Amitabh Sharma, Features Coordinator
Imagine a scenario where an important online sales-pitch presentation with a client could not transpire as the Internet connection in the office had been disconnected for an upgrade. What followed would be far from pleasant and would have taken some amount of firefighting to control the situation.
Lack of communication or failure as a team ... "this is a classic instance of how things go wrong," says Ashish Jhingran, director of sales, marketing and operations, Indusa Global. "It definitely indicates an instance of failure for the organisation as a team."
"For once," Jhingran explains, "the two department heads overlooked their responsibilities towards achieving a common goal and acted independently, which created the unpleasant situation."
What is a team?
In simple terms, a team would be a collection of people with different but complementary skills, working in tandem towards achievement of a common goal. "Be it a management team in a company, a project team in a department or a sports team in a stadium, the essentials remain the same," says Jhingran, who has 18 years experience of managing teams in different capacities. " It is a collection of people, different but complementary skills, working together and a common goal," he further explains.
The frequency, speed and flawlessness with which the team achieves its target define it to be a successful or an unsuccessful team.
Essentials of a good Team
There are several factors that go to making a team run like a well-oiled machine. Jhingran lists some key components that constitute towards making a successful team.
Common objective: The first and foremost requirement for creation, and existence, of a team is that of an objective that needs to be achieved. The objective is the reason for the team to be together. It is also necessary that the objective is well defined and clearly understood by every team member. Any ambiguity in understanding the objective will lead to misinterpretations, misunderstandings and hamper the team's functioning.
Well-defined process and roles: Not only does the objective have to be clearly understood, but each member of the team must also understand the process that the team will put in place to achieve the objective, as well as the role he or she has to play in doing so. The rules and regulations, the dos and the don'ts, have to be set and understood by one and all in no uncertain terms.
Capable leadership: Being a group of people with different skills and personalities, it is essential to have a team leader who can help in coordinating the team. The leader will need to be extremely efficient in understanding the goal to be reached, the process to be followed and also extremely effective in communicating with the members, individually and collectively. It is absolutely critical for the leader to be accepted as one by the team as a whole.
Free communication channels: For the team to succeed, it is imperative to establish and follow unblocked communication channels. Each member of the team should have the liberty of putting forth his opinion. The opinion needs to be heard and valued and suitably accepted or discarded with valid justification. Here, the team leader plays the important role of motivator in order to allow these open channels to function and make sure that any opinion or thought which comes from any member is judged and acted upon in a just manner.
Trust: Trust between the leader and the members, and also among the members, is absolutely necessary for the team to succeed in its tasks. Any element of mistrust has the potential to derail the entire team from its track to achieve its goals.
Feedback: This is the most critical element for any team's success. Once the process has been set rolling and the team has started functioning as an entity, it is imperative for the leader to continuously keep control on the activities of the team and monitor the progress being made at frequent intervals. There should be a continuous flow of information between the members and the leader. This feedback is necessary for reviewing the status of the task done so far, problems and concerns that might have cropped up unassumingly or even a word of appreciation from the leader for an individual member or the team as a whole.
Identifying and addressing problems
Every team is prone to problems which need to be identified and dealt with in the very early stages. The problems could be work related, like the quality of work that is being performed or time schedules going haywire; these which are effected by factors such as competencies of the workers or external factors, like the availability of material resources. "These problems need to be identified and resolved by the team as a whole," says Jhingran.
Given the nature of a team, the majority of the problems are personality led, like a clash of two similar personalities, domination by a few members, inadequate or no contribution by a few members, group formation by a few members, to name a few. "In any case, the role of the team leader is critical," Jhingran says, "he has to play an extremely positive and proactive role." The leader should be able to understand the personalities in his team so as to be able to tackle each individual member accordingly, when the need arises.
Jhingran says that it is imperative to have a person with high emotional intelligence and excellent communication skills as the team leader. "These are the only two tools that are needed to tackle these problems," he says.
The team leader should know 'what', 'when', 'where' and 'how' to communicate with the various personalities he or she is dealing with. The ability of the leader to tackle and resolve these problems largely determines the success or failure of the team in achieving its objectives.
amitabh.sharma@gleanerjm.com
