Communication For Teams

Running head: Communication for Teams

Communication for Teams

Timothy R. Hines

Michelle L. Murphy

BSBACC

University of Phoenix

Introduction

What makes a team different from just a group of people in the same place at the same time? Communication researchers Carl Larson and Frank LaFusto defined it by saying, "It is a sense of loyalty and dedication to the team. It is an unrestrained sense of excitement and enthusiasm about the team. It is a willingness to do anything that has to be done to help the team succeed. It is an intense identification with a group of people. It is a loss of self. "Unified commitment" is very difficult to understand unless you've experienced it. And even if you have experienced it, it is difficult to put into words (Adler, p. 249)." To make a team, is more than just getting people together for a common goal. The most important aspect of a team is communication.

In exploring communication within a team, it is important to understand how communication plays a role in the process of a task. Over the years, it has become apparent that businesses and schools put more of an emphasis on working in teams. Management and teachers face their hardest task when beginning to form a team. It is vital to form a good working team, not only for the manager and teacher's reputation with the company or school board, but also for their reputation with their clients or students. How a team performs together, depending on the task could even mean the difference between staying in business and having to close the business.

Communication is the biggest attribute in how well a team performs their given task. It is more important today to know how to effectively communicate with your team mates from the beginning of a task, right through to the end, which can be in the form of a verbal or written presentation or until the situation for which the team was created has been resolved.

There are five important stages you must consider once you have decided that a team will need to be formed. The first is deciding who the team members should be based on the way they communicate. The second is how they can put communication to work for them to get to know one another. The third is how they will use communication on the team project. The fourth is how the team members use communication to resolve or avoid conflict. And the last thing is how communication of the team mates will affect the final presentation. During each of these team stages, communication is vital. There are many ways to communicate and the first thing to consider is who should become a member of the team

In some businesses as well as schools, it is becoming more common to create teams are working together entirely in a virtual environment. This means that the communication involves a great deal of email, phone calls and instant messaging. It is also important to ensure that you have selected the right team members for this type of team as well as a traditional team that will have face-to-face meetings. Jackie Damrau states that "selecting the right team members is similar to selecting job applicants (Damrau, p.12)." For many of the virtual teams, you will use the same concepts you would use for a regular team.

Getting Started- Forming a team

There are a variety of things to consider when creating a team. The first thing to consider, of course, is how well do you know your employees? If you know how well your employees communicate with one another then you may already have an idea of whom you want to be in the team. There are however other things to consider when selecting your team, even if you think you know your employees very well. According to a classroom survey with Mark McCafferty's "Communication in the Workplace" students, some of the vital attributes to look for in a team member are: the ability to get along with others, the listening skills of possible members, the ability to hold back certain inappropriate comments when necessary, the professional attitude of possible team members and the ability to work well with others.

The ability to work well with others is different from the ability to get along with others. One may be able to get along with others, but may have difficulties working together due to differences of work ethics; therefore making it important to consider the work ethics of everyone being considered for the team. Listening skills are also vital to team members as in order to make the team work well together, it is important that the team members know how to listen to one another and consider all possibilities no matter how different he or she may seem. The ability to hold back inappropriate comments is also very important as people are very different from one another and what may seem normal to one person sound like something far fetched to another. A team member's professional attitude is also important as it could be a matter of how the work is divided among team members or whether or not there will be people on the team who do not do any work at all while others do most of it themselves.

There are other things to consider when forming a team. For example, the manager should also consider whether the team members generally have the same or similar shared norms or values. If there is a wide variation of norms among team members, it could hurt the team rather than help the team thrive (Adler, p. 275).

A manager should also take into consideration that among his or her employees, there are usually two types of groups, the first is a formal group which is formed by management and the second is an informal group, which usually "evolve out of employees' need for social interaction, friendship, communication, and status (Mosley, p. 263)." Often with informal groups, the informal leader may receive more allegiance than the formal manager (Mosley, p. 263). This may mean that no matter who is leading the team, if the team chooses an informal leader, that leader may be able to sway the team members to do as they requested rather than as the manager requested.

Getting to Know One Another

Once a manager has decided who the team members should be and has officially formed the team, there is the getting to know each other stage. This stage can also be called the forming stage, as it "is the stage in which members first come together

...