Regardless, if miscommunication based in cultural misunderstandings begins to fester and cause conflicts on the team, the greater goals of the organization cannot be realized, nor can the maximum effectiveness of teams. "Assuming you don't have team members who are overtly prejudiced against other cultures or nationalities, you could still face the challenge of strongly ingrained belief systems and expectations" (Adamson 2012)
"For those in the 'in crowd,' there may be a sense of community and intimacy. For those in the 'out crowd' however, there may be a sense of isolation, loneliness and even bitterness" (Friedman 2005)
However, there is the problem of team unity, which is often far more difficult to generate on a diverse team. "Diverse teams are prone to dysfunction because the very differences that feed creativity and high performance can also create communication barriers" (Polzer 2008)
Both teams want closure on product designs, yet the concept of just what closure is varies significantly between each. Internal team functions of task and relational requirements must be balanced to the environmental factors of team leadership for any team to achieve tis objectives (Bucic, Robinson, Ramburuth, 238)
In the case of a new product introduction, the task factors include entirely different perspectives and mindsets of priorities. The ability of a team leader to intermediate priorities across project teams and still accomplish a strategic goal is evidence of transformational leadership (Eisenbeiss, 1438)
This leadership strategy made the marketability a shared goal, and also made the actual performance of the printer in this environment immediately known. Using this technique, the project leader had galvanized both teams to a common goal and created a higher level of team effectiveness by seeking to balance task, relational and environmental factors in a single leadership strategy (Hui-Ling, Yu-Hsuan, 47)
This also gave each team an opportunity to work with the other and appreciate the perspective of added features and product quality, two areas engineering had deep personal commitment to, and sales achievement, what marketing wanted. The use of the Team Leadership Management creates a framework that trust can be created upon when a leader seeks to balance internal and external factors, often serving as pressure points, on a cross-functional or multifaceted team (Keiser, Nancy, Maureen Kincaid, and Kristine Servais, 20)
The external factor of time being so critical, with the product introduction date announced to shareholders and the CEO guaranteeing the date, put immense pressure on everyone in the company to meet it. Only through the use of transformational leadership strategies including participative decision making and share vision of final outcomes, two best practices of the Team Leadership Model (Vandewaerde, 419) did the project succeed in meeting its deadline
The first point made by McGarvey is that virtual teams are not suitable for every person. Specifically, McGarvey notes that they are not suitable for hands-on tasks and not suitable for projects that require "high sensitivity to nuances that are easy to miss when face-to-face contact is lacking" (McGarvey 1997, p
It will, therefore, be more effective to use a collaborative approach that will enable him to view me as a team member instead of authoritative figure. This approach is based on the followership theory of leadership, which assumes that the effectiveness of a leader is indicated by the quality of the followers (Adeniyi, 2007)
To this end, this paper reviews the relevant literature concerning the team decision-making process in general and some of the common types of pitfalls that can reasonably be expected to be encountered in any organizational setting. Finally, a discussion concerning the manner in which the difficulties involved in the team decision-making process have been further exacerbated by today's diverse, multicultural teams is followed by a summary of the research and important findings concerning these issues in the paper's conclusion Review and Discussion The Team Decision-Making Process in General There is a growing body of evidence that the decisions that are made by teams generally result in organizational performance gain compared to decisions made by individuals acting alone (Bedard & Maroney, 2009)
This may or may not be a full-time team membership role, but Petty recommends including this role to ensure that groupthink is not allowed to erode the quality of the decision-making process by verbalizing the negative aspects of proposed solutions. While these steps can help mitigate the impact of groupthink on the team decision-making process, other common pitfalls that face team leaders today include the problems that are commonly associated with so-called "virtual teams" where members rarely or never actually meet face-to-face but rather must rely on telecommunications technologies for collaboration and decision making (Brandt & England, 2009)
Although every team is unique, there are some common approaches that are used by teams to make decisions today, including the following: An individual on the team can make the decision based on his/her own information (commonly termed "a command decision"). An individual on the team can make the decision based on input from other team members (commonly termed "a consultative decision"); The team can vote and base the decision on the majority; The team can work together to decide on an option that everyone can support and this is the most common team decision (commonly termed a "consensus decision"; and, The team can get everyone to agree on one option so they have unanimous agreement (Kessler, 1995, p
Lengthen the discussion phase. Despite the need to reach a consensus in a cost-effective fashion, it is also important to allow team members and external authorities to provide their feedback and to take this feedback into consideration (Petty recommends the "Six Hats Thinking" method to facilitate collaboration among team members)