Teams & Teamwork: Developing Yourself as an Effective Team Member

This presentation delves into the core aspects of building and managing effective teams, differentiating between groups and teams, and outlining the characteristics of a successful team. It highlights the advantages of teamwork, emphasizing the importance of communication and addressing potential barriers such as unclear goals and poor leadership. The presentation also explores behaviors that can cause conflict within a team, such as disagreements due to cultural differences and ego clashes, and suggests strategies for conflict resolution through improved communication. Furthermore, it includes a self-assessment of personal strengths and weaknesses as a team member, with actionable steps for improvement, such as being more decisive and enhancing communication skills. The presentation concludes by referencing academic sources that support the concepts discussed, providing a comprehensive overview of how to develop oneself as an effective team member. Desklib provides access to similar solved assignments and past papers.

Running head: BUILDING & MANAGING TEAMS
Building & Managing Teams
Name of Student
Name of University
Author Note

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BUILDING & MANAGING TEAMS
Table of contents
AC 1.1 Explain the difference between a group and a team......................................................2
AC 1.2 Describe how a group becomes a team.........................................................................2
AC 1.3 Outline the characteristics of a good team.....................................................................2
AC 1.4 List the advantages of working in a team......................................................................3
AC 2.1 Explain why it is important for people working in teams to be able to communicate
with each other...........................................................................................................................3
AC 2.2 Give examples of barriers to communication that may prevent a team from working
effectively...................................................................................................................................3
AC 3.1 Give examples of behaviours that could cause conflict in a team.................................4
AC 3.2 Outline something a team member can do to reduce one of these examples of conflict
....................................................................................................................................................4
AC 4.1 Identify own strengths and weakness as a team member..............................................4
AC 4.2 Identify ways to improve own ability to function effectively in a team........................5
Reference....................................................................................................................................6

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BUILDING & MANAGING TEAMS
AC 1.1 Explain the difference between a group and a team
According to Certo (2018), a group is considered as a collection of individual people
that make coordination with the efforts put in by them. Group examples can be considered as
ethnic groups, trade unions and friendship circles. At the same time, a team is a group of
people that share a common aim and goal. The members of a team work together by
providing support to one another. Example of the team includes sports team, project team and
management team.
AC 1.2 Describe how a group becomes a team
A group can be converted into a team by encouraging the individuals to continue to
work in a proper manner. The individuals need to be convinced about sharing similar goals
and giving proper support to one another. This can help the individuals to form a team that
can gain success. The development stages of a team can be utilised to ensure that the group
members develop a feeling of unity and possess a sense of purpose (Nguyen 2016).
AC 1.3 Outline the characteristics of a good team
A good team can communicate with one another and maintain the focus on the
commitment made to the team and its members. They provide support to one another and
ensure that every member of the team contributes to the task that has been assigned to them.
According to Lanaj and Hollenbeck (2015), proper leadership is also required so that the
team can be united and organised. A fun time can be arranged to prevent the monotonous
working hours and provide refreshment for the betterment of the team.

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BUILDING & MANAGING TEAMS
AC 1.4 List the advantages of working in a team
One of the major benefits of working as a team is the fact that individuals can gain a
vast experience. Working in a team exposes an individual to different other individuals
belonging to different society or culture. This can help in enriching the knowledge of the
individual in terms of variations in culture and ideas (Hoch and Kozlowski 2014). At the
same time, working as a team in an organisation can be beneficial as better outcomes of a
work can be maintained.
AC 2.1 Explain why it is important for people working in teams to be able to
communicate with each other
As stated by Drescher et al. (2014) communication is important in every aspect, as
without it people cannot express their emotions and ideas. Communication with people
belonging to a team is required as different tasks are assigned to different people and
communicating about the progress of the tasks can help in maintaining the update of the task.
At the same time, communication also helps to build trust among the members.
AC 2.2 Give examples of barriers to communication that may prevent a team from
working effectively
Examples of barriers to communication can be in the form of unclear goals. As
pointed out by Ford, Piccolo and Ford (2017) one of the chief characteristics of a team is that
it is defined by the goals it sets for itself. Barriers to a communication may lead to the unclear
defining of goals and subsequently provide a team with a disadvantage of maintaining
stability in the team. Poor communication between leaders and members may also affect
negatively as clear instructions cannot be provided.

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BUILDING & MANAGING TEAMS
AC 3.1 Give examples of behaviours that could cause conflict in a team
As stated by Guinalíu and Jordán (2016) a team consisting of individuals that belong
to different cultures and have a different mindset. Thus, two examples of conflict can be
provided to understand the concept better:
1. Disagreement between team members due to the varied backgrounds and culture
2. Ego between individuals can also be the reason for conflict among team members
AC 3.2 Outline something a team member can do to reduce one of these examples of
conflict
Team members can try to communicate more with one another so that each member
can understand the difference in culture and mindset of one another. As stated by Serrat
(2017) by communication can bring about a sense of trust and reliability among individuals.
With the help of proper communication, people can reduce the disagreement as a mutual
solution can be brought about. This can be considered effective for maintaining the stability
of a team.
AC 4.1 Identify own strengths and weakness as a team member
Strengths
1. I can be supportive to the team members and multi task
2. I can undertake good research and ensure that authentic information is derived that can
help me to undertake my project in a proper manner
Weakness

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BUILDING & MANAGING TEAMS
1. One of my weaknesses is that I become reliable to the superiors for proper instructions.
This is weakness because I cannot take decisions by myself
2. I also become nervous at time and because of this, the team becomes in danger of being
jeopardised. This is considered as a weakness as the productivity of the team may be
compromised due to this
AC 4.2 Identify ways to improve own ability to function effectively in a team
I can improve my ability to work effectively as a team member by being bolder and
taking decisions that I think is correct. I need to undertake considerable research to
understand the situation and find out solutions that can be suited to the problem. Moreover, I
can improve my communication skill by interacting more with people with listening to the
situations that they face while working with me. This can help me to improve my
performance as a team member.

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BUILDING & MANAGING TEAMS
Reference
Certo, S.C., 2018. Supervision: Concepts and skill-building. McGraw-Hill Education.
Drescher, M.A., Korsgaard, M.A., Welpe, I.M., Picot, A. and Wigand, R.T., 2014. The
dynamics of shared leadership: Building trust and enhancing performance. Journal of Applied
Psychology, 99(5), p.771.
Ford, R.C., Piccolo, R.F. and Ford, L.R., 2017. Strategies for building effective virtual teams:
Trust is key. Business Horizons, 60(1), pp.25-34.
Guinalíu, M. and Jordán, P., 2016. Building trust in the leader of virtual work teams. Spanish
Journal of Marketing-ESIC, 20(1), pp.58-70.
Hoch, J.E. and Kozlowski, S.W., 2014. Leading virtual teams: Hierarchical leadership,
structural supports, and shared team leadership. Journal of applied psychology, 99(3), p.390.
Lanaj, K. and Hollenbeck, J.R., 2015. Leadership over-emergence in self-managing teams:
The role of gender and countervailing biases. Academy of Management Journal, 58(5),
pp.1476-1494.
Nguyen, D.S., 2016. Success Factors for Building and Managing High Performance Agile
Software Development Teams. International Journal of Computer (IJC), 20(1), pp.51-82.
Serrat, O., 2017. Managing virtual teams. In Knowledge Solutions (pp. 619-625). Springer,
Singapore.