High Performing Teams (HPT)
Contents |
Abstract
High-performing teams are critical to the success of organizations in today's fast-paced and competitive business environment. They are characterized by high levels of collaboration, clear and shared goals, effective communication, and a positive and supportive culture. Research has shown that high-performing teams lead to improved employee engagement, increased productivity and efficiency, and higher levels of innovation. To build a high-performing team, it is important to focus on creating an environment that supports collaboration and encourages open and honest communication. This can be achieved through a variety of techniques, including regular team-building activities, clear goal setting, and a strong emphasis on feedback and continuous improvement.
One of the key elements of a high-performing team is a shared vision and clear goals. Teams must understand what they are working towards and why it is important, in order to stay motivated and focused. This requires regular communication and collaboration between team members to ensure that everyone is aligned and working towards the same objectives. In addition, a positive and supportive team culture is essential for high performance (Lencioni, 2002). This can be achieved through a focus on mutual respect, trust, and collaboration. Teams should strive to create an environment where individuals feel valued and empowered, and where they are encouraged to share their ideas and contributions.
In conclusion, high-performing teams are a crucial component of organizational success, and require a combination of clear goals, effective communication, and a supportive culture. By focusing on these key elements, organizations can build teams that are capable of delivering outstanding results and driving business success. This article will look into the characteristics of high performing teams and try to identify how project managers can incoperate the necessary information to create and produce high performing temas at the workplace.
Big Idea
Nowadays, a well‑organized group plays a key role in the organization’s development process. It can be said that creating a group is an easy process because there is only few employees, who will work together professionally, are needed. However, it is not as easy as it seems to be, because such a group should meet a number of factors that will shape it. Here i will explain them in more detail, but the factors are sortly identified under. reference for this is https://www.wydawnictwo-siz.pl/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Trendy-w-zarz%C4%85dzaniu-przedsi%C4%99biorstwem.pdf#page=125
- Team member competencies
- Skill, process, tools and techniques
- communication
- value system
- shared vision, purpose, goal direction
- organizational value
The literature provides numerous methods for defining the essential features of High-Performance Teams. It is important to highlight some of these approaches and acknowledge that there are many more available. Research should not be confined to a single approach when creating such teams because there is no universal formula or perspective that is uniquely appropriate and efficient. High-performance teams exhibit varying characteristics depending on the people and the environments in which they function, so it is crucial to consider multiple approaches.
Also going to talk about the importance of the leader of picking the high performance team:
- In every High-Performance Team, it is crucial to have suitable leaders who can effectively manage team members, provide motivation, and aid in problem-solving. Additionally, leaders in High-Performance Teams must cultivate trust with team members and assist individuals in discovering their growth opportunities.
Characteristics of high performance teams
In this section i will try to identify the most important characteristics of high performance teams by looking into different articles and see which once that are beeing repeeted by different authors and articles.
Clear Goals: High-performing teams have a clear understanding of their purpose, goals, and objectives. These goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). Clear goals provide direction and focus for the team, and help team members stay aligned and committed to achieving the team's objectives. Reference: Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. American psychologist, 57(9), 705-717.
Roles and Responsibilities: Each team member should have a clear understanding of their role and responsibilities within the team. Clear roles and responsibilities help to avoid confusion and conflict, and ensure that everyone is working towards the same goals. Additionally, team members should have the skills, knowledge, and resources necessary to fulfill their roles effectively. Reference: Hackman, J. R. (1987). The design of work teams. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 20, pp. 267–335). Academic Press.
Effective Communication: High-performing teams communicate effectively and openly with one another, sharing their ideas, concerns, and feedback. Effective communication helps to build trust and understanding, reduce conflict, and promote collaboration. Team members should be encouraged to listen actively, ask questions, and provide constructive feedback. Reference: De Dreu, C. K. W., & Weingart, L. R. (2003). Task versus relationship conflict, team performance, and team member satisfaction: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(4), 741–749.
Trust and Collaboration: High-performing teams trust and respect one another, and work collaboratively to achieve their goals. Trust is built through open communication, shared experiences, and a commitment to the team's success. Collaboration involves sharing ideas, resources, and expertise, and working together to achieve a common goal. Reference: Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. H., & Schoorman, F. D. (1995). An integrative model of organizational trust. Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 709-734.
