INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SUPPORT

SERVICE
Level II

LEARNING GUIDE
Unit of Work in Team Environment
Competence
Module Title Work in Team Environment

Unit Code ICT ITS2 10 0710

Nominal
Duration
Learning  Describing team role and
outcomes scope
 Identifying own role and
responsibility within team
  working as a team member

LO1: Describing team role and scope

Overview

In this learning outcome we will discuss about how to describe role and responsibility of team.

Objectives:

After completing this Learning outcome the student should be able to:

 Identify role and objective of the team from available sources of information.
 Identify team parameters, reporting relationships and responsibilities from team discussions
and appropriate external sources.
 carry out personal interaction clearly and concisely
 Identify Individual role and responsibilities within the team environment.
 Identify and recognize roles and responsibility of other team members
 Identify reporting relationships within team and external to team
 Use and undertake effective and appropriate forms of communications and interactions with
team members who contribute to known team activities and objectives
 Make effective and appropriate contributions to complement team activities and objectives,
based on individual skills and competencies and workplace context
 Observe protocols in reporting using standard operating procedures
 Make contribution to the development of team work plans based on understanding of team’s
role and objectives and individual competencies of the members.
LO1: Describing team role and scope

Identify role and objective of the team from available sources of

information

The team is the central hub of work productivity and communication and the best place to ensure
the wellbeing of an organization.

Teams usually consist of people with different skills and personalities who perform
complementary job tasks. A well functioning team should meet regularly to discuss each person’s
progress, concerns and to share ideas.

The best team accepts:

 The need for difference and diversity

 Is mutually supportive of each other’s strengths
 Can make up for people’s vulnerabilities in times of personal or professional challenge.

Create supportive team environments by:

 structuring regular team meetings that enable active communication

 encouraging out of hours opportunities to celebrate achievements and strengthen
interpersonal relations, along with other activities like shared lunches but be sure to make
these events optional as some people who experience social phobia or anxiety may find
these stressful
 Encouraging home and life balance
 Providing information to all staff about valuing diversity and being aware of physical and
mental health issues:

There is a whole area of academic study and practical experience about building good teams.
Business psychologists present many theories concerning the way in which people interact. A
world-class Project Manager needs to be an amateur psychologist and a manipulator of human
behavior. Here are some of the factors which generally lead to a good team:

 Shared belief in the value and achievability of the team's goals,

 Awareness of the value of the individual's own role and contribution,
 Recognition of the value of other team members (whether they are key specialists or just
non-specialist, junior assistants),
 Desire to work collaboratively, sharing thoughts, ideas, concerns, etc,
 Friendship - enjoying working together with a common purpose,
 Supporting each other in recognition that the team's success requires all members to be
successful,
 Coaching junior members rather than bossing them,
 Listening to ideas and advice from other team members,
 Making time to communicate with other team members,
 Celebrating successes,
 Rewarding good team behavior in financial and non-financial ways.

Self check
Answer the following questions
 1. What is a Team?

2. A team is not important to tackle a problem which occurs in organization.

(Agree/Disagree….. Why?)

3. Difference and diversity in a team has to be eliminated and all members expected to
have the same idea in all respect. (Agree/Disagree….. Why?)

4. Mutually supportive team strengths individual’s competency (Agree/Disagree….. Why?)

5. What do you suggest to create supportive team environments?

LO2: Identifying own role and responsibility within team

Team Roles and Responsibilities

Team members don't have specific responsibilities, but their participation is critical to the team's
success. Team members must agree to:

 Be enthusiastic and committed to the team's purpose.

  Be honest and keep any confidential information behind closed doors.
 Share responsibility to rotate through other team roles like facilitator, recorder, and
timekeeper.
 Share knowledge and expertise and not withhold information.
 Ask questions, even seemingly "dumb" ones. Often the new perspective of "inexperienced"
team members can provide insight.
 Fulfill duties in between meetings.
 Respect the opinions and positions of others on the team, even if the person has an
opposing view or different opinion.

Skills of Different Professionals on Teams

Team members from different disciplines bring a unique set of skills. It is also important to
recognize that skills overlap. Understanding the skills and education of various team members
contributes to respect. It is important to recognize that each profession trains its members in a
culture that reflects a common language, professional behaviors, values, and beliefs. Sometimes
there is disagreement because the expectations and language create confusion. Most
professionals do not recognize the training of others and learn what other professionals do only
after they are practicing as professionals.

