work groups, teams, organizations, performance, processes, effectiveness In W. C. Borman, D. R. Ilgen & R. J. Klimoski (Eds.), Handbook of These pressures drive a need for diverse skills, expertise, and . multilevel perspective on teams are often neglected in research and practice. Because it is difficult to gain.
Table of contents
- Learning from Others
- A Process to Build High-Performance Teams
- Introduction: Healthy Organizations and Healthy Business
- A Process to Build High-Performance Teams - DesignIntelligence
Roles are about the design, division, and deployment of the work of the team. While the concept is compellingly logical, many teams find it challenging to implement. There is often a tendency to take role definition to extremes or not to take it far enough. When teams divide the labor, they introduce a side effect called interdependence also known as risk.
Learning from Others
Think of it this way: Interdependence is an investment; synergism is the return on investment. If the team is to reap the rewards of interdependence, its members must collaborate. Keep in mind that collaboration is a choice, and despite the obvious logic of collaborating, many teams experience interdependent people acting independently. An activity that team leaders often avoid or fail at is facilitating the discussion about roles, especially the issues of role clarity. Achieving role clarity is accomplished through discussion — lots of it.
High-performance teams need competent leadership. When such leadership is lacking, groups can quickly lose their way. Whereas a common, compelling task might be the biggest contributor to team effectiveness, inadequate team leadership is often the single biggest reason for team ineffectiveness. In most organizational settings, it is the leader who frames the team purpose and facilitates discussions on its meaning and nature.
The vision, commitment, and communication of the leader govern the optics through which individual team members see the team purpose and become aligned to it. Because collaboration is a choice held by each team member, leaders must be capable of calling out the initiative and creativity that motivate exceptional work both by individuals and through collective performance. Leaders who must rely on positional authority and autocratic style to achieve desired outcomes seldom see the levels of team performance shown to leaders who act in service and support to the team.
Because collaboration is a choice, it is important that the team accepts its leader. Leadership acceptance, like so many dimensions of teaming, is not an on-off concept but rather a matter of degree. Team members can strongly support and accept the leader, accept the leader with reservations, or reject the leader. Teams and processes go together.
It would never occur to a surgical team, construction crew, string quartet, or film crew to approach tasks without clearly defined processes. The playbook of a football team or the score sheet of a string quartet clearly outlines the necessary processes. Business teams have processes as well, which might include solving problems, making decisions, managing a meeting, or designing a product.
Hopefully, for every process, each team member has a clear, specific role based on function, skills, and expertise. In many business settings, however, processes are inadequate, ill-defined, or missing entirely. High-performance teams identify, map, and then master their key team and business processes. They constantly evaluate the effectiveness of key processes, asking How are we doing?
What are we learning? How can we do it better? Organizations that leverage cross-functional project teams have learned that new team skills and well defined processes go hand in hand. Simply, there are two primary kinds of processes — working and thinking. Teaming efforts tend to focus primarily on implementation or work processes at the expense of thinking processes. Thinking processes are essential to high-performance teams.
- Luthers Works, Volume 1: Genesis Chapters 1-5 (Luthers Works (Concordia)).
- Highlights.
- Login using.
- Overture c minor D8 - Cello.
Yet teams often ignore thinking processes for expediency. Organizations that have built successful teams and a collaborative culture have made an investment to train teams in thinking processes that facilitate problem solving. In effect, these organizations have recognized the importance of addressing thinking processes with the same degree of deliberateness invested in working processes.
One of the biggest misperceptions in the world of teams and teamwork is the belief that to work and communicate effectively, team members must be friends. In fact, the diversity of skills, experience, and knowledge needed to divide tasks effectively almost precludes high levels of friendship, which is most often based on commonality — of the way people think, their interests, or beliefs.
Speaking of diversity, we find that the more differences that exist on a team, the smarter it can be. A team whose members look at the world through the different lenses of function, gender, ethnicity, personality, experience, and perspective has a decided advantage over a more homogenous group. The diverse group will be able to surround problems, decisions, and other issues with a brighter collective intelligence.
They will see more creative solutions if they can channel their differences into synergy rather than strife. Solid team relationships provide the climate needed for high levels of collaboration and are characterized by trust, acceptance, respect, understanding, and courtesy. Trust is clearly the non-negotiable element of interdependent relationships.
Team leaders cannot mandate trust, they can only attempt to create an environment and opportunities that will facilitate its development among team members. People will not be interdependent with people they do not trust; therefore, without trust, high levels of collaboration cannot be achieved. Communication is the very means of cooperation.
One of the primary motives of companies choosing to implement teams is that team-based organizations are more responsive and move faster. A team cannot move faster than it communicates. Fast, clear, timely, accurate communication is a hallmark of high levels of team performance. High-performance teams have mastered the art of straight talk; there is little motion wasted through misunderstanding or confusion. The team understands that effective communication is essential, and as a result, they approach communication with a determined intentionality. They talk about it a lot and put effort into keeping excellent team communication.