Accountability: Each team member should be accountable for their actions and contributions to the team's success. Accountability involves taking responsibility for one's own performance, and being willing to hold others accountable as well. This helps to ensure that everyone is working towards the same goals, and that individual contributions are valued and recognized. Reference: Latham, G. P., & Pinder, C. C. (2005). Work motivation theory and research at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Annual Review of Psychology, 56, 485–516.
Continuous Improvement: High-performing teams continuously seek to improve their processes, skills, and performance. This involves setting performance standards, monitoring progress, and making adjustments as necessary. Teams should be encouraged to learn from their mistakes, experiment with new approaches, and seek feedback from others. Reference: Senge, P. M. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York: Currency Doubleday.
Celebrate Success: Recognizing and celebrating the team's successes and milestones helps to foster a positive team culture, build morale, and motivate team members. Celebrating success can involve acknowledging individual contributions, recognizing team achievements, and providing opportunities for team members to socialize and build relationships.
Application of high performance teams in project management
In this part the article focuses on how theory about efficient teamwork fit the PPPM scene. Although high performing teams are relevant for PPPs, we will from now on focus on their relevance for project and project management. It is hard to provide a step-by-step guide to project managers on how to implement knowledge about high performing teams directly in your project. This is because no project is similar and everything need to be adjusted to local conditions and the specific team. However, this section give suggestions on useful situations where the tool is appropriate, and it will be up to the reader to do a implementation of the guideline in their local project.
Groups and teams form a basis for working with projects, and therefore also programs and portfolios. Everybody love great teamwork. If the teamwork is bad, everything collapse with it. Teams can be found in all parts of the project organisation. All the way from the board of directors, throughout the organisation and to the workers at the bottom of the organisational structure. They come in different shapes and sizes and need to be adjusted to their environment. Knowledge about high performing teams are therefore important in the terms of PPPM.
Furthermore, groups and teams are a natural part of the work breakdown structure of a project. Most projects, due to their complexity, are divided into smaller portions of work where it is natural to create a group or a team to do the work. In this relation it is clear that individual teams that do not accomplish their task will give a negative impact or delay to the whole project. We can thereby emphasize the importance of high performing teams in projects, which is a reason for project managers to facilitate the creation of effective groups and high performing teams in their organisation.
Knowledge about high performing teams is important when managers form teams. Project managers benefit from having an understanding on how individuals behave in teams (Maylor, 2010, p.255). In this way they can put together teams with abilities to adapt to these seven guidelines. This includes having a nice balance of diversity and a nice distribution among skills and characteristics among the members, adjusted for the tasks they are assigned to.
An example of a management issue of balancing several high performing teams is matrix management and distribution of resources in an project. The reader should seek knowledge of this topic from other sources. The seven guidelines for effective groups require a lot of time, dedicated- and motivated members. These are scarce resources in a project. It is reasonable to say that the benefits of high performing teams in a project must be balanced against other concerns in the iron triangle of time, cost and quality. Project managers need knowledge about groups and teams when deciding how much time and energy each employee should be allowed to spend on different teams in projects. This is important when managers design and manage the organisational matrix and an aggregated plan of resources. This means that sometimes it is reasonable for managers to limit teams and groups to be other types of lower performing groups. Knowledge about performance in teams is therefore a nice tool to include in these kind of evaluations.
Team performance is also a focus in the standards of Project Management Institute (2017). In section 9.4 and 9.5 the focus is on how management facilitate the team to improve results through improved teamwork. Project managers use knowledge about effective teams to select the best strategies for obtaining their goals. This project manager-approach is a nice add-on to the seven guidelines. More or less, project managers try to push their team into a suitable environmental and cultural frame. This is to give the team a climate of trust. To obtain this Project Management Institute (2017) introduce tools and techniques that help facilitate this environment described in the guidelines. When the environment is good, the team is more likely to be able to focus on developing and applying the seven guidelines in their project.
Discussion and limitation
This section is yet to write and discuss. But topics to include in this section can be
- the relevance of the information/data
- Is the information enough
- Is the topic researched enough
- etc
Annotated bibliography
Bibliography
This is the once i have found and planning on using or now. https://www.wydawnictwo-siz.pl/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Trendy-w-zarz%C4%85dzaniu-przedsi%C4%99biorstwem.pdf#page=125
https://www.timreview.ca/sites/default/files/article_PDF/HakanenSoudunsaari_TIMReview_June2012.pdf
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6498873
