Effective Team Working: Report for Wales Trinity Saint David, London

This report examines the importance of effective team working for achieving team success, focusing on how to develop an effective team, the impact of teamwork on success, potential barriers, and the different roles individuals play within a team. It references Tuckman's theory of team development, detailing the forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning stages. The report also highlights the benefits of effective teamwork, such as enhanced cooperation, widened horizons, learning opportunities, and a positive environment. Barriers like unclear purpose, dominance, poor performance, and conflicts are discussed, along with essential team roles like plant, resource investigator, coordinator, shaper, implementer, team worker, monitor/evaluator, completer/finisher, specialist, and leaders/mentors. The report emphasizes the significance of clear roles and leadership in fostering a positive and productive team environment within an institution like the University of Wales Trinity Saint David.

Effective Team
working for team
success

Executive Summary
The main purpose of this report is to understand the importance of an effective team which could
benefit individuals in getting successful outcomes. The aim is to know how an effective could be
formed along with how its working could impact the success of team. The report also analyse
what barriers an effective team could face and what roles individuals play while forming a team.

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
How students can develop an effective team.........................................................................1
The impact effective team working can have for team success ............................................2
Barriers to effective teamwork ..............................................................................................3
The types of roles that are needed to create a cohesive and effective team...........................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Effective team is defined as the group of people who have capability to achieve certain
task and objective in a specific time period. Effective team is the backbone of every organisation
as it helps them in accomplishing goals and enhance profitability (Kozlowski and Bell, 2019).
Every individual who is a member of team is responsible for their success as a team. University
of Wales Trinity Saint David was established in the year 2010 in London and has an aim to
transform student's lives who are connected with them. The university has diversity in its campus
as students belongs to different gender, age, demographics, experience and background. The
following report covers how students could develop an effective team along with its impacts of
team success. Furthermore, the barriers an effective team could face have also been explained.
The last section of this report focus on different types of roles that will be required to create
cohesive and effective team.
MAIN BODY
How students can develop an effective team
Effective team of students help them in accomplishing their objectives in certain time
period and also assist them in learning new skills from each other. For students, to create a strong
effective team, the Tuckman's theory could be applied.
Tuckman's theory
This theory defines the journey of an effective team from its initial formation to how it
accomplishes their objectives (Warburton and Ryan, 2018). This theory was given by Bruce
Tuckman who explained that team development has to go through five stages to become an
effective team. The five stages of this theory has been described below in detail:
Forming: This is the first stage of this theory according to which a leader selects
different individuals to form a team and assigns them a task. The team members at this phase
behave politely with each other and are excited about what they will do in future. As the roles of
people are not defined yet, the mentor has to direct them.
Storming: At this stage team members start addressing the given task by presenting their
opinions and suggestions in front of each other. Conflicts between team members might arise
when they will have different perspective of achieving their objective. If this situation is not
managed correctly by the leader then it might become destructive for team. In this phase, either
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team members build their relationships or become against each other. In worst scenarios, team
could be stuck in this phase if conflicts are not resolved properly.
Norming: When the team pass the storming phase by resolving their conflicts, they enter
norming stage. At this stage, team members start recognising value of each other and appreciate
contribution of each individual in team (Stone and et. al., 2017). The team leaders at this phase
do not have to guide team on regular basis and members could take their responsibility towards
completion of task.
Performing: At this phase, every team member knows their roles and responsibilities as
well as have clear purpose. They put all their efforts and work with full potential to accomplish
its aim efficiently. Every team member is self-reliant and confident towards completing their
tasks without having supervision from their leaders. Team will be able to perform prominently
without any conflicts and misunderstandings.
Adjourning: This is the last stage of Tuckman's theory which was developed later and
was not mentioned in old model. According to this stage, team get splits when their objective has
been achieved by them in a specific period of time. This stage could also be called as mourning
phase as team members get separated from each other after working for long time which could
become difficult for them.