Components of Successful Teamwork

 Open communication.
 No punitive environment.
 Clear direction.
 Clear and known roles and tasks for team members.
 Communication & Teamwork
 Respectful atmosphere
 Shared responsibility for team success
 Appropriate balance of member participation for the task at hand
 Acknowledgment and processing of conflict
 Clear specifications regarding authority and accountability
 Clear and known decision-making procedures
 Regular and routine communication and information sharing
 Enabling environment, including access to needed resources
 Mechanism to evaluate outcomes and adjust accordingly
LO3: Working as a team member

These guidelines provide an overview of three main aspects of group work. These are:

1. Working as a team – overview of why group work is important

2. Stages in group development – forming, storming, norming, performing and mourning

3. Roles in groups – important behaviors in effective teams

1. Working as a team
Why work in teams? There are several good reasons:

• Research shows that we all learn effectively from each other. Hence, your teams should be
learning teams, with the focus on helping each other to learn.

• Teams are much more effective than individuals for work on complex projects.

• Teamwork develops your interpersonal skills in coping with conflict, in being a chairperson, in
developing your interdependence and accountability and in developing your sense of self
esteem. This aids your personal development and your non-work-related relationships.
Effective teams
Why do some groups accomplish very little, while others achieve much more?

This difference stems very much from the processes within the group - its inner dynamics or
workings. The features of an effective team include:

• combined group effort of all members

• Clear goals

• Group members focused on learning

• Mutual trust and support

• Open communication

• Democratic processes.

Making the most of your team

There are many advantages of working collaboratively with other students. To make the most of
your experience as a team member, remember to:

• Become actively. Don't wait for another team member to do all the work.

• Share - open communication and the contribution of ideas and information is essential for
successful and highly performing teams.

• Learn to work cooperatively. The success of your team will depend on helping each other.

• Respect your fellow team members. Be aware that each team member will have unique
talents and ways of learning. Not everyone learns by the same process.

• Use your time productively and effectively. Define clear goals - what needs to get done, by
whom and why?

• Expect success - be enthusiastic and positive.

• Meet with your group members regularly.

• Ask your tutor for frequent feedback - that's the tutor's role.

• Maintain a sense of humour - keep things in perspective.

 • Hang in there - developing a good team is hard work and demands commitment from all team
members.

2. Group development
There is strong evidence that groups pass through a sequence of five stages of development.
These are sometimes defined as:

Forming, or coming together

Storming or conflict

Norming, or working out the rules

Performing, or getting the job done

Mourning, or breaking up.

The length of time different groups take to pass through each of these developmental stages will
vary, but it is generally not possible to achieve high team performance until the group has passed
through at least the first three stages. The duration of each stage will depend on factors such as
individual and team maturity, task complexity, leadership, organizational climate, and external
climate.

Storming ….. Who controls this group?

During this stage of group development, team members may become hostile or overzealous as a
way to express their individuality and resist group formation.

You may find that you and/or other group members exhibit:

• Infighting, defensiveness and competition

• Doubts about success

• Low group morale

• Polarization of group members

• Concern over excessive work

• Disunity and increased tension

You and/or other group members may:

 • Set unrealistic goals

• Resist the task demands

• Establish a pecking order

• Criticize group leaders or other group members

• complain.

Many groups do not develop beyond this stage because they lack the ability to listen to each other
and find mutually acceptable resolutions to the major issues.

Norming ….. What are the rules of this group?

During this stage of group development, members accept the team, the team norms, their own
roles and the idiosyncrasies of fellow group members. Emotional conflict is reduced by patching up
previously conflicting relationships.

You and/or other group members may:

• Attempt to achieve maximum harmony by avoiding conflict

• Develop a high level of trust and respect for others in the group

• Discuss group dynamics constructively

• Form friendships

• Develop a sense of team cohesion with a common spirit and goals

• have high group morale

• Establish and maintain group boundaries

• Accomplish a moderate amount of work

During this stage, if the formally appointed leader is not effective, or there is no formal leader, a
leader will emerge or should be agreed upon who can focus the group resources to solve
problems.
Performing ….. How high can this group go?

