The essence of finding success in team activities begins with the team defining its roles in

allocating team leaders and team members. Our model beings with clearly defined roles
for both the team leader and the team members. After a few role defined steps in our
model, it makes the necessary stride that any successful team must make, it effectively
communicates together to find the proper challenging goals with multiple clear roles and
assignments for every member of the team, thus then efficiently and productively
becoming a high performing team.





the Harvard Business Review and Building High-Performance Teams thought out and
written by Harvey Dubin, we once again believe that our model can successfully lead any
team to the one common goal of having a high performance team. We will now go
further into each step of our model beginning with the leaders beginning tasks, then
covering the team members specific roles, and then explaining how the whole team is
needed reach the high performance team status.
Any individual does not need to be born with natural leadership tendencies to be a
successful team leader, but rather, and according to Harvey Dubin, found on page four
of his article, A single leader going out on a limb can be the start of a challenge that
can transform a companys culture and future. The context of Dubins line can be
thought of that any individual with only an idea, the courage of going out on a limb and
believing in that idea can become a successful team leader that could one day transform a
As I mentioned above, our
model can be found
successful when the final
point of a high performance
team is reached. Our team
thoroughly believes that any
kind of team, no matter the
nature of business or the
industry can find success in
their respectful matters by
committing to our model.
With the help from our
Organizational Behavior text
book, written by Jason
Colquitt, Jeffery Lepine, and
Michael Wesson, and three
articles consisting of: A
Strategic Guide for Building
Effective Teams composed
by Laird Mealiea and Ramon
Baltazar, The New Science of
Building Great Teams
written by Alex Sandy
Pentland published in
companys culture and future. The first step in our model for the team leader is vision.
Vision, or visibility, can be defined as how aware others of a leaders power and
position, (Colquitt, Lepine & Wesson 423) we thought this is critical in the beginning
stages of building an effective team because a team leader has the vision, and with the
help of others, he or she believes will be successful in helping the team succeed. With a
proper level of vision, the next step is to have no external consulting. Having no external
consulting serves as a psychological factor and another important factor of finding high
team performance. Laird Mealiea and Ramon Baltazar expand on this by
contributing, Everyone on the team talks and listens roughly equal measure,
keeping contributions short and sweet. Meaning that the team must show enough
commitment and belief in itself to find its success, there is no need for any external
consulting when a team firmly has enough commitment and self-belief. The following
step for the leader is to experience effective feedback. Found in our class textbook,
feedback can be thought as the degree to which carrying out the activities required
by the job provides employees with clear information about how well theyre
performing. (Colquitt, Lepine & Wesson 105) While this applies to both team leaders
and team members, it is especially important for the team leaders because a team leader
must know if they are being effective in finding the success for the team.
Any successful team is not defined solely by its leaders, but by its team members.
The team members are the heart and soul of any project; they are the ones who put in the
necessary energy and effort in order to achieve the goal of the team. The first step on our
model for team members is diversity. Colquitt, Lepine & Wesson define team diversity
as the degree to which members of a team are different from one another in terms
of any attribute that might be used by someone as a basis of categorizing people
(362). No successful team can too many of one skill while lacking in another equally
important skill, team diversity is just another critical factor to reaching the ending task of
having a high performance team. Building on diversity, the next step for team members is
to have proper training. In similar thoughts to Mealiea and Baltazar, having formal
training in deficient areas (12), vastly enhances the ability of the team because when a
team is prepared for any upcoming tasks they may encounter, the prosperous completion
is far more likely. The final and most important step for the team members is to display a
level of honest commitment to the true betterment of the team. With being mentioned in
multiple chapters of our class textbook, one definition that Colquitt, Lepine & Wesson
provide is that employees have a strong desire to remain a member of the
organization, maybe because they want to stay, need to stay, or feel they ought to
stay (76). Expanding on their definition, having commitment is the action of believing
and caring about something you are attached too. Without believing or caring about your
team, it is only an interest and not a commitment. Having all the team members commit
to the team leader and the overall team directly translates to discovering team success.
