Report: Strategies for Building and Managing Successful Business Teams

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of developing successful business teams, using Ajman Free Zone as a case study. It outlines the essential characteristics of effective teams, including communication, clear goals, member contributions, diversity, and leadership. The report delves into the importance of team roles, referencing Belbin's Team Roles model, and highlights the value of theoretical models like Tuckman's stages of team development. It explores how to support team development through various stages, motivating team members, and resolving conflicts. Furthermore, the report discusses methods for monitoring team performance and recommends strategies for improvement, making it a valuable resource for understanding and implementing successful team-building practices within a business context.

Running head: DEVELOPING SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS TEAMS
Developing successful business teams
Name of the student
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1DEVELOPING SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS TEAMS
Executive Summary
This report has described the essential features for developing a successful business team. The
study has taken Ajman free zone as the organization and the report has developed ways to guide
the organization in developing effective and successful teams. The report has described the
features of a successful business team, support needed to develop effective team and monitor the
performance to identify the effectiveness of the team development process. The report shows the
importance effective team developing in achieving success in the business.

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Table of Contents
Task 1...............................................................................................................................................3
1.0 Features of successful business teams.......................................................................................3
1.1 Characteristics of successful business teams.........................................................................3
1.2 Importance of team roles in successful business teams.........................................................4
1.3 Value of using theoretical models when building successful business teams.......................6
2.0 Support team development........................................................................................................7
2.1 Stages of team development..................................................................................................7
2.2 Planning to motivate team members to achieve given objectives.........................................8
2.3 Encourage open communication between team members.....................................................9
2.4 Ways of resolving conflict between team members............................................................10
Task 2.............................................................................................................................................11
3.0 Monitor the performance of teams..........................................................................................11
3.1 Monitor the performance of a team.....................................................................................11
3.2 Recommend how to improve performance..........................................................................14
References......................................................................................................................................16

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Organization: Ajman Free Zone
Task 1
1.0 Features of successful business teams
1.1 Characteristics of successful business teams
The modern global environment has become highly competitive in nature due to the
advent of free trade and developing a successful business team is essential for gaining
competitive advantage in the market. In order to develop a successful business team, certain
characteristics have to be developed. The first characteristics of a successful team is effective
communication between the team members. In a successful business team, the team members
communicate with each other openly by sharing their opinions, ideas and thoughts (Lisak and
Erez 2015). Moreover, they take into consideration, the opinion of other members of the team.
Communication is essential for keeping a track of the status and progress of tasks or projects on
which the team is working on and increases the overall effectiveness of the project. Poor
communication between the team members leads to the development of cross wires which results
in conflict and in competencies in the project (Levi 2015). The next point is development of
goals of the teams based on the results and outcomes. Setting up of clear sets of goals and
objectives provides a direction and plan of these objectives with effective contribution from each
of the team members. This improves the collective aim of the team and results in better
achievement of the objectives and outputs.
The next characteristics is contribution of the team members effectively and effective
team members contributes their fair share. They are aware of their roles and responsibilities so
they fit in perfectly into the business operations. These team members have high sense of

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belonging and care about the organization’s success. A team should comprise of diverse team
members where every team member will have their unique set of abilities and contribute to the
business by providing their specialized knowledge and experiences (Krumm et al. 2016). The
variety in cultures, age groups and personalities will bring in creativity within the organization.
Good leadership is another important criteria for developing a successful business team and an
effective leader binds the team together. The leader sets the pace of the work and offers
motivation to all the employees for increasing their productivity (Arasti, Zandi and Bahmani
2014). A successful business team will be well organized and the team member should have
able to manage their time effectively to promote smooth running of the business. Business teams
have to be also competitive, accountable and responsible towards the work they do which helps
the team to progress further. Ajman free zone has to incorporate all these factors in increasing
the export and import in Ajman (Afz.gov.ae. 2018).
1.2 Importance of team roles in successful business teams
A result and outcome of the performance of the team depends on the behavior of the
teams. There are diverse roles of the team members such as monitors, evaluators, coordinators,
implementations and plants. The plants solve the issues faced by the team in unconventional
manner due to their nature of creativity. The evaluators and monitors will analyze the issue to
offer different solutions to the problem and address the objective of the study (Mathieu 2015).
The coordinators will monitor the overall operation of the business team and the implementers
will effectively and efficiently execute the alternate plan. Therefore, it is essential to identify the
roles of the team members to effectively match the skills of the employees with the business
requirements. This is essential for developing balance between the teams. Cohesiveness is also
essential for effective performance of a team and teams can be made more cohesive by