The impact effective team working can have for team success
An effective team has a major impact on the success of achieving objective and on team.
When every member of a team works together on same project, it helps them in improving their
skills, morale, productivity and quality of work (Pluhar and et. al., 2019). An effective working
by every team member could benefit them in various ways out of which some are discussed
below:
Enhance cooperation: Team members working together without any conflicts while
being cooperative with each other plays a major role in team success. Every member of a team
performs individually according to their skills but work together towards achieving common
goal. Working together as a team instead of competing with each other for personal appreciation
results to great accomplishment in future. For instance, students playing basketball as team
enhance their cooperation level as they pass the ball to other teammates for scoring better and to
win the game.
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Widens horizons: When an individual work separately, they only generate single
opinion over the assigned project. But when people work in a team, they get to know different
perspective of others which increase their productivity and results in better outcomes (Higgins
and et. al., 2018). For instance, the students of University of Wales Trinity Saint David comes
from different background and culture which provide them an opportunity to understand each
other as well as broadens their mind. Hence, when they work in team they also get a chance to
explore new skills and persuasions of others.
Learning opportunities: Each team member has different abilities, talent, skills,
experience and capabilities which helps them in learning new knowledge from each other. They
discover new ways of achieving objectives and learn from each other’s experience. Working as
an effective team offers an opportunity for teammates to improve their skills and enhance
confidence in team. For instance, students while working on same assignment gets a chance to
see different creativity of others which boost interpersonal relationships between them and team
achieve success.
Create positive environment: When people work as a team without having any
conflicts, it leads to positive environment (Hashmi, Ishak and Hassan, 2018). An effective will
develop a spirit of companionship, loyalty and partnership among teammates which shape the
culture of university. For instance, students of university working as a team boost their morale
and develop satisfaction as well as feeling of belonging in the campus.
Barriers to effective teamwork
Effective teamwork improves the interpersonal relationships between teammates and
encourage them to perform well to achieve success. But there are certain challenges that mentors
could face while creating an effective team. Some of the barriers are mentioned below in detail:
Unclear purpose: For making an effective it is very important to have a clear purpose,
but if teammates are not sure about what their objectives are then it might create confusion. This
will also lead to waste of time as the members of team are unable to move forward. Members
will struggle to begin their work which could result into floundering.
Dominance: Some of the team members might have a dominating personality that could
intrude other teammates. The dominant team member will try to control other team members
which could result in to tension within team. This could lead to bullying which decreases
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motivation of members and their productivity might get reduced. This will impact the success of
achieving goal and students will not execute their overall efforts.
Poor performance: Any person in a team might not be able to put all their efforts which
could impact the team success. Inability to perform is a result of poor guidance or lack of skills
required to accomplish given objective (Carter and et. al., 2019). To make an effective team, it is
very prominent that all members contribute their best to bring out best outcomes. Any person
performing poorly and ineffectively will lead to failure of achieving successful results.
Conflicts: Every person in a team has different approach and opinions towards
accomplishing same objective. Conflicts could also arise as a result of poor communication
among teammates. The disagreements could also develop as a result of personality clashes
because different team member might not compromise on same point. If each member does not
value or respect every person in a team then it canalso result into conflicts within team.
The types of roles that are needed to create a cohesive and effective team
To make an effective team, it is very important to assign clear roles to the team members
so that the aim could be achieved efficiently (Endriulaitienė and Cirtautienė, 2021). The roles
required to form an effective team are mentioned below:
Plant: This is an individual who give innovative ideas or thoughts of how work could be
done. They possess some personality traits such as intellectual, creativity and innovative. They
also give new ways to deal with problems arise while performing tasks.
Resource investigator: This member of the team explores resources, opportunities and
contacts to get the work done efficiently (Alotaibi and et. al., 2019). These people have very
good negotiation skills which help them in maintaining flexible environment within team.
