Building Team Work: Strategies for Success

Overview

Learning to work well as a productive member of a diverse team is essential in today’s global economy.  At Miami you are lucky to have many opportunities to research, write and present as a team. Each of these opportunities helps you further develop key skills that employers are seeking.  For example, the 2012 Job Outlook Survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that employers ranked “the ability to work in a team” as the most important skill they are seeking in prospective employees.

When teams work well, there are many benefits to team work, including the ability to:

• Distribute and share the workload
• Distribute and share responsibility
• Enable greater knowledge sharing and knowledge development
• Build interpersonal and intercultural communication
• Develop project planning skills
• Produce better writing

 But team projects can also go array, leading to such problematic, frustrating outcomes as:

• Miscommunication and misunderstandings
• “Slackers” getting a free ride on others’ labor
• Greater workload for individuals who actually do the work
• Fragmentation of knowledge; Little knowledge sharing
• Breakdown in organizational cohesiveness/good will
• Subpar product

Characteristics of Effective Teams

Effective teams are ones where team members:

• Communicate well with others
• Offer and share ideas
• Listen carefully to others’ ideas
• Are flexible; Don’t dominate or insist on “my way or the highway”
• Are active; Don’t sit passively and say “whatever you decide”
• Are comfortable with dissensus, but ultimately seek consensus
• Commit to a work/meeting schedule and, barring unforeseen circumstances, stick to it
• Care about the project, about team members, and about the success of the team
• Feel connected to and committed to the team.
  

Strategies for Effective Team Communication

The art of effective teamwork resides in effective communication. If a team communicates well throughout the process—from brainstorming and planning to researching and compiling to final preparation and delivery—then the complications that will inevitably arise will be much easier to negotiate and resolve.  But in order to communicate well, individuals need to also understand their own communication practices and biases better. For example, someone who is very direct and to-the-point may appear rude to someone else who prefers a more non-confrontational style of communication.

Plan Together

• Engage in initial individual and team reflection.
• Plan together before beginning to research.
• Discuss goals and format for final product(s).
• Discuss platforms for communication and writing.
• Reflect on processes for researching, drafting, revising, editing.
• Develop processes for conflict resolution / troubleshooting.
• Plan to meet often throughout the project,

Leverage Technologies

• Consider creating a shared Google Drive folder (not file) where then all files put in that folder will automatically be shared with all team members.
• Use meeting scheduling services such as Doodle to schedule group meetings.
• Use video platforms such as Google Hangout to hold team meetings.
• Keep backup copies of everything and ensure that all team members have access to each other’s files.

Make a Task Timeline

• Every week assign yourselves homework and list that homework in the task timeline so all group members can see who is working on what/when and everyone can see the key milestones and due dates for your team.  (Task Timelines can in a variety of formats such as Gannt charts or they can be simple lists in a word processing file.)
• Be sure to divide the work equally and, ideally, have all members participating in all phases of the project (although some projects may lend themselves to different organizational structures).

Foster Equality

• Recognize that each member brings shared and unique strengths to the project; Value each team member.
• Create space for every team member’s views to be shared.
• If misunderstandings or miscommunications arise, address them immediately as a group.  Seek instructor’s help if needed.
• Recognize levels of interaction and relationships. For example, if teamed with your best friend, be sure not to isolate other teammates. Engage in group-oriented communications that build connections among all members rather than excluding any members.

Strategies for Effective Team Researching / Writing / Presenting

• Engage in effective communication strategies listed above.
• Have a clear sense of audience, purpose, and context that you all share.
• Develop a team strategy for division of labor: 1) All together, All the time (seldom used), 2) Divide & Conquer (most frequently used but can result in fragmented results), 3) Hybrid—All/Divide/All in recursive pattern.
•  Divide fairly and appropriately; consider strengths (and project requirements)
•  Check in together and share documents often.
• Begin early enough that you’re not frantically putting your project together the night before it’s due.
  

Howe Writing Initiative ‧ Farmer School of Business ‧ Miami University

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