Now that the team has established its interpersonal norms, it becomes an entity capable of
diagnosing and solving problems, and making decisions. This stage is not always reached by all
teams.

You and/or other group members may:

• be willing to sort through group problems

• develop high conflict resolution skills

• understand members' strengths and weaknesses

• undertake constructive self change

• identify closely with the group

• accomplish a great deal of work

Groups reaching this stage will be effective and will devote energy to maintain good group
relations.

Mourning ….. Where do we go from here?

This final stage of group development applies more to temporary teams like task groups or
committees. However these days, with reorganizations occurring frequently this stage is not
uncommon.

You and/or other group members may:

• feel elated at the successful attainment of goals

• feel disappointed at unattained goals

• feel a sense of loss when the group is disbanded

• feel relief at the end of the process

• congratulate each other

• celebrate.

3. Roles in groups
Individuals within a team all have unique skills and strengths. It is only when the contributions of
ALL team members are valued that teams will function efficiently.

Any individual team member can play a number of different roles within the team. Roles are
predetermined behaviors expected of people in a group.

Some roles will feel natural - "I'm always the one who . . . " There will be other roles, however,
which may be difficult, eg Chairperson or Presenter. Try and gain experience in at both natural and
difficult roles in the group.

There are four main types of roles:

• Task roles

• Functional roles

• Maintenance roles

• Dysfunctional roles
Task roles

Once a team knows what its goals are, the various tasks needed to succeed can be identified and
assigned to group members.

The more clearly the task roles are defined, the better the chosen team member will be able to
perform the task. If a task role is too narrowly defined, however, the team may miss out on the
opportunity to capitalize on the skills and talents of that team member.

When a team has the right mix of tasks that are well differentiated and integrated, group members
develop a sense of cohesion and team spirit, and each can see where their particular role fits with
the objectives of the group as a whole.

Some of the tasks you may need to do include:

• Developing an understanding of particular technical knowledge

• Obtaining references and taking notes

• Doing calculations

• Analyzing data

• Devising graphs and tables

• Preparing designs

• Building a prototype

• Writing sections of reports

• Preparing presentations

Functional roles

In order for a group of people to function as a team, members must find ways to interact with each
other beyond just performing their task roles. These 'functional' roles help the group to achieve its
goals. Each team member can adopt one or more functional roles as needed.
You may find yourself taking on such roles as:

• Coordinator: Draws together the various activities of team members.

• Initiator: proposes solutions; suggests new ideas, a new definition of the problem, or new
organization of the material.

• Information seeker: asks for data; requests additional information or facts.

• Information giver: offers facts or generalizations, relating own experience to illustrate points.

• Opinion seeker: looks for options about something from the team; seeks ideas or suggestions.

• Opinion giver: offers a view or belief about a suggestion, regarding its value or its factual
base.

• Goal setter: helps the group to set goals.

• Deadline setter: makes sure that deadlines are set and met.

• Progress monitor: makes sure that the group is progressing according to plan.

• Evaluator: measures decisions against group goals.

• Clarifier: tries to see how an idea might work if adopted.

• Summarizer: restates suggestions after the group has discussed them; outlines related ideas
or suggestions; provides a precis of the ideas.

• Decision pusher: helps the group to come to closure; makes sure that decisions are reached.

• Planner: prepares timelines and schedules; organizes.

• Spokesperson: speaks on behalf of the group.

• Troubleshooter: asks the 'what if ...?' questions.

• Diagnosor: determines sources of difficulty; decides where to go next; eliminates blocks.

Maintenance roles

As well as the functional roles that assist the group to achieve its tasks there are group
maintenance roles which help the team grow and strengthen. These roles support and maintain
group life and activities. You may find that your personal skills lend themselves to one or more of
the following maintenance roles:

• Encourager: is friendly and sincere; praises others; is warmly responsive to others, and their
ideas; is accepting when people offer contributions.

• Gatekeeper: makes sure that every member of the group has a chance to be heard.

• Standards setter: expresses standards for the group to use in its discussions; reminds the
team to avoid actions which don't fit these standards.

