Team Success and Failure

Introduction

There are many different factors that influence and determine the potential success or failure of teams, largely irrespective of whether those teams are within the realm of business, politics, entertainment, or sports. In general, teams whose members share common perceptions about their purpose and goals, teams whose members trust one another and whose members trust their managers and leaders; teams whose members communicate and coordinate their efforts efficiently; and teams whose members can resolve conflict and disagreements effectively and productively tend to be more successful than teams whose members do not.

Discussion

Establishing and Maintaining a Shared Vision

One of the most fundamental determinants of the relative success or failure of teams is the degree to which the individual team members maintain a shared vision of their mission, purpose, and goals (Wooden & Jamison 2005). This should become somewhat apparent just by understanding the significance of clearly defined purposes and goals, largely because the failure to establish shared goals allows so much room for different approaches to presumed goals that those differences typically undermine the efforts of individual team members to achieve any goals together (Miller 2009). Conversely, where team members all share the same conceptual understanding of the mission, purpose, and goals, they are much more likely to make efforts in their respective areas of responsibility that support the achievement of unified team objectives (Miller 2009).

For example, if some members of a retail sales organisation believe that the goal of their department is to maximise ...

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...ccessful when team members maintain a shared vision of the team’s purpose and goals, when individual team members trust one another and trust their superiors, when they communicate and coordinate their respective efforts well, and when they maintain processes and methods to resolve conflict and disagreements productively rather than destructively.

Works Cited

George, J & Jones, G 2008, Understanding and Managing Organisational Behavior, Prentice-Hall, New Jersey.

Maxwell, J C 2007, The 21 Irrefutable Rules of Leadership, Maxwell Motivation Co. Macon, GA.

Miller, S 2009, Why Teams Win: 9 Keys to Success in Business, Sports, and Beyond, Jossey-Bass, Mississauga, Ontario.

Robbins, S & Judge, T 2009, Organisational Behavior, Prentice-Hall, New Jersey.

Wooden, J & Jamison, S 2005, Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning

Organization, McGraw-Hill, New York.