Step 7: Monitor and review performance

Communication skills for fostering consultation

Lead with a purpose

Empower to participate

Aim for consensus

Direct the process

More resources

Sample answers to ‘My workplace’ questions

Overview

How can you transform a group of people into a team? What do you, as the team leader, need to do to support them? This Content guide contains information and short activities to help you:

develop your team’s purpose, goals and objectives
to do this in consultation with your team members
and to support them in achieving the outcomes expected of them.

Key terms

Diversity

Your workplace is made up of lots of different types of people. Differences between people at work, such as in their age, gender, race, values, etc, creates diversity in the workplace.

Networking

To be influential inside or outside your organisation you need to be connected to other people and have access to information. Networking means using your connections or contacts to stay informed about what is happening inside or outside your organisation, and to convey information that you need passed on to others.

Empathy

Demonstrating understanding by seeing a situation from another’s point of view.

Consultation

Consultation means you outline the situation or problem to other people, and take their ideas or opinions into account before deciding what needs to be done.

Accountabilities

Areas in which members accept full responsibility for their actions.

Stakeholders

Stakeholders are the individuals or organisations that are involved in, or may be affected by, the work that your team does. These may include managers, external customers, a project sponsor, internal customers, contractors, suppliers, project team, external clients, government agencies and the public.

Strategic plan

A plan that describes the overall goals and objectives for the entire organisation.

Vision statement

An organisation's strategic plan usually includes a vision statement, which describes the values or beliefs of the organisation. Example: ‘Always looking for a better way to serve our community.’ Also see mission statement.

Mission statement

An organisation's strategic plan usually includes a mission statement, which describes the organisation's values and how it does business. Example: 'Through the provision of excellent customer service, environmental awareness and community responsiveness, we will be the region of choice for families living in regional NSW.' Also see vision statement.

Key result areas

Describes the main areas of accountability and responsibility of an organisation, department or job, eg to provide excellent customer service, to provide a healthy and safe work environment.

Goals

What you want to achieve. A goal should be measurable by quantity or quality, have a time frame for completion, and be achievable.

Objectives

Objectives are the smaller steps we need to take to achieve our goals.

Why teams are important

What is a team? People often compare workplace teams with sporting teams, but while this can be useful in coming to a definition, it is very simplistic. It is true that we see qualities in sports teams that would be desirable to have in our work teams, such as commitment to goals, cooperation, discipline and loyalty. However, there are also differences. To equate workplace teams within modern complex organisations, and their diverse and often unclear goals, with a sporting team would be misleading.

A group of people become a team when the members:

have a common purpose
have specific performance goals
cooperate to achieve the common purpose
are accountable to each other.

Back in the 1950s, management researchers reminded us that most people like to be treated like people rather than pieces of machinery on an assembly line. It was then that the move towards teams and team-building began.

A number of factors also contributed to this movement — better education for workers, greater access to information, competition, customer expectation and a greater understanding of human motivation. All of this led to the decentralisation of management and the growth of teams.

The focus on team processes accelerated in the 1970s following the success of the Japanese economy, which was based upon the work of teams.

We now recognise that teams:

improve productivity
bring democracy to the workplace
respond more rapidly to problems
encourage innovation
foster multi-skilling.

However, it is important to note that not all people or organisations are suited to the team approach. Not everyone is a team player — some people prefer to work in isolation or in pairs. And some jobs are not suitable for teams. In fact, if an organisation’s structure and its reward and recognition system does not support teams, then teams can have a negative impact.

In these cases, some of the negative aspects are:

productivity gains are not guaranteed
there can be problems with accountability
too high expectations can create stress in team members
multi-skilling is not always effective
there may be high levels of conflict due to poor leadership.

Factors that contribute to team effectiveness

Common purpose, goals and objectives

All team members need to believe that the team has a worthwhile purpose, and team members need to know what is expected of them.

The purpose of the team is the reason why the team is together in the first place. Goals describe what the team wants to achieve. Often a goal might be broken down into objectives that are shorter-term achievements and serve as clear measuring posts as the team progresses towards its ultimate goals.

