Franchise
→
Blog
→
Team in management: structure and principles

5 minutes of reading

Team in management: structure and principles

In the article we consider key aspects of team formation and functioning in management. We explore the unique features of teams at different stages of their development and analyze the pros and cons of teamwork together with popular authors and doctors of psychological sciences.

Content

What is the essential difference between a team and a group?
How a team can turn into a group and vice versa
Features of a team at the stages of its development
Pros and cons of teamwork
How to build a productive team
Roles in a team according to Meredith Belbin
Team - a condition for progress

21.08.2024

Team in management: structure and principles

Friedrich Engels - politician

❝ Where there is no community of interests, there can be neither unity of goals nor unity of actions for the benefit of the entire community of people. ❞

In short, a team in management is an association of people aimed at achieving a common goal. Team members are assigned specific roles, responsibilities, and duties, and each member's job is to live up to them while working toward a common goal.

But building a balanced, integral, harmonious and effective team is a task that requires considerable knowledge, effort and time. How exactly is a team structured, what are the roles of its members, what are the advantages of working in a team, and is the effort spent on organizing it really worth it? Let's figure it out now.

What is the essential difference between a team and a group?

Tadeusz Kotarbiński - philosopher

❝ Even to fight for individual rights, it is necessary to create a collective. ❞

A group is usually called a number of people united according to some characteristic. For example, this sign could actually be working on the same project. But the structure, goals and mechanisms of work of such a group will be extremely different from working in a team. The following are the key differences between a team and a work group:

The group, as a rule, consists of people who are unfamiliar or completely unfamiliar to each other, who sometimes intersect when performing their tasks. Their work does not depend on the actions of other group members; they perform individual tasks.
In a team, the participants are united by a common goal and responsibility, each team member is interested in completing the assigned task, the participants actively work together and are committed to long-term interaction, and also build friendly relationships.

Read also!

Intangible motivation of employees

Rules of business correspondence

How a team can turn into a group and vice versa

Patrick Lencioni - business coach

❝ Any long-term relationship requires constructive conflict to develop. This applies to marriage, partnerships, friendships and, of course, business. ❞

Patrick Lencioni, a popular author in the genre of business fiction, in his bestseller “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” described the mechanisms of the flow of a group into a team and vice versa. In order for a group to turn into a team, it is necessary to unite its members with a common goal, distribute tasks and responsibilities.

But sometimes a full-fledged team can disband into a group. Lencioni described five reasons for this transformation:

Mistrust. If team members do not trust each other, then misunderstandings will often arise: someone will hush up work problems, someone will not express their opinion, etc.
Fear of conflict. Disputes when working in a team are an organic part of this formation. As we know, truth is born in disputes. But in order for this to happen, conflicts must be resolved correctly: do not get personal, allow each team member to speak, and organize general meetings.
Irresponsibility. A responsible approach to completing tasks can be ensured by preparing the team: discussing risks and reactions to their implementation, setting deadlines, discretely distributing tasks, etc. This helps reduce anxiety as participants mentally prepare for possible failures.
Undemanding. Some people are characterized by being undemanding even towards themselves, not to mention their comrades in the project. In this case, it will be useful to introduce a team reward system, which will motivate the team to complete tasks smoothly and on time, so as not to let themselves and each other down.
Indifference to the result. The final goal of the project may not be sufficiently motivating for the employee. In this case, it is necessary to develop a system of individual KPIs - performance indicators (comfort, salary, schedule) that employees consider important for themselves. In the future, these indicators can be used to motivate team members.

Features of a team at the stages of its development

Albert Einstein - physicist

❝ We cannot solve a problem with the same way of thinking that created it. ❞

Clare William Graves, an American psychologist, described the supposed stages of development of man and society in his theory of Spiral Dynamics. He argued that throughout his life a person develops in a spiral, at each new turn of which the level of thinking and behavior changes.

The Graves Spiral, with similar stages of development, is also applicable in a team: it allows the leader to understand which stage each participant and the team as a whole are at, as well as what level they should strive for. Below is a little more detail about the stages:

Beige stage (Survival): the main motivation is survival, and each participant is focused on himself and his safety.
Purple stage (Family): trust and a sense of security are important. Often in such a team there are relationships that are closer than work relationships.
Red stage (Strength): the team has a leader who has power and strength, he protects the team from an aggressive environment. Characterized by a clear division into “us” and “strangers”.
Blue stage (Order and rules): the team values stability, order, transparency and predictability. The decision-making system is also characterized by clumsiness.
Orange stage (Result): the team is focused on achieving productivity and success by working systematically and rationally.
Green stage (Unification): the team tends to build a strong ideology, the tasks are often quite existential in nature (what contribution do we bring to the world?). Such a team is characterized by awareness and freedom.
Yellow Stage (Development): The team is dominated by ideas of internal and external innovation, inventing new ways of working and maximizing creativity.
Turquoise stage (Globalism and evolution): the highest stage, the ideal to strive for. Being at the forefront of progress in many, many areas of activity, work dedicated to creation and development, charity and helping others. For example, Google is at the turquoise stage.

