Teams provide inducement to work in a set up. Functioning as a group ensures effective and proficient performance of the jobs. This facilitates harmonization with different team members and also results in dissemination of the ideas and knowledge among them. (Teams and Teamwork) The convention of functioning in groups is more and more common in different types of organization. The members from different department are taken together to form teams with a view to encouraging cooperation among them in solving the problems and harmonizing new programs and new processes and also to be employed in the secular planning efforts. With a view to unite all the key personnel so as to increasing the productivity, increasing the associative-ness and enhancement of quality and proficiency the forming of interdisciplinary and diverse functional teams are constituted. Simply placing the people in teams however, do not ensure the effectiveness of the team. It is considered cumbersome to make the personnel work collaboratively, to make them hear to each other, to judge the viewpoints of all and to extend the courtesy and regard for each other. (Lankard, 1994) Impact of demographic characteristics and cultural diversity on group behavior

The studies from various fields have propounded hat the advantages that come out of demographic differences in organizations by enhancement of the differences in the point-of-view and strategies of the work that the members of different teams can bring. To illustrate the theoretical and practical differences may lead to the perspectives available within an organization and facilitate clarifying, organizing and combining the innovative strategies to accomplish the goals. Moreover, the work units consisted of different members that is found from the broad networks of contacts making it likely that useful new information are included in the decisions so as to increase commitment of selections and enhance responsiveness to rapidly changing organizational environments. (Chatman; Polzer; Barsade; Neale, 1998)

In the present skill oriented economy, the organizations more intensively strive to form competitive advantage by engaging the cross-cultural groups to arrest and integrate the know-how inherent in its geographically and culturally dispersed subsidiaries. In comparison to individuals the teams evidential possess increased collective knowledge as well as the higher capability to practice such knowledge. The more varied the team members are the more apparent the bases of the knowledge and the more diverse their point-of-view and ways of thinking that can influence their output. The differed groups are progressively more inventive and resourceful than the identical groups. Alternatively, it has also been found that the heterogeneous groups are progressively more conflicting, more negative influential reactions and less cohesiveness than the identical groups. Such matters may particularly exist among the culturally diverse groups consisting of members with varied bases and notions of life. (Cultural Diversity, Information Pooling, and Group Effectiveness: A Network Approach)

How do demographic characteristics and cultural diversity contribute to or detract from high-performance teams

The business acknowledges the varied demographics of the workforce along with the awareness for implying a varied customer profile on their operations. The increasing economic integration of the business worldwide give rise to the cultural diversity of the labor force associated with the collaborative virtual work. As a consequence the output of a global team may be dependent upon the technical and assignment factors as well as upon the cultural identity or diversity of the group. In small teams the differences among the members are more evident due to various facts including the cultural structure of the team. The desire and capability of the group member to collaborate with each other are more prone to have an impact on the overall output of the teams. (Exploring the Links between Cultural Diversity: The Collaborative Conflict Management Style and Performance of Global Virtual Teams) The diversity in the attitudes and thinking, give rise to the inventive methods of solving the problems. The teamwork devises a harmony between the different team members resulting in increasing their skills and organizational development. (Teams and Teamwork)

The director of workforce diversity at IBM, Ted Childs, emphasized upon introvert viewing of the customers of the company and to view people like them. If they are unable to do so then he opined the continuing loyalty of becoming their customers decline. The businesses also acknowledge the capability of cultural diverse work teams to solve the problems effectively. Ernest H. Drew, CEO of Hoechst Celanese opined at conference...

Drew was clear with the presentation of the reports by the teams about the fact that the diverse teams had wider solutions. (Lankard, 1994) Kirkman, Tesluk and Rosen also reported the results of an investigation on the fact as to the way the demographic diversity in work teams affect the team strength and team capability. They viewed that the team empowerment completely arbitrated the relationships that race diversity had with team leader ratings of team effectiveness and partially mediated the relationships with team member ratings. (Kirkman; Tesluk; Rosen, 2004)
How a group can become a high performance team

Every group of people is not allotted with the assignments as a team and also not each and every project necessitates a team. The high accomplishments teams are not are more often referred to as self-directed teams. (Building High Performance Teams) A team indicates to any group working collaboratively. The Committees, councils and task forces cannot be called as teams. The Groups cannot be called as teams as it is often referred to. Similarly the total workforce of any large and complex organization is never called a team. The teams vary basically from the working groups since they necessitate both individual and mutual responsibility. The teams depend more upon the group discussion, debate and decision; on more than sharing information and best practice performance standards. The teams create isolated work-products of the joint contributions of their members. This enhances the efficiency of collective efforts of workers which is considered more than the sum of all the individual efforts of team members. (Katzenbach; Smith, 1993)

More simply a team is more taken to be more than the sum of its parts. The team spirit is taken to be a common obligation. The groups function as individuals with it and become a strengthened unit of collective performance. This type of obligation necessitates a goal to which the team members target. The teams with their performance in accomplishment of a meaningful purpose afford to develop direction, momentum and obligation. The better teams are identified with the inclination towards investing more amounts of time and effort discovering, molding and agreeing on a goal that belongs to them both collectively and individually. Conversion of broad impetus into the particular and quantifiable performance objectives is considered to be the first step for a team attempting to mold a purpose meaningful to its members. The groups constituted basically for the purpose of making a team or for performance enhancement, communication, organizational effectiveness or excellence are becoming more effective as teams as exhibited by the bad impressions found in respect of many companies in trials with its quality circles that never found to have converted quality into specific goals. (Katzenbach; Smith, 1993)

The strategy of discussing the goals and the approaches to them fetch the team members a clearer and clearer selection only when the appropriate performance objectives are fixed for accomplishment that provides them enough choice enabling them to refute the objectives that the team selects and opt out or they can pitch in and become accountable with and to their teammates. Most of the times, such teams puzzle the broad objectives of the organization as a whole with the specific objective of their small group at the top. The order of the team depicts that in order to constitute an effective team it is essential to have team purpose that is unique and explicit to the small group and that necessitates the team members to be prepared and attain something that is more than the individual end results. A team cannot be initiated without some minimum complement of skills particularly of technical and functional ones.

Unanimity on the specifications of works and the method to harmonize different skills and the team performance is based on the essence of molding the common approach. The efficacy of teams develops strong obligations to a common strategy in order to ensure their working collaboratively and attainment of the goals. There is unanimity of decisions on performing a particular job by a definite person, the definite schedules to be fixed and adhered to and the skills need to be improved and the continuing membership in the team that is to be included and the ways the group and teams tailor the decisions to attain the objectives. Such factors of commitment are quite significant to the team performances as…