Best Ways to Build Teams

Team-Building Creating and providing upkeep for team cohesion and continuity can be a tricky thing in the modern workplace. There are a number of things that must be dealt with. There are also a number of factors that contribute to teams becoming shaky or even dysfunctional. While choosing the overall topic of team-building can lead to the casting of a very wide net in terms of overall topics, this report shall focus on a few things in particular.

They will include the betterment of overall management practices, the elements that are inherent to a good team environment, the avoidance of conflicts before they start, ways to improve communication and strategies that can be used to avoid conflicts in general. While creating and upholding proper team dynamics is not rocket science, there are some important tactics and ideas that should be utilized and employed and not everyone knows (or cares to know) what those things are.

Analysis The assignment being completed with this report gives a basic set of parameters. Essentially, the author is to act as a consultant that is reporting to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of a healthcare corporation. While not obvious to some, the fact that this is a healthcare corporation ups the stakes significantly when it comes to the efficacy, ethics and motives of the people involved. Most for-profit businesses are focused on the bottom line.

While there are no huge ethical quandaries for most of those businesses, there are some fields that are inherently chaotic and potentially troublesome when it comes to what business decisions are made and why. Indeed, if a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) wants to up his hourly rate a bit, there is not really anyone endangered by that and the market (and his performance) will dictate if that rate will stick.

However, healthcare is a whole different story because quality of life and, sometimes, life as its exists can hang in the balance. Much the same thing pertains to industries like those that involve food, energy and other necessities. Beyond that, healthcare is perceived by many to be a fundamental human right. As such, decisions that surround the healthcare industry are obviously going to be harder and more important to properly manage than with other industries where the implications are not nearly as massive (SCU, 2016).

Even so, the general facets of team-building and managing/avoiding conflict are not all that different. The one big difference is that there are real people with real lives that are on the end of the proverbial chain and are thus being affected by the actions or inactions that are brought about by how well a team does or does not work together. As suggested by the assignment, barriers can emerge when it comes to completing work and working together.

Those barriers should be identified and eliminated as much as is reasonable or possible when they are discovered. A good tip to help foster and propagate this desired end is to make it clear that there is an "open door" policy with management and that there should be a free flow of communication among all team members. If one or more thing is hindering that, people should say something. If there is some sensitivity or bias perceived, people can be given alternate ways to provide feedback (Quast, 2013).

One thing that can be a proverbial landmine when it comes to teams working or not working together well is any sort of general resistance to change or people trying to "protect" what their responsibilities and work load. For example, a person that is drowning in work may feel that they will get in trouble or lose their "place" in the proverbial machine that makes up the team if they ask for help.

However, it should be asked for and encouraged that people reach out for help and make it clear where they are in terms of workflow so that such things do not happen and/or get to the point where it truly is a problem due to the delay in letting people know that something is amiss (Acevedo, 2016). Another potential pitfall is when two or more members of a team engage in personal spats over one thing or another. Regardless of the nature of the spat, it has to be addressed.

It should be made clear that the arguing and infighting will stop and this will include removal of one or both of the people involved if it comes to that. With that being said, there has to be a "culture" in a team and an organization. Only people that mesh and fit with that culture should be hired and anyone that cannot or will not abide by the tenets of the group and what is expected need to be coached, reassigned or even let go (Bouton, 2015).

The proverbial linchpin of any good group is the leadership of the group or the wider company. If the leadership is absent or bumbling, it will absolutely have negative effects on the team(s) impacted by the absent or incompetent leadership and this can hold true even if the team members want to thrive, succeed and do the right thing. When there is a lack of leadership, there is a void that is created and the byproducts of this are usually not all that good.

The leader(s) involved with a team need to set the tone and need to enforce it. At the same time, the leaders need to make sure that the employees are properly equipped and supported so that they can complete the tasks that they are being expected to do and do well. Indeed, any team environment needs.