The ostensible reason for creating work teams is because they’re supposed to do something. That’s what this section is about.
We create teams instead of doing a task ourselves because we believe that the members of a team working together can accomplish more than the same number of individuals working separately. While we all know that teams have the potential to do more and to do it more quickly, achieving those aims isn’t simply a matter of getting together a group of people. It often takes much more skill than doing it on your own. Teaming takes time, patience, communication, organization, and discipline. This is perhaps the same reason so many managers find it difficult to delegate; it often seems easier to say, “I’ll just do it myself".
The chartering process, described in the Getting Started section, is the first and the most important step. But the ultimate goal of building a charter is to get to the “performing” stage of the team process more quickly. Once there’s a charter, ground rules, and a plan, it’s time to get at it. This section on Getting to Results concerns the knowledge and skills necessary for actually performing the job.”
Meetings, meetings, meetings! Why do we have to have so many meetings? And why do they have to be so long? And unproductive? Most of us who have served on teams have heard and said these things many times. We know that presenting, discussing, collaborating, assigning, reporting, and deciding are important things that happen in meetings but, we wonder, how are we supposed to get anything done if we are always meeting? Plus, most of us have other responsibilities besides those that come from our team.
We probably wouldn’t mind the time so much if we felt we were spending it productively. Most meetings don’t give us that feeling, though. The first portion of this section presents some different views on making our meetings, especially team meetings, more effective. It deals with the kind of agenda building, time management, record keeping, and follow-up skills that will help us get our teams on to the task at hand and out of the meeting more quickly.
Finally, one of the biggest challenges we face in managing our teams these days is that the members are increasingly likely to be spread out across the country or the world—let alone across town. Managing teams in a virtual environment is a growing challenge and is a crucial skill for anyone looking to be a manager or team leader in an information economy organization. Knowing how to get things done in teleconferences or computer conferences, how to share data, how to do things at a distance that are much easier in person, requires that we gain new knowledge and develop new skills. The final portion of Getting to Results provides insightful information to help you develop these competencies and will describe a variety of technology tools available to you as you sharpen your skills in effective virtual collaboration.
