Effective Strategies for Leading a Work Team to Achieve Productivity

This report delves into the critical aspects of leading a work team effectively, emphasizing strategies to enhance team productivity and overall performance. It identifies factors that commonly affect team productivity, such as poor communication, low employee engagement, lack of motivation, and insufficient training. The report proposes solutions including creating a positive work environment, improving communication flow, clarifying roles and responsibilities, and providing regular performance assessments with targeted training. Furthermore, it outlines practical steps for team leaders, including effective communication methods, task requirement identification, planning, cultural sensitivity, task assignment based on skills, performance measurement, encouragement of collaboration, ensuring individual and joint responsibility, monitoring work, prioritizing health and safety, completing necessary documentation, and evaluating task success. The analysis concludes with a focus on identifying process improvements for future tasks, aiming for continuous enhancement of team performance. Desklib provides students access to a wide array of solved assignments and study resources.

Lead A Work Team or
Group

Table of Contents
Part 1................................................................................................................................................1
Part 2 ...............................................................................................................................................2
References ......................................................................................................................................6

Part 1
The continuous improvement in the productivity of the individual through removing or
delegating unnecessary activities or replacing them with more effective and value-added ones
leads to enhancing the overall performance and profitability of the business as well as leading the
company towards continuous growth and success (Ways to Improve Team Efficiency And
Productivity, 2021). Enhancing the productivity of team members is one of the essential
responsibilities of the team leader. It will help them achieve the desired goals and objectives of
the team effectively. But various factors directly influence the productivity and performance of
the employees (Renshawand Robinson, 2019). Some of the factors that are directly impacting the
productivity of the team members are mentioned below:
Poor communication: One of the significant factors that directly influence the team
members' productivity, as identified, is poor communication. Poor communication among the
team members leads to not having a proper understanding of the task or activity needed to be
carried out by them. It will automatically lead to not achieving desired goals and objectives on
time effectively, leaving employees and performing poorly and influencing their productivity.
Not having proper communication also creates misunderstandings among team members and
affects their performance (Petittaand Jiang, 2020).
Low employee engagement: Another factor that directly influences the team members'
productivity is low employee engagement. Proper engagement of the team members in the group
activities leads to not sharing ideas among each other and leads to poor coordination. Poor
engagement is one of the significant factors that influence the productivity of the team
effectively.
Lack of motivation: The primary factor behind enhancing the team member's
performance is the motivation factor. Motivation leads the team members to achieve desired
goals and objectives of the team effectively. But having a lack of motivation among the team
members will directly influence their productivity and profitability. It is analyzed that poor
engagement, personal stress, and not satisfying the needs demotivating employees to perform
better and directly affecting their productivity.
Lack of formal training: Another factor that directly influences the team members'
productivity is lack of proper training and development, getting proper training helps to enhance
the skills and knowledge of the team members allowing team members to perform better. But not
1

having adequate training lead to directly influencing their productivity (Toader and Kessler,
2018).
Determining the solutions
To continue to grow and gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace, the business
organization needs to enhance the productivity of their team members (How To Improve Team
Efficiency and Productivity, 2021). Improving the productivity of the team members will help the
team members to achieve desired goals and objectives of the team and enhance overall
performance. Some of the solutions that team leaders can consider to improve the productivity of
the team members are mentioned below:
 To enhance the productivity of the team members, the team leaders need to ensure that a
proper and positive work environment is created for the team members. A positive work
environment helps in improving the productivity of the team members.
 To provide clarity of roles and responsibilities among the team members and avoid
misunderstandings, the team leader needs to determine an adequate flow of
communication. Avoiding communication gaps will help them enhance the team
members' productivity (Rudman, 2020).
 A team leader needs to ensure that the team roles are set effectively and efficiently. In
addition to this, the team leaders also need to ensure that the goals set are understandable
and attainable, making it easy for the team members to achieve desired goals and enhance
overall productivity.
 Regularly assessing the performance of the employees and analyzing their strengths and
weakness, and then accordingly offering them training will also help enhance the overall
productivity of the team members (Benson, 2018).
Part 2
Communicate effectively with team members
As a team leader, effective methods like open meeting and creating a receptive
atmosphere will effectively communicate with the team members. The open session is a forum
that will promote effective communication among the team members and team leaders. It will
allow the team members to hear and see and feel what the leader is communicating. Also,
creating a receptive atmosphere like avoiding tension and promoting team members to share their
thoughts will lead to effective communication with team members (Weddle, 2021).
2

