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Organizational Development and Team Building

Organizations cannot afford to overlook the significance of teambuilding in the current dynamic world of business, which is characterized by intense rivalry. In organization, the significance of effective team building lies in the fact that it fosters better and transparent communication between workers, and between the management and employees.Team building improves cooperation and understanding, and professional relations, which are reflected in the quality of work done by workers (Tjosvold et al, 2014). It also contributes significantly to the realization of employee motivation and establishment of trust among workers, thereby leading to enhanced productivity. This paper focuses on comparing and contrasting two articles based on the team building approaches promoted in these articles. These articles are Kenneth De Meuse’s “Driving Team Effectiveness: A Comparative Analysis of the Korn/Ferry T7 Model with other Popular Team Models,” and Christopher Boyle’s article review of book, The five dysfunctions of a team: A leadership Fable by Pat Lencioni.

While De Meuse’s article focuses on the promotion of the Korn/Ferry T7 model for team building, Boyle’s article advocates for the adoption of the Lencioni (2005) framework for effective tam building. The T7 concept focuses on two factors within the team and five factors outside the team that affect team effectiveness. The five internal factors are task skills, teaming skills, talent, trust, and thrust, while the two external factors are team support from the firm/organization and team-leader fit.

The aspect of task skills ensures a successful execution of the job, while the aspect of teaming skills ensures an efficient and effective team operation. The element of talent focuses on the employment of team members’ collective skills to accomplish the task, whereas the component of trust ensures confidence among team members (Tjosvold et al, 2014). The aspect of thrust focuses on the common objective that that the team should accomplish (Tjosvold et al, 2014). Team support from the company refers to the extent to which the organizational leadership allows the team to perform, while team-leadership is the magnitude to which the team leader fulfills the team members’ needs.

Lencioni (2005), which is discussed in Boyle’s article, argues that all teams possess the ability to be dysfunctional, and understanding the level and type of dysfunctional in the team is critical for improving the team’s performance. De Meuse’s article focuses on team dysfunctions such as absence of goods delivery, inaccuracy in measurements lack of flexibility in assignments, lack of focus, poor process management, unfavorable team atmosphere, fear of conflict resolution, poor resource management, poor decision-making, poor deployment of skills, lack of trust, and lack of commitment. On the other hand, Boyle’s article addresses team dysfunctions such as absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to result.

I believe that the two resources employ techniques that can significantly enhance the performance of a team. These articles focus on critical factors that are required for the realization of high performance teams. The availability offactors such as trust, effective conflict resolution, commitment to the realization of team goals, accountability, adequate focus, and appropriate allocation of resources as well as good deployment of skills ensures effective performance of a team. In the absence of most of these elements, the aspect of cooperation or teamwork can be greatly compromised, leading to poor performance.

In my organization, I have encountered the Lencioni (2005) technique for enhancing team building. This method of team building contributed largely to the success of teams in my organization. The operation of this concept of team building focused on five key factors that included trust, conflict resolution, commitment, accountability, and attention to results. The organization’s management engaged team members in activities or games that fostered the five aspects among the team members, leading to high performance. However, in some occasions, members could conflict over resource allocations, thereby hindering effective teamwork among them. As such, I believe that this method team building was not effective enough in encouraging high performance among team members in my organization.

In my opinion, the Korn/Ferry T7, which is discussed in De Meuse’s article, is more effective in ensuring high performance of teams than the Lencioni (2005) discussed in Boyle’s article. Considering the two models for effective team building, it can be noted that all of them focus on the five factors that include trust, accountability, attention/focus, commitment, and effective conflict resolution. These factors are essential for the realization of effective performance of teams in the organization. On the contrary, the availability of these factors alone does not ensure high performance alone since other critical issues such as resource allocation and skills deploymentshould be addressed, as well. The Korn/Ferry T7 model addresses these issues, whereas the Lencion (2005) model does not. As such, the application of the Lencioni (2005) model cannot be effective in situation involving resource allocation even in the presence of trust and accountability. For instance, in my organization, despite the existence of trust and accountability among team members, issues associated with conflict over resources could still occur. This shortcoming arose from the inability of the Lencioni (2005) model to address the issue of resource allocation.

The inability of the Lencioni (200) method to focus on the aspect of talent also contributed to the conflicts experienced among team members since other individuals felt that they could perform certain tasks better than others.  As such, when these tasks were assigned to other individuals, they ended up being annoyed. According to Tjosvold et al (2014), the all stakeholders have a vital role in enhancing the level of performance of teams. The organizational management and team leadership should offer the necessary resources and governance, which are key to the attainment of high performance by teams. The Korn/Ferry T7 model incorporates the aspects of organizational support and good leadership, which are not addressed in the Lencioni (2005) model. Considering the above mentioned aspects, it can be argued that the Korn/Ferry T7 model is better than the Lencioni (2005) team building approach.

Implementing the Korn/Ferry T7 model in my organization would not involve many resources since other aspect of these model are already addressed by the Lencion (2005), which currently exists in my organization. As such, my implementation process would involve a focus on the unaddressed issues such as resource allocation, organizational support, team-leadership fit, and talent. Nevertheless, prior to the implementation or incorporation of these elements in the organization’s team building model, I would have to focus on certain issues to avoid resistance. First, I would create awareness about the intended change by educating employees on and informing the management about the significance of the intended change. I would then proceed to a systematic process of implementing the four unaddressed issues. Once the implementation has been done, I would propose for the development of a feedback and monitoring program to determine and ensure the effectiveness of the adopted changes.

In conclusion, despite focusing on the same aspects, the Korn/Ferry T7 model addressed by De Meuse’s is more comprehensive than the Lencioni (2005) team-building model, which is discussed by Boyle. Korn/Ferry T7 frame work incorporates the aspects of organizational support, resource allocation, leadership fit, and talent, which are not included in the Lencioni (2005) model for team building.