Co-ordinator: This role is played by the person who is capable of clarifying goals and
encourages decision making within a team. The individual helps in assigning roles and
responsibilities to each team member. The skills these individuals possess are effective
communication and outstanding interpersonal abilities.
Shaper: This role is played by those individuals who have capability of pushing the team
to work towards objective with agreement. They are mostly focused and have dynamic
personality who always try to remove challenges a team could face.
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Implementer: This is a person who executed the given ideas and possess the ability to
convert discussions into practical approaches. They have capabilities of remain focus and
organise things properly to achieve success.
Team worker: These individuals motivate and support other members of the team to
perform better to achieve objectives. They also work as counsellor of team as they listen to every
person and try to understand their perspective.
Monitor or Evaluator: This is also a task oriented role which is played by those people
who can analyse the outcomes of team members' performance (Prain and et. al., 2021). The
person critically evaluates opinions, ideas, proposals and contribution of every teammate. After
evaluating every perspective, the individual carefully analyse their strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities and threats team could witness in future.
Completer or Finisher: They are the people who are concerned towards accomplishing
the target on a given time limit. They remain focused and pays attention on every aspect of the
project as they want to complete the task without any delays.
Specialist: These individuals possess some specific skills which are required to finish the
task effectively. They have technical skills or are expert in some field which are very important
for the success of the team. Their knowledgeable abilities help the team in achieving targets
easily.
Leaders or Mentors: Any team is incomplete without a leader as they are the people
who provides direction or guidance to team members. They provide easier solutions to achieve
targets easily and motivate members to perform well by supporting as well as appreciating them.
CONCLUSION
From the above mentioned discussion in the report, it has become clear that an effective
team plays a very important role in accomplishing targets easily. It is very important to build an
effective team in an institute in order to maintain a positive environment. It has been observed
that team diversity brings a lot of benefits for every person and also help them in improving their
personality. But making a team is not an easy task as it comes with various challenges as every
person in a team belong to diverse background and have different opinions. For forming an
effective team, mentors could apply Tuckman's theory model which will help them in
supervising team easily. It has also been evaluated that different teammates play various roles in
a team according to their skills which assist them achieving success.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Alotaibi, N. M. and et. al., 2019. Knowledge about and attitudes of interdisciplinary team
members toward occupational therapy practice: Implications and future directions.
Medical Principles and Practice, 28(2), pp.158-166.
Carter, K. M. and et. al., 2019. Reviewing work team design characteristics across industries:
Combining meta-analysis and comprehensive synthesis. Small group research, 50(1),
pp.138-188.
Endriulaitienė, A. and Cirtautienė, L., 2021. Team effectiveness in software development: the
role of personality and work factors. Verslas: teorija ir praktika= Business: theory &
practice. Vilnius: VGTU leidykla, 2021, Vol. 22, iss. 1.
Hashmi, A., Ishak, S. and Hassan, H.B., 2018. Role of team size as a contextual variable for the
relationship of transformational leadership and teamwork quality. Asian Journal of
Multidisciplinary Studies, 6(5), pp.76-81.
Higgins, T. C. and et. al., 2018. Team-Based Care Initiative Final Evaluation Report.
Kozlowski, S. W. and Bell, B. S., 2019. Evidence-based principles and strategies for optimizing
team functioning and performance in science teams. In Strategies for Team Science
Success (pp. 269-293). Springer, Cham.
Pluhar, E. and et. al., 2019. Team sport athletes may be less likely to suffer anxiety or depression
than individual sport athletes. Journal of sports science & medicine, 18(3), p.490.
Prain, V. and et. al., 2021. Team teaching in large spaces: three case studies framed by relational
agency. Teaching Education, pp.1-15.
Stone, B. and et. al., 2017. A multi-user computer-aided design competition: Experimental
findings and analysis of team-member dynamics. Journal of Computing and
Information Science in Engineering, 17(3).
Warburton, L. and Ryan, S., 2018. The Team Approach. ABC of Rheumatology, p.185.
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