• Consensus tester: checks for agreements, for example 'I think we are all feeling the same
way'.

• Mediator: conciliates; harmonizes.

• Tension reliever: helps eliminate negative feelings.

• Listener: is able to listen empathically and hear what others have to say.

• Volunteer: offers whatever is needed.

Dysfunctional roles

Unfortunately sometimes you may find either yourself or other team members take on roles that
are disruptive to genuine efforts to improve team effectiveness and satisfaction. Some of these
roles include:

• Being aggressive

• Blocking or nit-picking

• Competing

• Clowning or joking to disrupt the work of the group

• Withdrawing

• Being sarcastic or cynical

• Blaming

• Taking all the credit

 • Dominating

• Manipulating.

When group members take on dysfunctional roles, this can lead to very ineffective team
behaviors. Examples of these behaviors include team members being late to agreed team
meetings, or team members not doing the work they were supposed to do. You might have two
hour meetings where nothing was accomplished or one student tells everyone else what to do
while other students say nothing. Such behaviors inevitably cause team conflict, which needs to
be addressed quickly and effectively to get the group back on track to working effectively and
collaboratively.

Excellent strategies for overcoming team conflict are discussed in the recommended reference
on team work:

Use and undertake effective and appropriate forms of communications

and interactions with team members

Types of Communication Medium

We divide the different types of communication medium into two different categories:

1. Physical media

2. Mechanical media (everything that is not No. 1)

Physical media

With physical media we mean channels where the person who is talking can be seen and
heard by the audience. The whole point here is to be able to not only hear the messages
but also to see the body language and feel the climate in the room. This does not need to
be two-way channels. In certain situations the receiver expects physical communication.
This is the case especially when dealing with high concern messages, e.g. organizational
change or downsizing. If a message is perceived as important to the receiver they expect to
hear it live from their manager.

 Large meetings, town hall meetings

 Department meetings (weekly meetings)
  Up close and personal (exclusive meetings)
 Video conferences
 Viral communication or word of mouth

Large meetings

Large meetings have got great symbolic value and should be used only at special
occasions. This channel works very well when you need to get across strategic and
important messages to a large group of people at the same time, creating a wide attention,
get engagement or communicate a sense of belonging. Large meetings are excellent when
you want to present a new vision or strategy, inform about a reorganization or share new
values. The opportunity for dialogue is limited at large meeting, of course but you can
create smaller groups where dialogue can be performed.

Weekly departmental meetings

In the weekly meetings you and your group communicate daily operative issues, give status
reports and solve problems. Weekly meetings are also used to follow up on information
from large meetings, management team meetings etc from a “what’s-in-it-for-us-
perspective”. This type of smaller group meetings gives good opportunities for dialogue.
This channel is often the most important channel you have as a manager, because that’s
where you have the opportunity to build the big picture, you can prepare for change, you
can create ownership of important strategies and goals etc. This is a favorite among the
types of communication medium.

Up close and personal

This is a form of meetings where, often, a senior manager meets with a “random” selection
of employees to discuss and answer questions. Some managers use this as a ongoing
activities on a monthly basis. It can also be used in specific projects or campaigns e.g.
launching new strategies.

Viral communication
Or viral marketing as it is also called works external as well as internal and refer to
marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in
awareness or knowledge through self-replicating viral processes. It can be word-of-mouth
delivered or enhanced by the network effects of social media.

Mechanical media

The second of the two types of communication medium is mechanical media. With
mechanical media we mean written or electronic channels. These channels can be used as
archives for messages or for giving the big picture and a deeper knowledge. But they can
also be very fast. Typically though, because it is written, it is always interpret by the reader
based on his or her mental condition. Irony or even humor rarely travels well in mechanical
channels.

 E-mail
 Weekly letters or newsletters
 Personal letters
 Billboards
 Intranet
 Magazines or papers
 SMS
 Social media

E-mail

E-mail is a good channel for the daily communication to specific target groups. It is suitable
mainly for up-to-date and “simple” messages and where there is no risk of
misunderstanding; E-mail is an important supplement to weekly meetings and the intranet.
Invitation to and agenda for meetings can with advantage be sent out with e-mail before the
meeting, while background facts and minutes from meetings is well suited to be stored on
the intranet.