A Process to Build High-Performance Teams
You will notice that the team model now circles back to common purpose, the first characteristic of a high-performance team. The connection is intentional, for a team cannot maintain unity of purpose without exceptionally good communication among team members. Once a team loses its ability to communicate well and thereby understand one another, it quickly loses its sense of purpose. Confused communication and unity of purpose cannot coexist. Healthy organizations need to find the right balance between their particular situation, sector, and culture, highlighting the importance of well-being and sustainability.
This contribution discusses also the sustainability of work-life projects and the meaning of work in healthy organizations, stressing the importance of recognizing, respecting, and using the meaning of work as a key for growth and success. Finally, the contribution discusses new research and intervention opportunities for healthy organizations.
Work plays a key role in the health and well-being of workers, and it is important to recognize the negative impact on workers of the current world of work characterized by globalization and technology advances Sparks et al. As a consequence of globalization, workers today experience greater job insecurity as well as the negative effects of the introduction of information technology such as long hours of work at visual display terminals, which can be detrimental to their health Sparks et al.
Both the psychological and physical well-being of workers is thus under threat. A major challenge in the 21st century is to create healthier societies by promoting healthy organizations Di Fabio, ; Di Fabio et al. In healthy organizations, culture, climate, and good practices create an environment that can promote employee health and safety as well as organizational effectiveness Lowe, A healthy organization is conducive to healthy and successful business De Smet et al.
Grawitch and Ballard , too, maintain that a healthy organization is not only an organization that makes good profits but an organization that also promotes a healthy business environment through the well-being of workers. From a positive psychology point of view Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, ; Seligman, ; Di Fabio, , the four factors in a healthy organization that need to be considered are the individual, the group, the organization, and inter-organizational processes Henry, At the individual level, interventions to improve the psychological health of the employees and the organization as a whole should be introduced.
Interventions are aimed at building strengths Di Fabio, a ; Di Fabio and Kenny, , enhancing positive individual resources such as emotional intelligence and resilience Di Fabio and Saklofske, a ; Di Fabio, , and promoting well-being Di Fabio and Saklofske, b ; Di Fabio, ; Di Fabio and Kenny, Interventions aimed at bringing about personal development, confidence, and forgiveness enhance psychological maturity and can help employees interact with each other in a healthier and more productive manner Judge et al. At the group level, a healthy group is a group that respects its members, takes time to listen to their views, tolerates different styles, and aims for win-win solutions.
At the organization level, healthy organizations, too, are open to challenges. At the inter-organization level, the focus is on making the boundaries of organizations more fluid and improving the relations between organizations. Partnerships, networking, and community involvement are important here Stacy, ; Henry, ; Di Fabio, At this level, it is important to promote partnerships between organizations across the supply chain for their mutual benefit. It is also important to facilitate individual networking of employees within, outside, and across organizations to improve performance and business prospects.
Also of importance are community programs that involve employees in some form of community work such as teaching the underprivileged, renovating buildings, etc.
Introduction: Healthy Organizations and Healthy Business
Stacy, ; Henry, ; Di Fabio, Two OHP societies were later established: In , the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology was founded in Nottingham United Kingdom with the aim of applying psychology to occupational health Cox et al. In , the Society for Occupational Health Psychology SHOP was established in Portland United States with the aim of conducting psychological research on the health of workers and their problems in the workplace. Primary prevention Caplan, stresses the importance of preventing the development of a problem before it starts and of promoting psychological well-being.
Positive organizational health psychology Di Fabio, developed from a positive primary preventive perspective Di Fabio and Kenny, ; Di Fabio et al. According to this perspective, healthy organizations need to create the right balance in their particular situation, sector, and culture, highlighting the importance of well-being and sustainability Di Fabio, The challenge facing us today is to promote a healthier society by building healthy organizations with the focus on well-being from a cross-cultural perspective Di Fabio, The psychology of sustainability Di Fabio, covers the issue of positive sustainable organizational development in a culturally diverse world Akay et al.
Here the attention is on both hedonic well-being Watson et al. Hedonic well-being comprises an affective evaluation in terms of positive and negative affects Watson et al. Eudaimonic well-being concerns optimal functioning and self-realization Ryan and Deci, , life meaning and purposefulness Waterman et al. Because meaningfulness is integral to sustainability Di Fabio and Blustein, , employees need to experience hedonic well-being and especially eudaimonic well-being in order to recognize the deepest meanings and authentic aspects of the Self, which can lead to a real sense of accomplishment and full self-realization as major forms of well-being.