Team members are no where near being exclusively attached to having commitment, it is
also vital for team leaders to display a strong level of commitment for many of the same
reasons as the team members.
Many of the first six factors of our model do not specifically apply to just team
leaders or team members, this is because a successful team consists of both the members
and the leaders coming together to accomplish their goals as one individual unit. With the
team acting and believing as one, the next phase of our model comes to light. The first
aspect of this phase of the model we will discuss is exploring and discovering a specific
challenging goal. Dubin begins to touch in this thought with his discussion of the
not-so-secret ingredient (1). He expands this thought with stating that all you need
to do is compel the people in your company with a new possibility. The human mind has
always naturally been curious for advancement and sometimes something as simple as a
new possibility is all a team needs to come together to expand the idea to a challenging
goal that will have a truly beneficial effect on the company. On page 12 of the Mealiea
and Baltazar article, the authors also mention goal setting and define it as
clarifying behavioral expectations as to desired team behaviors. Their definition
exemplifies the importance of having a common team goal because without one, the team
is working for nothing and thus will not be able to find success. The other aspect of their
classification serves as a perfect transition into the next aspect of our model, having clear
roles or assignments. One definition that Colquitt, Lepine & Wesson provide for roles
is a pattern of behavior that a person is expected to display in a given context
(358). In majority of team goals, multiple factors have to be completed in order to
accomplish their goal. The best and most efficient way to complete each factor is to have
each member of the team have a specific role that directly plays into completing the
overall goal. In Pentlands article, a study is discussed consisting of specific roles
being monitored in order to find the science behind creating a great team. Without
multiple roles being observed, the study would never have been as effective because a
successful team is dependent on every team member successfully fulfilling their role.
This leads us to possibly the most important factor in having a high performance team
and that is communication. Without positive and thought provoking communication, no
other step of our model can sufficiently be completed. While many different definitions
of communication can be found, Colquitt, Lepine & Wesson define it as the process
by which information and meaning get transferred from a sender to a receiver
(391). Communication is vital between all aspects of the team, team leaders must confer
with each other to ensure the right decisions are being made, team members need to
communicate with one another in order to effectively complete their jobs or tasks. In
supplement, team leaders have to communicate with the team members so the team can
act as a whole and successfully accomplish their goal together. As I briefly mentioned
before, Pentland discusses a study regarding how successful teams communicate with
each other. Some of the data points the study concluded include: members face one
another, and their conversations and gestures are energetic, members connect
directly with one anothernot just with the team leader, members carry on back-
channel or side conversations within the team, and members periodically break, go
exploring outside the team and bring information back (6). If any team follows
these guidelines for communication the overall team performance will vastly improve.
With communication being such a key factor in any teams success, Mealiea and
Baltazar also touch on having open communication with occurs when group
members take advantage of communication opportunities, openly share their
feelings, provide timely and relevant feedback, and share relevant information with
other group members (5). The glue that sticks our model together is having strong,
positive and effective communication throughout the entire process of the team
happenings. With this ever so critical aspect taken care of, our model has reached its
finale, executing as a high performance team.
The one common goal for any kind of team, no matter what their respective goal
or task happens to be, is to come together as one and truly be a high performance team.
The definition provided in our text book for performing is, members are comfortable
working within their roles, and the team makes progress toward goals (Colquitt,
Lepine & Wesson 352). Making progress towards goals is what every team strives to do
but our model is not just about performance; our model has laid out the steps for a team
to achieve high performance. High performance can simply be thought of as an expanded
definition of normal performance, all team members being comfortable and happy with
their roles and making consistent progress that eventually leads to the successful
completion of the teams original goals. Now that all of the necessary steps are known for
what we believe will lead to having a high performance team, our team hopes you know
understand and will take action into building high performance teams, no matter what the
endeavor looking to be conquered is.