This new experience provides a category in the Teams Store from where you can browse and acquire workflows that automate your daily routine. Acquiring workflows is quite easy with Teams, connecting easily to many of the services you use on a daily basis. Workflows can be manually triggered via message extensions, message actions or automated to start off of an event trigger.
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These are only some of the many workflows that you can now enable from within the Teams store. We will be continuing to add more workflow templates based on your feedback and input from sources all across the industry.
A "high-performance work team" refers to a group of goal-focused individuals with specialized expertise and complementary skills who collaborate, innovate and produce consistently superior results. The group relentlessly pursues performance excellence through shared goals, shared leadership, collaboration, open communication, clear role expectations and group operating rules, early conflict resolution, and a strong sense of accountability and trust among its members.
In addition, the article offers suggestions for ways HR can help teams achieve high performance. These include recruiting the right team members, training, conflict resolution, and assessments and facilitation of results, pay and incentives. The article does not cover matters such as employee engagement and employee involvement, which are encompassed in the Employee Relations Discipline, nor issues related to employee staffing or employee retention, which are covered in the Staffing Management Discipline.
Work teams are the backbone of contemporary work life. Executive teams run corporations. Project teams create new products and services. Matrix teams help develop everything from pharmaceuticals to the delivery of services in consulting firms and charitable agencies. Marketing and sales teams deliver products and services to customers. High-performance work teams are essential to the way most organizations organize and carry out their work, resulting in superior performance, which translates into a significant competitive advantage.
A team is a group of people who work together to accomplish something beyond their individual self-interests; however, not all groups are teams. A simple but effective description of what is meant by "a team" comes from Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith's book, The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization: "A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed in a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable."1
The use of teams has expanded dramatically in response to competitive challenges and technological changes. Team structures allow for the application of multiple skills, judgments and experiences that are most appropriate for projects requiring diverse expertise and problem-solving skills. Teams can execute more quickly, make better decisions, solve more complex problems, and do more to enhance creativity and build skills than an individual can. Their use also increases productivity and morale; well-functioning teams can outperform individuals and even other types of working groups.
Although there is no simple measure of performance effectiveness for groups, and no team is identical, there seems to be a shared understanding of what makes an effective group work. High-performance work teams are generally composed of a combination of purpose and goals, talent, skills, performance ethics, incentives and motivation, efficacy, leadership, conflict, communication, power and empowerment, and norms and standards.
High-performance teams begin by recruiting and retaining their best talent while quickly helping low-performing members find other places to work. Morale typically increases as performance increases. After selecting for talent, it is critical to ensure that the team members possess complementary skills (e.g., technical, problem-solving, decision-making and interpersonal skills). Team members must exhibit a sustained commitment to performance excellence, exercise candor and mutual respect, and hold themselves and their organizations accountable at both the individual and team levels.
Both monetary and nonmonetary systems that encourage high performance have a positive impact on tactical implementation of the team's goals. Over the long term, intrinsic motivators such as personal satisfaction at work and working on interesting projects provide the greatest impact on performance. In addition, a belief in one's self and abilities encourages people to take more strategic risks to achieve team goals.
High-performing leaders generally accompany high-performance work teams. Essential leadership qualities include the ability to a) keep the purpose, goals and approach relevant and meaningful; b) build commitment and confidence; c) ensure that team members constantly enhance their skills; d) manage relationships from the outside with a focus on the removal of obstacles that might hinder group performance; e) provide opportunities for others without seeking credit; and f) get in the trenches and do the real work required. There is widespread agreement that effective team leaders focus on purpose, goals, relationships and an unwavering commitment to results that benefit the organization and each individual.
Conflict management is an essential part of becoming a high-performance team. Open communication in such teams means a focus on coaching instead of on directing and a focus on the ability to immediately address issues openly and candidly. The key to team performance is open lines of communication at all times to provide motivation, maintain interest and promote cooperation.
Empowered work teams increase ownership, provide an opportunity to develop new skills, boost interest in the project and facilitate decision-making. Researchers refer to the ideal situation as being "loose-tight," such that specific decision-making boundaries are constructed with enough room for individuals to make empowered choices.
Dr. Bruce Tuckman, an early psychology researcher focused on group dynamics, developed a four-phase model of team development that included forming, storming, norming and performing. Refinement by other researchers has resulted in a well-known team development process that provides a useful framework for leaders and team members seeking to understand the nature of group dynamics and their evolution.
Other researchers have described a similar process yet attributed different names to the phases (e.g., working group, pseudo team, potential team, real team and ending with a high-performance team). Regardless of the identifiers used, high-performance work teams develop over time in roughly similar ways. As a result, this four-phase model serves general organizational purposes well, although some researchers have suggested that a fifth stage occurs when the group is disbanding: adjourning or mourning, the feeling of sadness and loss as a successful team separates.
Work teams are continuing units responsible for producing goods or providing services. Their membership is typically stable, usually full time and well-defined. Work teams are found in both manufacturing and service settings and are traditionally directed by supervisors who make most of the decisions about what is done, how it is done and who does it. Self-managing teams involving employees making decisions that were formerly made by supervisors are gaining favor.
Parallel teams pull together people from different work units or jobs to perform functions the organization is not equipped to perform well. They exist in parallel with the formal organizational structure, have limited authority and can only make recommendations. Parallel teams are used for problem-solving and improvement-oriented activities (e.g., quality improvement teams, employee involvement groups, quality circles or task forces).
Project teams are typically time-limited and produce a one-time output (e.g., a new product or service, information system or plant). Project-team tasks are not repetitive and involve considerable application of knowledge, judgment and expertise. As a result, membership is usually diverse, drawing from different disciplines and functional units, so specialized expertise can be applied to the project.
Management teams coordinate and provide direction to their subunits and are responsible for the overall performance of a business unit. The management team's authority stems from the hierarchal rank of its members. At the top of the organization, the executive management team establishes strategic direction and manages the company's performance by applying its collective expertise and sharing responsibility for the overall success.
A virtual team is a group of individuals who work together in pursuit of common goals across time, space and organizational boundaries. They are linked electronically by webs of communication technology (e.g., the Internet, Skype, WebEx, internal networks). Members of a virtual team coordinate their work predominantly with electronic information and communication technologies to accomplish specific organizational tasks and may never meet face to face. Virtual teams allow companies to obtain the best talent possible for a specific project without geographical restrictions. They are also generally viewed as more efficient in expenditures of time and related travel costs. See How to Collaborate with Global Teams and Making Stronger Connections Virtually.
Organizations can be strengthened by leveraging differences that mirror the diversity of their employees. Surveys have demonstrated a positive impact on high performance by teams with a diversity of ages, ethnicity and gender. A diverse workforce can also improve organizational productivity and creativity. Managing a diverse workforce can be a challenge, though. When people from different backgrounds come together, there is potential for both great accomplishment and great conflict. Managing diversity requires creating an environment in which differences in perspective can be valued and allowed to positively influence and contribute to the organization's work.
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