Successful Team: Qualities, Aspects and Obstacles

Everyday teamwork is being utilized by everyone. It doesn’t matter what industry or across the world. Leaders are seeing the value of teamwork and what can be accomplished when people put their strengths together. These teams consist of people from different cultures with different personalities. Conflict is inevitable when it comes to group dynamics, but it is the resolution necessary to keep the group functioning efficiently. Examining what makes a team successful and at the same time what can obstruct a team.

Teams consist of personnel with varied backgrounds, experience, education, and intellectual ability. Therefore Teamwork cannot be demanded. The most meaningful part of the reading for me is in The Innovator’s DNA Chapter 9: Putting the innovator’s DNA into Practice-Process. The chapter analyzes the way of how successful teams can be by following certain business procedures. Apple has one of the best team innovators in their industry and this is what they look for ,”We wanted entrepreneur...high energy contributor who defined their previous roles in terms what they contributed and not what their titles were.” (Dyer et al. 2009. Pa 197). The reading talks about creating a team within companies, but finding a good balance to maintain it can be difficult at the same time. Other processes include associating, questioning, observing, and networking. All of these are involved to really see the details that goes into forming a team.

Teamwork is not all successful too, there are always conflict that arises. Julia Rozovsky is Google’s lead researcher who first struggled in finding a good team with stability. I was able to look over her stress and difficulty to examine the previous team she did not cope well with. Julia mentioned “I always felt like I had to prove myself...teammates sometimes jockeyed for leadership or criticizes one another’s idea.” (Duhigg, 2016). Conflict is common when working in teams. In resolving conflict, ask the question, “How can we stop this from occurring again?” Yet, conflict is needed too to make a team realize all their potential to be efficient and find solutions

Often when companies for teams for business projects and goal, the team follows the discovery process. As innovators, people often ask questions that digs deep into to determine the cause. Also, observing the situation for the smallest details team can spark new ideas to the team The team gets to see the ways of how certain team members, leader, and other businesses handle workflows and goals. It all sums up to saying for the team “We try and look for a latent customer need, a need that's not been seen before or expressed in some way.” (Dyer et all. 2009 p. 201). Teams can capture many positive and negative impact through being an intense observer. In the reading, I looked over the two things most successful team focuses on. Which are internal and external networking.

With internal networking, teams get to create and share new innovated ideas. Working in the same company with other teams who do not have the same interest field, but with a simple discussion can trigger some new ideas for both members. For external networking, teams look outside the box for new ideas. Networking with other companies that can inspire them and to see the interest they may have in common. It is said “Innovators gain a radically different perspective when they devote time and energy to finding and testing ideas through a network of diverse individuals.” (Dyer et all, 2009 P113).While it is about elaborating the diversity of the team’s network. Cross training with experts to challenge fundamental assumptions in other industries, can also build a bridge into a different area of knowledge.

Despite the conflict Google’s team lead researcher Julia encountered with. She was able to find a group who values each member’s strengths and flaws. Putting it together to make it work. Her team focused on surveying the group norms. Analyzing over thousands of Google’s employees work in teams and what makes the team successful. Comparing and contrasting whether is socializing outside, chatting a few minutes before driving into workflow or having a team where each member played a different role. Julia and her team fitted into the same communicating, dependability, structure and clarity. It was concluded with psychological safety. Julia states “There were other behaviors that seemed important as well...But Google’s data indicated that psychological safety, more than anything else, was critical to making a team work.” Julia and her team figured out which norms were most important. Now they had to find a way to make communication and empathy the building blocks of forging real connections.

At my previous workplace at HouseCalls Program, my team consist of 4 employees and one supervisor. Therefore, we all took on many different roles to run the program. I was a community health worker and a social worker at the same time. I was the point person to conduct community outreach and family visits. I observed the ways other agencies ran their programs, I asked questioned for clarification, I networked when the chance was given and I experiment to find the best result that fitted HouseCalls Program. The team would all try to attend events and meetings together to network and deepen our horizons. While making sure we shared information with each other if we attend separate events to gain insights. We worked well in communicating, offering ideas, observing each other’s methods of getting work done.

At the same there are conflicts, where my work would intervene with another member’s workflow. I try my best not to take over their role, but to reach out and suggest another alternative. Sometimes the tables would be turned, we wouldn't listen to each other and thinking to stick to our original plan. We would talk over each other to give ideas and with limited space for confidential phone conversation. It wasn’t going well for everyone. Also, we did not have enough people in the program to assist therefore it was difficult to be considered a successful team.

The reading, google article and my experience connects to each other because it relates about what is needed to become a successful team. When conflict arises it viewed everyone how to resolved it together as a group. Analyzing the process of using the discovery skills and delivery skills, the reading used examples of the world's top business to compare and contrast on teams. The google articles examines on what was important to keep a team successful and the norms of a group. My previous workplace, we all knew the basic traits of being a team.

The differences where, the readings went into details about leaders facilitating the ideas, but letting the team generate ideas for the businesses. For google team, not only Julia focused on her team to be successful, but all the teams that exist within the google company. Finding out how some groups have maintained stability and how to help other teams be successful. For HouseCalls Program, not enough employees to help take on roles and duties can big a burden for all who runs a program to serve the community.

There are so many qualities and aspects that goes into making a successful team and yet many teams do not have all the skills or empowerment needed. Many teams rely on very little to maintain a success. Whether it is taking on business projects and goals. Working in a small group compared to a big group of people working together to achieve results thats a team effort.it’s sometimes easy to forget that success is often built on experiences like emotional interactions and complicated conversations and discussions of who the members want to be and how teammates make each other feel. To me, T.E.A.M means for together everyone achieves more.