Managing People and Team: Strategies for Building a Productive Team

This essay discusses strategies for building cohesive and productive teams in the workplace, focusing on the role of a team manager in addressing challenges among team members. It emphasizes the importance of strong communication, collaboration, and creating a positive workplace cul...Read More

Running head: MANAGING PEOPLE AND TEAM
Managing People and Team
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1MANAGING PEOPLE AND TEAM
In every workplace, individuals need to work on projects as a team sometimes or the
other (Duhigg, 2016). For the ones, who are not used to work in groups, collaborating with
each other can be a tough task, especially when they do not like the others who they are to be
considered as their group members. In such cases, establishing a cohesive and productive
team can be really challenging for the managers. The same thing happened for the team
manager of Anthony, Arthur and Heather. This paper is going to elaborate on discussing the
strategies that would be imposed in order to bring the team members as a productive and
cohesive team.
Human beings are social creatures. They crave for friendship and positive interactions
always. The same goes for work places as well. As per Dierner and Tay (2017), “better the
relationships are at work, the happier and more productive employees are going to be”.
Successful building of a cohesive and productive team is not something very easy. In fact, it
takes huge efforts and huge patience, especially from the part of the managers. Cohesiveness
refers to the quality or potential of forming a united whole and productiveness is the
capability of producing something (Franz et al., 2016). A team in workplace consists of
members belonging from different backgrounds and of different nature. There are some who
do not want to get engaged into teams and want to do their assigned task individually on the
other hand, there are some who wants to work in teams but take the credit of doing things that
they has not done in the first place. Hence, a team consists of diverse nature.
As a leader or manager, all want to build and develop highly productive team. Having
worked with many executive leaders, most of the individuals in leadership tend towards
thinking their teams as highly productive and produce desired results. According to Raziq and
Maulabakhsh (2015), a productive team is built when the employees feel that they are cared
for and are more engaged. Hence, the key to create a positive and productive workplace
culture is all rooted in strong communication and collaboration. Cohesive working teams are

2MANAGING PEOPLE AND TEAM
well aware of how to share and communicate the workload for maximising the talents and
skills of the individual members. An ideal team is potential enough of coming together for
accomplishing the shared goals notwithstanding the differences in the working methods, the
level of skills and communications. Just by grouping the employees or team members
together and by hoping that they are successful is often very poor way of building teams.
Cameron and Green (2015) have claimed that “as a leader, you model the behaviours
you want your team to embody, as well as set the stage for what you want your company’s
workplace culture to look like” This simply means that in order to make a productive and
cohesive team, manager himself need to make himself a role model for their team members.
For this purpose, being transparent and open encourage the entire team to feel more
comfortable in discussing the new issues, ideas and for practicing a hearty art of debate. This
would also help in establishing great synergy. Choosing right members is the first and
foremost things to do in the process of building cohesive and productive team. One of the
most important factors that is to be determined before choosing the members is describing
their team’s mission. Deciding the goals of the team and the way of accomplishing them is
very important. After then, the process of selecting right team members contribute best to the
mission. Secondly, the next thing a successful cohesive and productive team require is that of
diversity. It is to note that a diverse team have a great access to many people with different
experiences and skills. Therefore, these groups would be able to pull from all these skills and
experiences for achieving the team’s mission. Furthermore, as stated by Hesse et al. (2015),
team building exercises are the best way of assessing how the individuals members work
together in order to attain a desired goal. Hence, prior to giving the team members some
important task to do, it is important to see how they handle something that is as simple as an
ice breaker. In this way, it would be easier to determine who is taking the lead, who is

3MANAGING PEOPLE AND TEAM
working well together etc. The manager can observe and apply the same to the real mission.
With the same, it would also help the team members to bond with one another in this process.
It is to note that a team cannot be successful if let alone to operate and that too
without trust. Anthony, Arthur and Heather, all have trust issues towards one another. Hence,
being a manager, it is his important duty to establish a baseline that would all the team to feel
safe (Harris & Sherblom, 2018). This would help three of them to freely discuss the ideas and
to share their concerns without any fear of being judge. Furthermore, determining the
strengths and weaknesses of each and every team members and then assigning them to some
specific tasks on the basis of that is what can be referred to as utilising the individual
strengths and this is also very important in order to build a productive team. Delegating on
the basis of strengths is the best way for each and every groups to attain its goals. Being clear
regarding what each and every member is important for the manager and he should hold them
accountable as well. As claimed by Korzeniewska and Wierzchowska (2016), a team can
never be cohesive is communication in the team is ineffective. Therefore, it should be
ensured that communication methods are continuous and consistent. The instructions and the
goals of the team should be constructed well. Also, all through the process of completing a
project and after its completion, one need to give proper feedback to the team. It is required
to be a combination of the individual feedback and for the team as a whole. Managers should
explain the team members what worked well and what did not along with the final results of
the project. It is to ne noted that constructive and productive feedbacks play a significant role
in this. Such feedbacks would make a more cohesive team during the future project of the
team.
Collaborative, cohesive and productive team is important to this millennial generation
to a great extent as millennial are at present the largest working demographic in the world.
From the above analysis it is to state that group cohesiveness and increase in their

4MANAGING PEOPLE AND TEAM
productivity only arise when the bonds link the members of the group to each other as well as
the entire group as a whole. The team members of very strongly cohesive teams are basically
more inclined towards participating readily and would stay in group for long-term. Manager
has a great role to play in this entire process. For building cohesive and productive team, he
should himself become a role model for the same and for this he needs to be both transparent
and open in communication.

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References:
Cameron, E., & Green, M. (2015). Making sense of change management: A complete guide
to the models, tools and techniques of organizational change. Kogan Page Publishers.
Diener, E., & Tay, L. (2017). A scientific review of the remarkable benefits of happiness for
successful and healthy living. Happiness, 90.
Duhigg, C. (2016). What Google learned from its quest to build the perfect team. The New
York Times Magazine, 26, 2016.
Franz, B., Leicht, R., Molenaar, K., & Messner, J. (2016). Impact of team integration and
group cohesion on project delivery performance. Journal of Construction
Engineering and Management, 143(1), 04016088.
Harris, T. E., & Sherblom, J. C. (2018). Small group and team communication. Waveland
Press.
Hesse, F., Care, E., Buder, J., Sassenberg, K., & Griffin, P. (2015). A framework for
teachable collaborative problem solving skills. In Assessment and teaching of 21st
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Korzeniewska, A., & Wierzchowska, K. (2016). Performance measurement and high team
performance building using the Prism Team Performance Diagnostic,". Annals of
Marketing Management & Economics, 2(2), 73-88.
Raziq, A., & Maulabakhsh, R. (2015). Impact of working environment on job
satisfaction. Procedia Economics and Finance, 23, 717-725.