Common Barriers to the Successful Functioning of High-Performing Teams
February 12, 2025
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The key to the success of the High-Performance Teams is determined by the composition of the members of the team. The team members represent diverse functional, cultural and social backgrounds, who collaborate to achieve specific goals under pre-defined deadlines and resource limitations. The team members can be categorised into five types by the variations in the personalities:
Various High-Performance Teams differ from each other in terms of the duration, goals or objectives of coming together and also the very purpose of their existence. Such teams can be mainly grouped into five broad categories:
Self-Managed teams essentially comprise a group of team members who are responsible for almost all the kinds of functional and managerial responsibilities required for delivering specific work outcomes or realisation of the project goals.
The administrative and technical responsibilities are rotated amongst the team members and the team members mainly play the role of the facilitators and carry out the supporting work for example planning, facilitation and scheduling of the workflow.
Self-Managed teams are essentially autonomous in terms of discharging their responsibilities and management of the team members. Such groups are more productive and deliver exceptional outcomes because the team composition comprises of the members who are experts or specialists in their respective fields and can efficiently handle both technical and managerial nature of work.
Parallel teams enjoy limited authority and can only offer recommendations for improvement or creative problem-solving. Examples of this type of groups could be quality circles, quality improvement teams, task forces, etc.
The nature of work of the project teams is not repetitive or redundant. Instead, it involves a significant application of the specialised skills and expertise for fulfilling the project goals. Such units comprise of members having specialised skills and representing diverse disciplines or functional backgrounds.
Depending on the nature of the assigned projects, a project team can take the form of a cross-functional team, matrix team or a contract team.
A cross-functional team comprises a group of team members from various functional departments or different fields of specialisation coming together to take care of a project assignment with pre-defined timelines. The members of the team can be deployed on a full-time or a part-time basis and once the task is accomplished the team is disbanded.
In matrix teams, an individual may report to two bosses at the same time for two different nature of responsibilities associated with the project. While in case of contract teams, a part of the project assignment which is outsourced to the external vendors is supervised by the project manager who ensures that the project objectives are met within the stipulated deadlines and resources.
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