Effective teams require goals that are clear, significant and embraced by all members.

Too many teams in organisations follow the design of Christopher Columbus.

When he set out, he did not know where he was going

When he arrived, he did not know where he was

When he got back, he did not know where he had been, and this was all done on public money.

A popular way to remember what should be in your goals and objectives is to use the SMARTT method — it stands for:

Specific and concise (the goal is not long-winded, that is, people can understand it)
Measurable (there's a way of knowing whether or not we've achieved the goal)
Achievable (the goal is do-able, that is, it's possible with the resources we have available)
Related (to the overall department and organisational goals, that is, the goal is part of a bigger picture)
Time-framed (we know when the final date for the goal is)
Trackable (we can easily monitor how we're going — daily, weekly or monthly)

For example:

All accidents or near misses need to be investigated within three working days and the incident or near miss is to be reported and documented according to organisational policy.

Read the following goal and state why it does not meet the SMARTT criteria:

Reduce defects in your work to a minimum

My workplace

1. Examine your team’s goals and assess them according to SMARTT criteria.

Answer:

It is critical that all members agree on the purpose, goals and objectives of the team, so it is vital that you, as team leader, consult everyone in the team and together you can reach a consensus.

Clear membership role and function

The team structure is important in effective teams. The success of a team depends on each member being competent in the technical aspects of the job, as well as having similar values and norms as everyone else on the team.

It would be difficult for someone to work in a team that prides itself on meeting high performance targets if they were not motivated to do the work within the time frames and to the same standard as the rest of the team.

Once you have agreed on the purpose, goals and objectives, it is your job, as team leader, to allocate tasks to the appropriate team members.

As team leader, you will need to:

have a clear understanding of team projects
understand the different skills and abilities of the team members
understand the members’ preferences
be able to identify skills gaps and cater for them
be able to effectively allocate tasks to members in a fair manner.

One way of approaching a project or job is to break it down into tasks, and then to use a human resource matrix to work out which are the best people to do particular tasks.

The resource capability matrix allows you to capture the skills of the current and proposed team members.

To complete a matrix:

Write the key SMARTT goal in the row labelled ‘Goal’.
List the names of your team members in the left hand ‘Team member’ column.
Label each capability column with one of the task skills required to deliver the goal.
Record the skills that each team member currently has, deciding on an appropriate rating (low proficiency, medium proficiency, high proficiency, excellent proficiency/can train others to do the job.

Here is an example of a team member capability matrix.

Table: Sample team member capability matrix

Goal: To organise a team meeting to establish organisational policies and procedures in line with the OHS committee’s recommendations, by the end of the financial year
Team member / Capability 1
Decision-making skills / Capability 2
Policy and procedure writing skills / Capability 3
Knowledge of OHS / Capability 4
Project management skills
A / + / ++++ / + / ++++
B / ++ / + / +++ / +++
C / + / ++++ / ++++ / +
D / ++++ / ++ / +++ / +++
E / +++ / +++ / ++++ / ++++

+ = Low proficiency/start training

++ = Medium proficiency/advanced stage of training

+++ = High proficiency/competent

++++ = Highly proficient/can train others to do the job

The resource capability matrix helps you, as team leader, to work out which are the best people to do certain aspects of the job.

For example, from the table above:

Person A is good at decision making but has a poor knowledge of OHS.
Person E, on the other hand, is highly proficient in OHS and project management.
Both person A and person E have strong skills in writing policies and procedures so between the two they might be able to complete the task required.

Mutual responsibility and accountability

Regardless of the structure of the team, it is necessary to make clear at the beginning the responsibilities and accountabilities of the team and its members. Usually you, the team leader, are accountable for the group’s decisions, actions and performance. If things go wrong, you are usually the one to suffer.

Yet, it is not good enough for team members to blame you — you need to make them aware that their actions also contribute to the team outcome.

If you manage your team well the members will develop the capacity to assume responsibility for their efforts. You can give them small problems or tasks before the larger and more complex tasks, so that they can enjoy the successes of the smaller projects before gradually building up to having greater responsibilities and accountabilities.