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recognizing the roles of the individuals. In order to attain cohesiveness among the team
members, mutual and collective commitment, coordination and cooperation will result in success
of the team. The team have to be familiar with each other’s roles so that they can complement
each other (Aga, Noorderhaven and Vallejo 2016). Familiarity among team members also
ensures enhancement of team performance as they are able to engage and share information for
developing constructive business solutions. Moreover, it is necessary that all the team members
have been defined a given team role so that they are able to meet the business objectives and
their personal objectives effectively. These factors show the importance of segregating the team
roles within the teams for developing effective business environment (Hajro, Gibson and
Pudelko 2017).
As per the theory mentioned by Belbin’s Team roles model, team roles have been divided
into three groups. These groups are people oriented, action oriented and thought oriented. The
interpersonal strengths and weaknesses of team members needs to be considered while assigning
specific roles to each member (Eubanks et al. 2016). The first role is the shapers, they bring the
dynamic element into the team and responsible for stimulating the other team members.
However, these people are argumentative and question the action of each member which may
result in conflict. The next role is implementors and they execute the plans developed by the
team and transform the thoughts and ideas into reality. These kinds of people are well organized,
efficient and systematic but are not flexible and resist change. The last role in action orientation
is complete finisher that monitor the project to check if all the requirements have been met or not
and whether are any errors or not. However, these people have the tendency to worry all the time
and difficult to convince them. This shows as per the action of the team members; these roles
are crucial as they play an important role in making the team successful (Meslec and Curşeu

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2015). As per the people orientation, coordinators, team workers and resource investigators are
the three roles of the team members. The coordinators are the people that play the role of the
leader and offer guidance to the team. These people are calm and manage things effectively.
However, these people may tend to be manipulative and give away too much of their own
responsibilities to others. The team workers provide support and facilitate in smooth operation of
the team. These people are perceptive, diplomatic and flexible which helps in team cohesion.
They are however, indecisive and uncommitted positions in making decisions (Mathieu et al.
2015). The next role is the resource investigator that brings in innovation and helps the team
acquire all the resources they need by communicating with the external stakeholders. These
people are definitely a key face in fulfilling the team goal. However, these people tend to lose
their enthusiasm easily and are quite optimistic. In respect to thought orientation, it has already
been discussed above. This shows that every individual has their strengths and weaknesses so
team members having different strong suites complement each other in attaining their goals.
1.3 Value of using theoretical models when building successful business teams
There are different types of team models for developing an effective business team.
These human resource theories address each of the aspect of effective team building which is
essential for successful business team development. Bruce Tuckman’s Model of Team Stages
has been applied in different organizations for building teams that effectively contribute to the
organization (Stout and Blair 2017). This theory divided the stages of development into four
stages which enhances the overall performance of the teams. Belbin’s Theory of team roles has
divided the roles of the employees as per their capabilities where each of the team members fit
into their specified role. Isabel Briggs-Myers and her MBTI theory are used for measuring the
perception of human beings about the world (Dutton and Ragins 2017). This test is effective for

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team building as team member can understand each other in a better way by evaluating the
perspective of the other team members. John Adair’s Leadership theory is another theory for
effective leadership and leadership is one of the key components of team building where leader
acts as a motivator and guides the team in fulfilling the given objective.
Carl Jung’s Color theory is another method of identifying the behavior of a human being.
This will help in understanding the reason the people behave in a certain way which is an
essential component for effective team building as the team members will be able to identify
each other’s point of view (Sacco 2016). Strength Theory is another theory that where
continuous improvement of team work has been focused on and this facilitates in developing
strong team (Shen et al. 2015). Team Analysis Theory is another means of analyzing the current
team performance and identifying the lag in the team work and building. This will help in
sustaining and enhancing the future performance of the team.
2.0 Support team development
2.1 Stages of team development
Bruce Tuckman’s Model of Team Stages is generally used to develop an effective team.
The development of any team goes through five stages while developing the team (Betts and
Healy 2015). These stages are adjourning, performing, norming, storming and forming. The
initial stage of team development is forming where the overall team is formed and everyone is
introduced to each other. In this stage, skills of the members, their interests, backgrounds,
timeline, project goals, individual roles and ground roles are discussed (Betts and Healy 2015).
This stage helps in familiarizing the teams, their responsibilities and roles which enables them to
understand their role in developing a successful business team. The next stage is storming where
the team experiences extreme pressure for completing the task and they are frustrated by each

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other habits. In this phase, the team identifies and realizes each other’s flaws and liabilities and
the teams have to adopt to these habits of their team members for developing an efficient team
(Woodcock 2017).
The next stage is the norming where after working for sometime, the people are to
identify and appreciate each other’s strengths and weaknesses. In this stage, the team starts to
work cohesively where every team member contributes effectively to meet team objectives and
goals. This stage is the starting of an effective team development process where the team
members starts to cooperate with each other (Largent 2016). The next stage of the team
development process is the performing stage, the team members become adapted to each other’s
ways of working and expertise which is due to the familiarity, motivation and confidence of the
team. This is also because of the fact that everyone is on of the same page where they are driven
to meet the specified goal of the project. The last stage is the adjourning stage where the team is
disbanded and different teams are based on the needs of the business and arrival of new projects.
2.2 Planning to motivate team members to achieve given objectives
Motivating the employees of the organization is one of the essential factors developing a
successful team member and fulfilling the objectives of the business. The compensation package
is one of the biggest motivational factors for the team members and it is essential to develop
salary structure that is equivalent to the industry standards. The next factors providing the team
members with effective work environment which will be able to positively stimulate the
employees. The organization will also have to provide the team members with opportunities of
self-development (Maruping et al. 2015). This will consist of providing the team members with
training and development facilities which will enable them to develop new skills. These also
facilitates in keeping their skill levels up to date and in alignment with the industry trends. The

