Dear Mr. Tony Marshall,
First, we would like to thank you for the opportunity that you have provided for Miracle Consulting Incorporated. As you already know, there are several major issues within your team and with these issues, your team will not function to its potential. Your team is composed of people with different backgrounds and therefore will have different values and methods for how they work in a team. However, a diverse group can be beneficial since it can bring in a “greater number of ideas, perspectives, knowledge and skills” (Langton 236). The issues, though big and important, are not impossible to resolve. If you decide follow our recommendations, we believe that your team will not only see an improvement in productivity, but also a stronger team efficacy.
Issues & Analysis
Issue 1: Disorganized Meetings
Your group does not have defined goals. A lack of goals can cause team members to lose motivation. Also, since your group’s meetings are not structured, there is a substantial amount of time wasted during disagreements about what should be accomplished next. The issue became apparent when Delery disagreed about doing takeaways for each meeting claiming that the group never agreed to do it every time and that time could be used more efficiently.
Issue 2: Bad Relationships
Currently, many essential team skills are missing within your group such as trust and respect. Often, individuals resist any changes because they do not trust the person initiating it (Langton 548). Without trust, the level of effort towards the project could decrease due to members feeling that they are being treated inequitably. Without respect, group members can begin to feel disrespected and therefore, compromise any trust that was built before (Ray). This is best seen when Onyealisi fails to preread the case and Delery votes against dividing up the work because he believes he would have to redo Onyealisi’s part.
Your group has bad relationships on both an individual level as well as within a team. By looking at the big five traits that influence organizational behavior, it is apparent the traits of agreeableness and openness are missing from some individuals. These are relevant to your team because when members challenge others’ ideas and handle the process poorly this can lead to frustration and poor team performance. Griffin and Cooper display this when they constantly bicker and question each other’s standpoints when in actuality they argue about the same ideas.
Issue 3: Norms
Since your group has undefined behavioural expectations this can lead to bad norms, which ultimately will lead to inefficiency. Bad norms can cause a variety of problems such as tardiness or poor team interaction. One instance of this was when Onyealisi was late to the meeting and other group members were unaware if he was coming or not. Not only is this an example of the lack of communication between your group, but also this critical event can create a bad norm of being late. Furthermore, if the group continues to neglect addressing unacceptable behaviour this can lead to multiple bad norms, which can create group conflict. The second instance of potential bad norms forming is when Onyealisi comes to the meeting unprepared. By failing to read the case prior to the meeting this prevented Onyealisi from contributing meaningful ideas to the group. This issue can tie into continuance commitment as he has no passion about the group study and always exhibits a negative attitude.
Alternatives
A possible recommendation was to use Robert’s Rule during meetings to help facilitate and keep order. However, we realized this may be too time consuming and limit the closeness between the team as it would create a more formal setting.
Another possible recommendation was to have the group attend team training. By participating in workshops that aim to build collaboration, reliability, and communication, these strong teamwork traits can be applied to their meetings to ensure a more cohesive and productive use of their time. However, we do recognize this recommendation is also very time consuming and may not work if one of the members is unavailable or refuses to attend because of the already existing intrapersonal conflicts.
Solutions
Recommendation 1: Agenda
Our recommendation is to create an agenda for each meeting, with a list of goals that you wish the group should accomplish by the end of each meeting. By creating an agenda, everyone in the group know what to expect each meeting and this would use the allotted time more efficiently. However, for this solution to be effective, the goals would need to follow the SMART criteria. By settling short-term SMART goals such as assigning one member to write up a section by the next meeting, this can help build the team’s efficacy and allow them to rebuild their trust and confidence as a team.
Recommendation 2: Team Dinner or Outing
According to The Five-Stage Model, we believe that your group is currently in the storming phase, however, because of continuous intragroup conflict, we believe that your team should go back to the forming stage before moving up. In order to do this, we recommend that your group should schedule biweekly team outings at a sports bar or restaurant. This is because you have indicated that all the team members are athletic and therefore, we believe that this common interest can be something they bond over. By spending time outside of the classroom, your team can increase their cohesiveness. Alongside the recommendation of the agenda, your team would be at the high cohesiveness and high performance norms quadrant of the relationship matrix, which leads to high productivity.
Recommendation 3: Collectively Setting Team Norms to Abide
In order to have an effective team, you should address pressing issues such as being unprepared for meetings and tardiness, as these have the possibility of becoming bad norms. Norms typically develop gradually as group members learn what behaviors are necessary for the team to function effectively (Langton 222). By collectively deciding the acceptable behaviour for attendance, cellphone usage, attentiveness, and preparedness, this will help meetings go over smoothly and more productively. We propose your team creates a list of norms they all agree upon so conflict and inefficiency will be avoided in future meetings. Furthermore, in the process of group work, we suggest having a team self-evaluation to examine team effectiveness and whether or not everyone has followed the set norms. If positive norms are set in place and followed through, you will have a much better environment of learning and communicating.
Conclusion
Based on what we saw, we believe that your group has great potential to work well, especially because of the group’s diversity. However, we believe that your group definitely has some issues. These issues, though troublesome, can easily be resolved through our recommendations. Our recommendations are not only effective, but they can be easily implemented and used within a short time frame. Furthermore, our recommendations require little to no cost.
Works Cited
Bruce Tuckman’s Model of Group Development. Leadership and Teambuilding. Web. 24 Jan.
2015. <http://wheatoncollege.edu/sail/leadership/student-involvement-handbook/strengthening-
group/leadership-teambuilding/>
Langton, Nancy, Stephen P. Robbins, and Timothy A. Judge, eds. Organizational Behaviour:
Concepts, Controversies, Applications. Fifth Canadian Edition. Toronto, Ontario: Pearson, 2010.
Print.
“PTO Today: Robert’s Rules for Beginners (color).” PTO Today. School Family Media Inc, 11
Dec. 2007. Web. 1 Feb. 2015. <http://www.ptotoday.com/filesharing/document/61-pto-today-
roberts-rules-for-beginners-color>.
Ray, Linda. “The Effects of a Lack of Respect in the Workplace.” The Nest. N.p., n.d. Web. 1
Feb. 2015. <woman.thenest.com/effects-lack-respect-workplace-4633.html>.
Robbins, Stephen P. “Organizational Behaviour 16th Edition Powerpoint Slides.” Online posting. Chapter 5: Personality and Values. Pearson Education, n.d. Web. 26 Jan. 2015.
SMART Criteria. Digital image. Measuring Results – Sustainable Development – Environment Canada. Government of Canada, 27 June 2013. Web. 30 Jan. 2015. <http://www.ec.gc.ca/dd- sd/default.asp?lang=en&n=FE4918AA-1>.