It is important that you make it clear to your team members that certain responsibilities are a shared commitment — this includes responsibility for task achievement, team morale and a range of other factors connected with the team’s operation.

My workplace

2. Look at the responsibilities and accountabilities of your team and decide whether your team members have a shared commitment to task achievement, team morale and other factors relating to the team’s operation.

Answer:

Consultative approach

It is important that you, as team leader, use a consultative approach as the first step to gaining team members’ input on decisions to be made within the team.

You should present the problem or tentative decision to the team for discussion and input of ideas. The team members’ opinions are considered openly before a decision is reached. You must keep an open mind and be able to tolerate dissenting views and suggestions. This approach is similar to a brainstorm where all ideas should be accepted without judgment.

Then, the team evaluates the ideas and a decision is made about the most appropriate course of action. As team leader, it is a good idea for you to seek consensus before making the ultimate decision. If the decision is acceptable to the team as a whole, then you will have a much higher rate of success in achieving your goals.

Sharing decision-making and giving your team an opportunity to have input increases the commitment of team members to the decision and helps them to accept change.

High level of participation

Participation is about commitment. Studies such as the Hawthorn experiment have shown that involvement increases productivity. In this experiment, researchers were trying to prove that working conditions, such as good lighting, had a direct effect on productivity. Instead, they found that productivity improved no matter what material change was made. So they deduced that people perform better when they feel cared for and when something is being done to help them.

Evidence also shows that people support what they help to create. If true participation is to be practised, you need to involve your team in both decision-making and problem definition. Keep in mind, however, that participation increases commitment (only) if the individual team members consider participation both legitimate and worthwhile.

The benefits of participation are:

better understanding of what needs to be done
involvement of team members
team cohesion
commitment to the task.

A participative leader:

is easily approached
is concerned about team morale
keeps members informed
consults
is considerate
supports people when they make mistakes
gives positive feedback for good performance
copes with change
resolves conflict.

Acceptance of diversity

As the workplace becomes more diverse, strategies for dealing with different age groups, sexes, cultures and abilities have become increasingly important.

Diversity is now considered a resource that an organisation can use to improve product design and move into niche markets. Different approaches to work and life, different language skills and cultural networks are being used to forge community and business relationships.

As a team leader, you will often need to manage a team with diverse team members. It’s your job to acknowledge the value of differences and the benefits that can follow from them by sharing ideas and experiences.

One of the main problems a team leader or supervisor faces is managing personalities and this is further complicated when people have different values and backgrounds. So it is important that you send a clear message to team members that harassment or bullying of any kind is unacceptable. Sometimes, it is useful to help the team to devise a code of behaviour in order to overcome some of the stereotypical responses to certain groups. Many organisations already have these in place. These workplace protocols are also supported by legislation on anti-discrimination and sexual harassment.

Cooperation

Cooperation is the very essence of teamwork. It means fitting in with others and supporting them. We have grown up in a very individualistic society so it is sometimes difficult to get people to cooperate, especially if the organisation has traditionally rewarded individuals rather than the team.

It is important that you provide the right conditions to foster cooperation within your team. You need to encourage team members to help one another for the mutual good, rather than fight against one another. If someone has too much work they may need help from other team members who are not so busy.

High level of trust

Trust lies at the heart of collaborative work methods. Trust is a difficult issue to address directly. It develops over time as a result of positive experiences and through deepening the level of understanding between team members. There are various actions that support or destroy trust in teams.

My workplace

3. Look at the following table and use it to assess your team on its ability to create a culture of trust.

Table: Checklist of trust behaviours

Behaviours that build trust / Behaviours that destroy trust
following through on something you agreed to
listening to others
respecting others’ right to have a different point of view
accepting ideas
tolerating differences
not criticising people
being open to feedback
offering help / letting people down
not listening to others
checking up on people
not keeping confidences
blaming
humiliating people in front of others
withholding praise
ignoring people
not providing people with feedback or necessary information
Answer: