Assignment 1: Teamwork=Creativity+Trust (Updated)

WRITTEN BY:

CHEN XIAONI, Renee 53635420

LUI LAIKING, Kimmy 53970571

WU XIAOXU, Effie 53659791

A collaborative team is the interaction of involving people work together by sharing opinions and knowledge. To build up mutual trust, enhance creativity and impact positively on the quality of working life for virtual team members become familiarity, honesty and full participation harness the collective expertise of the team. Exercise A1 and A2 reveal two completely different trust management types, one is characterized by low levels of trust while the other is high-trust work environment.

-Exercise A1 presentation/product tended to be marketable

Low trust 

The management types, the supervisor instruct the rest of the team on what is the next direction to proceed with the script writing process.” and “No team member is allowed to talk without the permission to speak from the supervisor.” This means the team members of this company can only receive information or idea from one supervisor. What’s more, this information or idea will be filtered by supervisor firstly. Poor and indirect communication creates suspicion and information loss.

Lack of creativity 

Because of the existing of the supervisor role and the bureaucratic reporting and feedback system, group members are not motivated for brainstorming. Especially due to the criticism every time after speaking, group members are less willing to speak out their own idea and thoughts. It seems the supervisor is the only one who can make decisions.

Low teamwork spirit 

The subordinates never know what next direction that they are going to involve. They feel difficulty to achieve the group’s goal with ambiguous vision.  Group members not allowed laughing during working hours, everyone just focuses on his/her own responsibility without interaction, information is passed to team members strictly on a need to know basis, team environment eventually becomes silence with low creativity, since subordinates can’t develop themselves by giving the opportunities to contribute and build on ideas from the team. Furthermore, the leader decides to present individually that may not be able to reflect the team effectively attract audiences. 

Assume the above aspects in low level status that cause the team subordinates lack of autonomy, while a team leader has high level of responsibility to lead the team by job allocation and dedication. We can find the advantages of centralization of authority in leadership style. Personal leadership not only facilitates a quick action by his/her owns decision making, without spending more time to vote for majority, but also improves the quality of work that letting subordinates to follow the standardized procedures in a better supervisory manner. As a result, a group could have better coordination among various operations because of direct control and supervision are facilitated to eliminate likelihood of conflict of authority and duplication of work. Indeed, a leader who should have clear mission so as to make use of what capabilities and resources that he/she is given for the team to implement the project successfully. By adopted Ladder of inference, being a good leader, who should avoid bias and selective manner when driving the team members to get through the project, instead, to provide evidence or state out what solid experiences that he/she has come across previously. Try not to frustrate the subordinates improperly, as they further not willing to devote themselves for the team or propose the idea just want to cater the leader’s thought as their personal goals.

-Exercise A2 presentation/product tended to be creative

High trust 

“Everyone must have the freedom to communicate with everyone.” When employee knows they have the right and the opportunity to communicate with colleagues and boss exactly, they can receive the feeling of supportive and comfortable and thus been motivated from company.

High creativity 

Each group member has the equal rights to speak out, to challenge and to be involved in final dictions. In this kind of democratic atmosphere, group members showed their great activity and motivation in brainstorming. After the collision of thought, it was the best idea that decided the final decision.

High teamwork spirit  

There is high trust in group goals among all team members. Everyone has freedom to communicate with each other to generate different ideas as possible.  They are encouraged to bring out their own ideas via the brainstorming, not only actively and openly share their knowledge and ideas around the whole team, but also accept the criticism from others when proposing the ideas. Letting each member to have high participation by greater clarity in expressing ideas through group discussion can help developing of team goals with creativity.

Seems case A2 is most likely under decentralization management, as there is no leader to lead the group. Hence, it may cause of disadvantages in lacking of co-operation and coordination. Meanwhile, decision making becomes time consuming, everyone just believes his/her own decision is the best, rather than accepts or compromises the final decision from different points of view. They eventually need taking time to vote for majority. In addition, individual competition among group members by increasing conflicts, or even a small peer group dominates the project without getting others' acceptance.  There is costly duplication of work in such activities, processes and outcomes; those may impact economy of scale. Especially, when the organization is still finding a new market to be developed and penetrated or new products to be launched, decentralization is not always a good strategy to adopt from the very first beginning. Which just like a new product is lacking the assessment reviewed by hierarchy managerial levels, the risks of getting mistake become higher or even the new product that can prove to be costly, however, group members should not only focus how creative on their product design, they ought to arrange job allocation to complete the certain parts piece by pice, then come up with a whole by getting the synergy effect.    

 

Conclusion

Successful teams are characterized by a team spirit based around trust, mutual respect that bringing people together work effectively as a team or make appropriates decisions. It also can help improve participants’ confidence, attitudes, motivation and personal satisfaction. To streamline team forces by taking pooling experience and expertise to achieve goal in more efficient use of resources. 

In applying the cases of A1 & A2 to make comparison between their leadership styles, there is no absolute way to define which one is better. As long as depending on how the leader manages his/her team to work under different circumstances, in fact, each leader upholds his/her own leadership style that must be existing pros and cons situations.

References

1. Sanduo Zhou, Chuanming Chen, Minghong Lu. Management Principle and Method. 4th Edition. Shanghai: Fudan University Press; 2008.
2. Xueming Yang, Talking about the trust management of staff in a corporate. http://wenku.baidu.com/view/40ce251dfad6195f312ba63f.html (accessed 06 Jan 2011)
3. Robert F. Hurley, The Decision to Trust. Harvard Business Review Article, 2009, R0609B: 55-62.
4. Constructing excellence Company. Effective Teamwork: A Best Practice Guide for the Construction Industry. Http://212.69.36.161/pdf/document/Teamwork_Guide.pdf?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter (accessed Mar 2004)
5. Teresa M. Amabile, How to Kill Creativity. Harvard Business Review Article, 1998