Meaningfulness represents the intrinsic motivational energy that promotes real sustainability for employees and their projects, performances, developments, and choices Di Fabio, Both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being reveal similar relationships with curiosity and gratitude. Positive organizational health psychology calls for an organizational approach centered on enhancing resources and building strengths and not on deficiency and failure from a primary prevention point of view Hage et al. It thus calls for early interventions aimed at increasing both the hedonic and eudaimonic well-being of workers at different levels individual, group, organization, and inter-organization to promote healthy organizations.
The concept of the sustainability of work-life projects in terms of coherence, direction, significance, and belonging was developed as part of promoting well-being and healthy organizations Schnell et al. Here it is important to stress the shift from a motivational paradigm to a meaning paradigm Di Fabio and Blustein, ; Di Fabio, A motivational paradigm concerns motivation and highlights intrinsic motivation in terms of doing a job to gain satisfaction; extrinsic motivation in terms of doing a job for reward or to avoid punishment; and lack of motivation in terms of lack of perception of the link between behavior and its consequences in the workplace Tremblay et al.
The meaning paradigm Di Fabio and Blustein, goes further: The meaning paradigm is thus key to the sustainability, growth, success, and health of organizations Di Fabio, Positive organizational narratives are essential for ensuring sustainable development in organizations Di Fabio, Such narratives often appear complex and confusing, but they can be transformed into coherent stories that produce meaning, hope, possibilities, and success for healthy organizations Di Fabio, These narratives can also be linked to the culture of each employee thus introducing a new positive perspective in a diversity management framework Cox, where the organizational culture is transformed from a culture oriented to the majority to a culture that accommodates different value systems that impact on the work environment.
This promotes the recognition of diversity as an opportunity to increase performance and new points of view for a healthy business.
A Process to Build High-Performance Teams - DesignIntelligence
The three levels of reflexivity are Maree, Reflectivity refers thus to the capacity to analyze the present and to look at the past, individuating significant life themes of use in constructing a bridge toward the future Di Fabio and Maree, Through the stories of their different life experiences and their future plans, people can give meaning to their lives, develop their own identities and their own Self, and give meaning to their existence Savickas, Better adapted people tend to tell stories in which they find redemptive meaning in suffering and adversity and construct life stories that feature themes of personal agency and exploration McAdams and McLean, They tend also to achieve higher levels of mental health, well-being, and maturity McAdams and McLean, In the narrative process, it is therefore important to facilitate the emergence of positive narratives, transforming negative stories about employees and about organizations into positive stories that enable employees to construct new ways to build their own new positive future reality.
By relating stories of success, employees can focus on positive experiences regarding their performance resulting in positive energizing psychological effects in terms of self-esteem and self-efficacy. They can then also more easily face new challenges by recognizing personal positive resources to construct new chapters of their successful lives thereby enhancing their well-being. Organizational practices aimed at achieving positive work experiences and positive psychological narratives at work are a key part of a primary prevention approach Di Fabio, Positive healthy organizations are based on building resources and strengths with success as the criterion.
A positive approach is adopted toward individuals, groups, and organizations as part of an early primary prevention intervention. The innovation of focusing on experiences of success in relationships between workers, teams, and organizations Di Fabio, could open new opportunities for research and intervention.
In fact, such relationships could be a central feature of healthy organizations Blustein, , and of new ways of conceptualizing organizational relationality. This refers not only to prosocial organizational behavior, organizational citizenship behavior, organizational support, organizational welfare, but also to the new construct of workplace relational civility Di Fabio and Gori, that includes relational decency, relational culture, and relational readiness. Also, some current innovative leadership styles can make a significant contribution to healthy organizations Clark, ; Hoffmeister et al.
Ethical Gallagher and Tschudin, , sustainable Hargreaves and Fink, , and servant leadership Ehrhart, can promote the development of healthy organizations. And servant leadership refers to the premium placed on the personal growth and well-being of subordinates in the organization Greenleaf, These leadership styles focus on promoting the resources, talents, and potential of employees thereby enabling them to realize themselves fully and achieve well-being as part of healthy organizations.
A new awareness is needed in organizational contexts of the value of developing early interventions and new approaches from a primary preventive perspective to foster healthy work environments. Enhancing the resources, strengths, and talents of workers and groups is the best way to achieve well-being and healthy workplaces. This calls for acknowledging the importance of relationships and meaning Blustein, , , ; Di Fabio and Blustein, in constructing positive organizational narratives and thereby promoting healthy organizations.
The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Evidence from US Labor Markets. Ethnic diversity and well-being. From meaning of working to meaningful lives: The Psychology of Working: A relational theory of working. Research, Practice, and Policy , eds V.
Principles of Preventive Psychiatry. Medical leadership and engagement: Creating the Multicultural Organization: A Strategy for Capturing the Power of Diversity.