Identify the requirement of the task
The task's requirement will be analyzed or determined through proper planning and goals
and objectives needed to be achieved by the team. Accordingly, the task required to be covered
to achieve those goals will be identified. Additionally, through talking to the senior manager, the
task needed to be carried out can be analyzed.
Identify the steps that need to be completed to complete the task
The actions that needed to be considered to complete the task by the leader include
analyzing the task, planning what needs to be done, and scheduling the task, including setting the
deadline. Then determining the required resources to complete the job and then the next step is to
clarify role and responsibility. Then finally tracking the progress.
Create a plan to complete the task
To create a plan to complete the task, proper planning will be done and adequate
documentation of the task. Then, the plan by dividing the goals and the next is reviewing the plan
daily to manage the barriers and achieve the desired goals.
Address the cultural differences of team members
To effectively address the cultural difference of team members, the cultural difference in
the team will be determined, them effectively working towards accommodating the cultural
differences. In addition to this, the leader can also employ diversity training to deal with cultural
differences.
Assign task activities to the team
In order to proper assigning task activity to the team members, proper and systematic
procedure will be followed by the leader, the clarity of roles and responsibilities will be offered
to the team members also the task will be assigned based on the skills and capabilities of the
employees (Holmes, 2018).
Set performance measures
To set the performance measures of the team members, the smart key performance
indicator will be used by the leaders. Analyzing the present and past performance of the team
members will help in setting the effective performance measures for the team members.
Encourage team members to work with each other and any other relevant personnel in the
organisation
3

Allowing team members to participate in the activity positively and supporting them and
recognising the team and their hard work will help motivate them towards achieving desired
goals and objectives. Also, creating a positive and healthy work environment will help encourage
team members to work with each other and achieve desired goals effectively.
Ensure that team members take individual and joint responsibility for the task
Motivating team members to effectively and positively participate by inviting their inputs
and ideas in the decision-making process and offering them clarity of roles and responsibility.
Additionally, encouraging them to ask questions and listen to their answers and take up a task
will lead team members to take individual and joint responsibility for the task.
Monitor the work of team members
The team members will regularly monitor the work of the team members through
performance assessment and feedback assessment techniques. This will help in analysing the
performance of the team members and determining the area further needed to be improved by the
team members (Mysirlaki and Paraskeva, 2019).
Ensure the health and safety of team members, including fatigue management
The healthy and safety of the team members will be ensured effectively also to do so the
proper policies and rules related to the safety and security measures will be implemented in the
organization by the team leaders. Also, team leader will ensure to create safe and positive
environment.
Ensure that the necessary documentation is completed
The necessary documentation will be completed by first identifying the needed
documents and then determining who is responsible for collecting the documents. After that
ensuring that all the documents have complied effectively. A leader will also ensure an effective
document control process and then finally reviewing effectively.
Ensure whether the task has been successful completed
To determine whether the task has been completed, the leader would compare the
completed task with the pre-set goals and objectives. Proper follow-up will allow the leader to
determine whether a task has been successfully completed or not.
Identify improvements to the group's process for future tasks
To determine the improvement to the group's process for the future task, the leader to
analyze the performance of the team members, which will help them to analyze the area that
4

needs further improvement effectively. Comparing present arrangement with the desired one will
also help the employees enhance their performance for future task and goals (Jha, 2019).
5

References
Books and Journals
Benson, J., 2018. Working more creatively with groups. Routledge.
Holmes, T., 2018. Using Team Based Learning to Launch Transformative Learning in the
Classroom. Journal of Transformative Learning.
Jha, S., 2019. Team psychological safety and team performance: A moderated mediation analysis
of psychological empowerment. International Journal of Organizational Analysis.
Mysirlaki, S. and Paraskeva, F., 2019. Virtual team effectiveness: insights from the virtual world
teams of massively multiplayer online games. Journal of Leadership Studies, 13(1),
pp.36-55.
Petitta, L. and Jiang, L., 2020. How group goal setting mediates the link between individual‐level
emotion‐related factors and team performance. Journal of Theoretical Social
Psychology, 4(1), pp.3-20.
Renshaw, P. and Robinson, J., 2019. Coaching on the go: how to lead your team effectively in 10
minutes a day. Pearson UK.
Rudman, R., 2020. Performance planning and review: Making employee appraisals work.
Routledge.
Toader, A.F. and Kessler, T., 2018. Team mental models, team goal orientations, and information
elaboration, predicting team creative performance. Creativity Research Journal, 30(4),
pp.380-390.
Weddle, H., 2021. Team emotion matters: exploring teacher collaboration dynamics over time.
Journal of Educational Change, pp.1-29.
Online
How To Improve Team Efficiency and Productivity, 2021 [online] Available through;
https://www.salesforce.com/blog/improve-team-efficiency-productivity/
Ways to Improve Team Efficiency And Productivity, 2021 [online] Available through;
https://www.hrcloud.com/blog/10-ways-to-improve-team-efficiency-and-productivity
6