Organizational Team Building

Organizational Team Building ORGANIZATIONAL TEAMS GROUP DEVELOPMENT The objective of this part of the study is to answer the question of how the Woodson Foundation could have been assisted in building a cohesive coalition by understanding the stages of group development. The Woodson Foundation is a large nonprofit social service agency and to be teaming up with the Washington DC public schools for the purpose of improving the outcomes of students. Problems at the school include truancy, low performance of students and crime and quick burnout of new staff.

The Woodson Foundation plans to create an after-school program that is experimental in nature and involves private money being combined with local leaders in the community with educational expertise. According to the text studied in this course "A work team is such that results in the generation of positive synergy due to effort that is coordinated and as such the effort put forth by individuals results in performance levels that are greater than merely the sum of all individual efforts combined.

The team should be comprised of a diversity of members from the cross-section of various interest groups involved in this after-school program. generates positive synergy through coordinated effort. The individual efforts result in a level of performance greater than the sum of those individual inputs. The team formed should be a team that is able to identify solutions to problems and as stated is formed from a cross-section of the participating organizations and entities involved in the initiative.

The group members should have all the same level of power vested in them so that there is no power-conflict within the group. The team should be made aware that no one will be able to have it all as their view deems to be right and that negotiation and compromise will be involved to ensure the best outcome for all involved and specifically for the students. The students should be the focus of the initiative rather than the personal views of individual group members.

PART II: PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION Identification of problems should be approached from the view of all team members who are the focal point for community members, school and organizational members addressing. The team members will gather information from the various organizations, entities and community at large and bring these problems to the table for discussion among the team for identification of problems and resolution of the problems for the best possible outcome for all involved.

Problem-solving can be approached in several ways and one of these approaches is called 'Brainstorming' which is reported to be such that avoids pressures related to conformity and that destroys creativity because this method supports any possible alternatives and rids the chance of criticism which is highly negative and defeats the purpose of identifying problems and seeking solutions. Brainstorming involves the generation of ideas that while at first look may not sound viable but ultimately lead to real and workable solutions.

The nominal group technique is a group decision-making model that involves group members meeting with one another and pooling their own ideas and then systematically yet independently ranking the ideas and the highest ranked idea is the chosen decision. This is a very effective method for problem resolution. PART III: RETROSPECTIVE EVALUATION Retrospective evaluation in the team environment often involves peer-evaluation of performance.

This is a viable method because only the group members actively involved in the team participation and collaboration has a full enough view of what has taken place to conduct evaluation of team members. PART IV. REFLECTION The Woodson Foundation is presently at the team-building stage which is an early stage of development of the team.

This process is difficult and involves overcoming many hurdles before the team has solidified as a working unit with cohesion characterized by a collaborative and joint effort with identified goals and processes that work with the specifically formed team. There are several steps involved in.