A521.6.3.RB_DellElceCamila

A521.6.3.RB – High Performance Teams

            There are many elements associated with high-performance teams.  Denning (2011) highlights six bullet points:

·      Carrying out their work with a passion.

·      Hastily adjusting their performance to the shifting needs of the organization.

·      Actively shaping the expectations of those who use their output-and then exceed the resulting expectations.

·      Interpersonal commitments that allow them to become nobler and more powerful.

·      Mutual concern for each other’s personal growth, which enables teams to develop interchangeable skills and greater flexibility.

·      Growing steadily stronger, eventually coming to know one another’s strengths and weaknesses, which enables them to anticipate each other’s next moves, and initiating appropriate responses as those moves are occurring.

            Teams focus on time constraints, predefined operational objectives, and subsequently are expected to have a product. The task requires a linkage between members who are pursuing a common goal. The team may be more formalized in its origin. The team focuses more on a transactional approach, necessitating goal clarity, effective leadership and followership, in addition to resources and needed support. Denning (2011) believes that these high performance teams impact the end users of their product by molding the potential expectations. He believes that high performing teams must be spontaneous, and flexible, since they must represent critical thinking. Monitoring output can result in adjustments along the way. Cohesiveness is what can make the team more successful. It is about learning more about the human resources that go into the thinking process. It is about encouraging self-reflective thinking that can be ultimately used to produce a more effective, and efficient, product.

            As the team functions together, Denning (2011) believes that the members grow in knowledge and strength. The process is then impacted, as the team and its members develop. In order for the team to function at the high performing level, there needs to be a sense of ownership in the outcome. When the members have a vested interest in the attaining the results, they have a reason to make it better. There is a sense of pride in what is being produced, and therefore, how it is being produced. A sense of commitment often results in a shared responsibility, and accountability, for an outcome. This focus can build a sense of trust in one another. The commitment that is used to be successful, also builds a sense of trust and pride in the accomplishments.

            When I was younger, I used to work for a pediatrician’s office. I used to work as a front office medical receptionist. My team consisted of a large group of individuals, about ten. We used to divide the work into equal parts and we never failed to each other. We trusted each other’s ethics to finish what we were responsible for. Every day, I was happy to go to work knowing that my team would be there and ready to accomplish anything. “Working together with other is necessary to achieve increased speed to market, faster product development, better customer service, lower costs, and the opening of new markets. Collaboration has become critical competency for achieving and sustaining high performance” (Denning, 2011, p. 160). This was for me the most positive experience I had while working with teams. 

            On the other hand, a negative experience I had was a couple of years ago, while working in my last year of my bachelor’s degree. The professor assigned a final into groups to precisely work together. We got together one afternoon and divided the work so that each participant, five of us, would work on their part and that way present our final with everything covered. Needless to say, that was the last time I saw three of them. For the next meetings it was only one classmate and I. We never got any work from the other team members and we ended up doing the entire work ourselves. While working in groups entails working toward the same subject, “each person has a defined responsibility, and each reports to a common supervisor” (Denning, 2011, p. 151). Sometimes, as Denning mentioned, collaboration is a matter of values, internal values. “When we’re in this sort of situation, we see that the other members of the group have different values, and this leaves us with the feeling that future collaboration would be horrible to contemplate” (Denning, 2011, p. 159).

References:

Denning, S. (2011). The leader's guide to storytelling: Mastering the art and discipline of business narrative. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass