Sunday, October 12, 2008

8.1 Supervision in teams

The discussion on page 228 seemed interesting to me because I think there is some confusion as to what a manager's or supervisor's role in a team is.  Often organizational groups are referred to as teams but there is still and manager or supervisor in a "commanding and controlling" role.  This could be because the group is incorrectly labelled as a team or because the facilitator, as the the text calls it, is unclear or unwilling to make the adjustment and assume a less controlling role.  This can be a problem because the purpose for creating the team would be lost.  I think there is some difficulty in switching to more team-based structures as managers feel confused over their role because of the drastic change.  It can be difficult for the manager to let go and actually let team members deal with and participate in more areas of the process.  

In this way, I think team structures are better for organizations because it encourages more participation.  Team members will likely work together better and member will feel like they can take more ownership over their tasks because they are more involved.  Teams also allow for more learning because processes are less controlled.  
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3 comments:

Professor Cyborg said...

The more cynical side of me thinks that it's not that managers are confused over their roles when organizations move to teams, it's more that they really didn't do much before and the teams make that all the more evident. Research does show that when people are trained to work in teams, this approach to completing tasks (especially complex ones) is highly effective. But organization members can't just be thrown into teams and expected to know what to do. Teams generally do have a team leader, altho that position may rotate depending on the task or the stage of a project. When done right, teams do facilitate greater commitment to the organization, higher levels of job satisfaction, and higher quality outcomes. When done poorly, however, no one is happy and the outcomes are usually underwhelming.

October 13, 2008 at 5:55 PM
Kartik J said...

I think of the manager's role as being the team leader. The responsibility of the decision rests on the manager's shoulder no matter what the decision of the team is, hence the manager as a team leader.

The manager usually takes the decision by taking into account the team consensus. If there is a unanimous approval for a decision from all the team-members, then the decision is clear. However, when there is a decision that the team is unable to come to a consensus on, the manager takes the decision for the team with the inputs from all the team-members. The manager's leadership role is in having the confidence to make the final call in taking any team decision.

October 14, 2008 at 8:09 PM
SS said...

I know of a ridiculous story of a manager that truly does not understand the role of being a team leader. The person’s idea of managing the group was for him to sit there and not be involved while telling everyone else what to do. He makes up unrealistic deadlines without consulting with the team members to see if it is physically possible and there is no rhyme or reason to how he selects the deadlines. To top it off, he would ask the members, almost every single day, to submit a report on the project’s progress. Talk about poor management! He was so obsessed with having everyone write a report for him that he did not even care that the reports interfered with the project! This is a true story; really!!

October 18, 2008 at 1:20 AM

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