Getting the Group to Work as a Team: A Mini Case Study
From the Thoughts on Project Management Blog
by Gina Abudi
Articles will focus on the the people-side of project management - team leadership, communication, virtual teams, change management and cultural diversity.
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Martha has been assigned a team of 10 people to help her plan a major customer appreciation event. They have been working together for over a month now and they just haven’t really come together as a team. She was sure she started off well. She contacted each individual on the team and let them know their responsibilities on the project.
Each of the members gets the tasks completed, but don’t seem concerned with the others on the team. If someone needs help, no one pitches in to assist. If a team member has a problem, no one helps him to solve that problem. Just yesterday one of the team members had an emergency and asked if someone on the team could have a call with the sales team so she could leave early. No one offered to help so Martha jumped in to assist. Martha had to do something. This was a bad experience for everyone frankly and some folks already were talking about getting off the project. Plus she felt the event won’t be as good as it could if they just came together as a team.
Here is what Martha should have done: Martha never got the team together prior to starting the project to get to know each other and discuss how they will work together to accomplish the goals of the project. She could have done this by getting the time in one location or even using a virtual tool. In order to get the group to come together as a team now, Martha might step back and hold a team building session. During this time she should plan to accomplish the following:
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Enable for time for team members to build relationships by getting to know each other on a personal level
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Develop processes and procedures for how the team will: share work, meet the objectives of the project, solve problems and resolve conflicts and make decisions
When the team members get to know each other, they will begin to support each other and will be more concerned about their team mates. Bottom line, they will function as a team.
Posted on: November 07, 2015 04:47 PM |
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Comments (6)
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Andreia Reis
PMO Coordenator| Adimax Indústria e Comércio de Alimentos
Mairinque, São Paulo, Brazil
Thank you for sharing, is a big challenges to Project Manager, in this case will be necessary use the technic of conflict resolution and skill of comunication and choose the best strategic to dealing with team. In my point of view this team have never Team work , because they think individually.
This is an interesting subject for discussion and also to learn more about how dealing with team.
Great Approach.
Best Regards
rachel town
Kent State University Ashtabula
Ashtabula, Oh, United States
Great topic! Thank you sharing! I am currently working on a project with a group of 8. Based on my personal reflection of how the project has been progressing, I have to agree with you. As the project is nearing completion I am able to assess that prior to phase one we should have established ourselves as a team and gotten to know each other better. Our communication was there however, it was in about four different areas (phone calls, Skype, GoogleGroups, e-mail). We should have established a better process for communication and procedure for meeting our requirements. This was another issue some team members were not 100% on what the deliverables actually were and consequently felt intimidated by directly asking the phase leader to clear things up.
Best regards!
DEBASIS CHAKRABARTI
General Manager & Country Operations Head - Burundi Africa| Kalpataru Power Transmission Limited
Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Nice article, Gina.
Martha''s team members seem to suffer from "bystander apathy" where one team member does not offer help to another in trouble. It might happen if the team in large, which, probably is not applicable in Martha''s case. There are other factors like ambiguity, where one team member is not sure if its worth helping the member in need; or if the team member is unsure about his/her own ability to help (cross functional training might help here). There might be diffusion of responsibility (X is more qualified to support Y than Z, so if X is not helping, why should Z?). Then there is group cohesiveness (or lack of it).
Matrha''s approach seem to address the last one, but she might think about addressing the other issues as well.
Thanks again for sharing, Gina.
Manas De Amin
Director| Computer Technology Group Kolkata
Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Nice article, Gina.
Not knowing each other professionally and personally often gives rise to such problem. Debasis has pointed out this brilliantly.
Organisation culture too can be the culprit.
PANKAJ KUMAR JOSHI
General Manager| Transrail Lighting Limited
Nainital, Uttrakhand, India
very good case study.
What Martha did in that case is also a part of leadership. This will motivate others in future.
It depends on project time period also .
If it is a short time project, it is not necessary to waste time in team building unless there are serious issues. It is possible that project manager can assign someone else the responsibility.
Good Gina.
This is a good representation of bad communication. Since the very first day, Martha was supposed to get together the team and take the time to know them one by one and and let them know each other as well.
But I desagree with something you mention in your article: "She could have done this by getting the time in one location or even using a virtual tool". In my opinion, using a virtual tool could be useful after the first face-to-face meeting, unless you are in another location and a virtual conference be mandatory. In any case this reading is really interesting and show a scenario that usually happen.
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