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next factor is promoting collaboration between the team members where the team members have
to be encouraged to provide their valuable inputs and contribute to the development of effective
solution. The leaders should also advocate democratic style of leadership by not punishing the
team for their failures as failure is part of any project and the leader should focus on identifying
the issues and rectifying it based so that further errors can be avoided (Pearsall and
Venkataramani 2015). The leader will have to encourage the team members to try again to
complete the next goal by learning from the present mistakes. The next step is setting up of clear
goals and communicating it effectively to the team members. The team members should be
aware of the company goals and the role they have to play in order to make the team’s
performance more effective and efficient.
2.3 Encourage open communication between team members
The development of an effective team dependents on the communication system among
them. It is essential to develop an effective open communication system where the team
members will be freely giving their opinions on the conflict. The open-door policy is one such
method of maintaining the level of transparency between the team members where discussion
takes place in presence of the team members (Boies, Fiset and Gill 2015). This helps in
developing clarity and trust among the team members. The next tool is the encouraging two-way
communication where the team leaders have to communicate with the team members effectively
to identify the issues faced by them and provided them valuable feedbacks to improve their level
of performance. Therefore, in order to develop two-way communication, the team leader will
have to develop high team spirit and morale so that a clarity can be kept between the team
members (Aga, Noorderhaven and Vallejo 2016). The use of appropriate form and modes of
communication is also essential for making it effective. This will consist of developing effective

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communication plan where the schedule of the meeting should be mentioned and effectively
developed as per the work load so that every valuable information is provided to all the team
members.
2.4 Ways of resolving conflict between team members
As stated Rebocho et al. (2017), conflict is a discord between team members when one of
the members are not in agreement with the actions of the other team member. As per the Belbin’s
Team roles model, it has been seen that every team member has diverse strengths and
weaknesses. These weaknesses in the team members results in conflict. Conflict is pretty much
evident in every team and it is essential to resolve conflicts so that it does not hamper the
productivity of the team and the team members. However, conflict is essential for progress of
the team and sometimes conflict can be constructive for team development and every team goes
through conflicts that improves their team dynamics. The first step of the process is
acknowledging the conflict between the team members. This is essential as conflict parties tend
to avoid acceptance of the conflict (Folger, Poole and Stutman 2017). This means that the source
of conflict needs to be identified at the initial phase. Therefore, the overall conflict has to be
discussed among the team to reach and effective conclusion. This has to be done to go beyond
the incident to reach the source that lead to the conflict, which means that it is essential to
identify the reason of stress between the team members. The next step is discussing the impact
the conflict on the team and the way it is affecting the performance and dynamics of the team.
This results in the understanding between the team members about the implications of the
actions. This enables them to realize and obtain solutions for mitigating the issue. The next step
is development of a cooperative process where both parties have to compromise to reach a final
conclusion. In order to do so, the conflict parties have to be made to communicate with other.

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The analysis of the situation has to be made by taking accounts of both the parties and develop
solutions that will facilitate in reaching agreement. However, it is not possible to resolve
conflicts at all times and therefore, managing conflicts is essential in this scenario. Therefore, in
certain the instead of resolving the conflict emphasis has to be given on positioning the team in
such a way that conflict between two parties does not hamper the dynamics and productivity of
the whole team (Moore 2014).
Task 2
3.0 Monitor the performance of teams
3.1 Monitor the performance of a team
The monitoring of performances is essential for ensuring that the employees of the
organization named Ajman Free Zone, UAE can achieve the goals and objectives with ease and
effectiveness. It is always necessary to keep the performances of the employees monitored so
that they do not neglect their job roles and responsibilities and can focus on the shared vision and
mission of the organization. The goals and objectives should be integrated with the tasks
assigned to the employees for ensuring that they work accordingly to meet the business goals and
objectives (Elnaga and Imran 2013). But for that, consistent monitoring of their performances at
various stages is essential along with keeping a close eye on the way they are working for
managing a strong workforce and ensure maintenance of production of 2high-quality products
and services effectively. For a reputed and established organization like Ajman Free Zone in
UAE, it is crucial for continually monitoring the targets to be achieved (Bhave 2014). The mind
map is an effective tool used to get the feedbacks and responses based on the performances and
this will assist in leading the team properly and combine the various elements of the topic such