Pros and cons of teamwork

Ken Blanchard - writer

❝ None of us are as smart as all of us together ❞

Teamwork is obviously more productive and effective for a number of reasons:

it is an exchange of experience and mutual learning among the participants,
a sense of involvement in a common cause, which has a positive effect on the emotional background,
the possibility of accomplishing large-scale projects that one person is not capable of doing,
high quality of the final work due to the distribution of responsibilities and the resulting synergy between the participants.

But for effective team activity it is also necessary to control and counteract the disadvantages of such association:

conflicts arising during work,
unbalanced team, which results in slow work,
“clinging” to the work team, which may result in bias and violation of a personal value system.

Also, when working in a team for a long period of time, it is possible to immerse too deeply, after which it may be difficult for the participants to join another team at the end of the project.

Read also!

How to make a business plan

Resume for an IT specialist

How to build a productive team

Mark Sanborn - writer

❝ In teamwork, silence is not golden, silence is death. ❞

There is a special algorithm for this:

Goal - Leadership - Team portrait - Selection of participants - Evaluation of results

A clear goal will allow participants to work in the same direction, rather than pulling the project in different directions. The main goal should be divided into intermediate ones, and a specific employee should be responsible for each task and the deadline for its implementation. This decomposition will allow you to control resource consumption and team workload.
A strong leader correctly understands the goals of the project and is able to clearly explain them to the team, and experience and knowledge will allow him to lead the team to success.
Proper distribution of roles, based on the strengths and weaknesses of team members, is an important principle of team work, because each member has a unique set of skills, some of which can be useful here and now, and some later.
Creating a job profile and selecting useful employees will help you understand what your team's strengths and weaknesses are. For teamwork to be effective, it is important to build the correct relationship between the professional, personal and psychological skills of its members. A little later we will dwell on the roles in the team in more detail.
Regular performance assessment serves as a timely indication of whether the team is moving in the right direction, allowing timely adjustments to be made and thereby increasing efficiency.

Team Roles by Meredith Belbin

Richard Templar - writer

❝ Diplomacy is the art of getting people to do what you want. ❞

Raymond Meredith Belbin is a doctor of psychology who has described a theoretical model of team roles. According to Belbin, team roles consist of three groups:

practical work,
people work,
intellectual work.

These teams include eight roles, but it is not necessary that all roles be represented by exactly eight people. The main thing is that team members complement each other, and if any of the roles is not fulfilled, the manager either takes it upon himself or finds a suitable team member from within. More details about team roles:

The soul of the team, motivator, team inspirer - empathic and diplomatic. Maintains a comfortable climate in the team, evaluates the emotional state of others, is indecisive and does not approach work structurally.
Coordinator, chairman - formal leader, distributes responsibilities, organizes work. Does not dive too deeply into the work process and can be indecisive in a stressful situation.
Idea Generator - Thinks outside the box, creates approaches and solves complex problems. Ignores minor details and has difficulty focusing on one task.
A collector of ideas, a resource researcher - sociable, able to find contacts, connects the team with external groups. Sometimes he loses interest in the work of the team and moves away from it, because he is often outside of it.
The strategist-analyst is reasonable, always accurate in judgment, thinks strategically, but is weak in communication and is not able to involve and inspire people.
Shaper, controller - motivator, locomotive, able to overcome difficult obstacles, but often demanding, unempathetic and hurts the feelings of others.
A pedant, a specialist - brings things to an end, identifies mistakes and thoroughly criticizes the work of others. Completes everything on time, but is prone to increased anxiety and cannot cope with the fast pace. Unable to delegate responsibilities.
Implementer - turns ideas into real actions, has little initiative, is not too flexible and takes a long time to accept innovations.

Team is a condition for progress

Michael Jordan - basketball player

❝ Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships ❞

Ultimately, the entire human civilization owes its existence only to the fact that we humans know how to unite for the benefit of a common goal, to work in a team, together. So, the question of the advisability of forming a team when carrying out a large-scale project does not even arise.

Forming a team is undoubtedly the most useful aspect of successfully completing a task, and its proper construction and competent management is not just one of the most popular activities in the labor market, steadily maintaining its position for decades, starting with the industrial revolution. In a major task, success is impossible without progress, progress is impossible without a team.