Some short e-mail tips:

 Wright short and to the point.

  Target your messages to the audience and avoid sending unnecessary all-employees-e-
mails.
 Set up your subject line to describe what the e-mail is about.
 Clearly state if the message is for information or for action.
 Avoid attaching large documents if possible. Post a link or direct to the source instead.

Weekly letters

Managers that have large groups of employees and who has difficulties in meeting all of
them often choose to publish a personally weekly letter. It is sort of a short summary of
news with personally reflections. Many employees often appreciate it because it has the
potential to give the “what’s-in-it-for-us” angle. They can also contain summaries and status
in tasks, projects or issues – yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Personal letters

At special occasions it can be justified to send a personal letter to employees in order to get
attention to a specific issue. E.g. pat on the back letter after extra ordinary achievements.
Or it can be a letter with your personal commentary on an ongoing reorganization that
affects many employees. One other example is a letter that summarizes the past year and
wishes all the best for the holidays.

Billboard

One of the most forgotten types of communication medium is clearly the billboard,
especially today, everything is about social media. But the good thing with the billboard is
that you can use billboards to inform a person who does not have computers and/or access
to the intranet or to reach people that work part time and does not attend weekly meetings.

 News summary
 Weekly letters
 Minutes from meetings
 Schedules
 Holiday lists

You can also use the billboard to gather ideas e.g. for items for upcoming meetings
Intranet

The intranet is of course one of the most used types of communication medium and a very
important communication channel and work tool for you as a manager, but it is also your
job to help your employees prioritize and pick out the information on the intranet, as well as
translating messages into local consequences. Ask yourself: what information concerns
you employees? In what way are they concerned? How do I best communicate this to my
employees? Weekly meeting or your weekly letter can be a suitable channel to discuss or
inform of information found on the intranet.

Employee magazine

A Magazine offers the opportunity to deepen a specific issue, explain context, describing
consequences or tell a story. It also has the opportunity to reach many employees. If you
want to create a broad internal understanding of strategic messages the magazine can be
a good vehicle to use e.g. by writing an article based on an interview with you. As were the
case with the intranet you also have to “translate” the information in the magazine to your
employees. You can ask yourself: What does the content in a specific article mean to us?
How shall I best communicate it to the employees?

Sms

Or text messaging to the mobile phone is one of the new types of communication medium
and not a very widely used channel but where it is used it is proven very effective. Some
companies use it as an alert system e.g. for giving managers a head start when something
important will be published on the Intranet. The advantage with Sms is that it is fast. But it
should be used rarely as an exclusive channel. Some companies use it as a subscription
tool where you can subscribe to e.g press releases.

Social media

Wikipedia describe social media as “Media designed to be disseminated through social

interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social
media supports the human need for social interaction, using Internet- and web-based
technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media
dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information,
transforming people from content consumers into content producers. Businesses also refer
to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM).”

More and more companies are using social media in their external marketing, setting up
twitter and Facebook accounts etc. But these channels are also used internal where
managers become “friends” on Facebook with their employees or where managers use
blog and twitter targeting their employees.

Push or Pull

You can also divide the different types of communication medium in Push or Pull
channels.Push channels are channels where the sender are pushing the message to the
receiver. Meaning it is up to the sender to control the communication.

 E-mail
 News letters and letters (if sent out)
 Magazines (if sent out)
 Meetings
 Telephone
 Sms

Pull channels on the other hand is when the receiver is pulling the message from the
sender. It is up to the receiver when he or she wants to take in the message.

 Intranet
 Billboards
 New letters and letters (if not sent out)
 Magazines (if not sent out)
 Social media

Push channels are often regarded as having higher reliability than pull channels because of
the fact that it is more active in the communication.

The ambition Stairway

Choosing the right types of communication medium is first and most about understanding
your ambition with the communication. What effect is you looking for after you have
communicated? Increased knowledge, better understanding more motivation or
involvement, or do you want it to lead to some sort of action or changed behavior?

The Ambition Stairway is a useful tool for you to use when deciding what channels to use
for your level of ambition. Which gives you control of the different types of communication
medium. Also, it is important to realize that just publishing something on the Intranet will not
get employees motivated and involved.

Choosing the right channels for your messages.