Hello I'm Ray Sheen.
Welcome to this course on Team Leadership.
I'd like to start with a quick discussion about business teams.
The concept of teams is very prevalent in our workplace today.
There are permanent teams and temporary teams.
There are sports teams and business teams.
There are functional teams and dysfunctional teams.
In this program we wanna focus on business teams, both good and bad.
To do that, we need to first establish what we mean by a business team.
A business team is a group of people with a set of complementary skills,
who work together to complete a set of business tasks.
So for starters,
we're talking about a group of people, no such thing as a team of one in business.
Some organizations do everything in a team environment.
Other organizations establish business teams to address specific projects or
processes.
Regardless, a business team will embody several characteristics
including a common goal.
Also, they have a high degree of interdependency.
They may be doing the same work or
they may be doing successive steps in a business process.
They share authority and responsibility for team management.
There may be a designated team leader.
But it is not an authoritative or dictatorial role.
At least, not if they are actually operating as a team.
Another characteristic is accountability by all for collective performance.
They work together to achieve the goal, not against each other.
Finally, the reward for job well done is shared by all the team members.
All members of the team are recognized for their contribution.
As you can see, a business team is more than just a collection of people
working for the same company.
There is a cohesion and organization of the team.
So that by working together,
they are able to achieve more than if each of them was working independently.
I know that many organizations use the term broadly and
refer to everyone in the company as being on the same team.
Well in this class we'll be much more focused.
We'll be considering the case where the team must regularly be working together
in order to achieve the team goal.
Let me describe one of the special types of business teams
that can be found in most organizations, the functional team.
This is a special case of business teams with a few unique characteristics.
For one thing, they're usually a permanent team.
People on the team may come and go, but the team and its goals remain unchanged.
Each individual has similar skills, and
they're either performing the same types of activities or very similar activities.
The functions could be HR, IT, Finance or Operations.
Whatever the function, they're working on the same business processes.
In this case, the team is normally organized and operating so
as to achieve functional excellence.
They are the subject matter experts in their organization for
the activities accomplished in their function, so they want to do it well.
Sometimes, a function such as customer service will be
operated as a team that can quickly react to any customer problem or challenge.
In that case, their goal is less about operational excellence and
more about customer responsiveness.
A functional team normally has a manager, supervisor or a team leader.
But in this type of team, that individual operates primarily as a coach and
facilitator of the process, not the boss.
One of the most important functions is to share and
propagate best practices among the team members.
They also apply critical extra resources at points
where the team is challenged by business conditions.
Since the team members are subject matter experts,
they don't need close supervision and direction.
Rather they need the facilitator to ensure they stay on course, and
don't overlook anything.
Let's switch to Project Teams.
These are also a special case of business teams.
In this case the team goal is normally the project goal.
What is unique about these teams is that it is a temporary team.
It is created to accomplish the project and
as soon as the project is complete, the team is disbanded.
Unlike the functional team,
the team members on a project team often have very different skill sets.
Let's talk briefly about the role of the project leader.
Since a project team is a unique and temporary team, a plan for
the project's activities must be created.
This individual is responsible for coordinating and
integrating all aspects of the project plan.
They lead the Core Team members who are the subject matter experts that will plan
and accomplish the various aspects of this project.
This individual has an integrating role, but
not a coaching role of the functional teams.
The Core Team members are the key role for
planning and implementing the project activities.
They are the subject matter experts for their function and they're responsible for
all of their functional project activities.
They work with the project leader and other core team members to plan and
execute the project.
A key indicator of project success is often the degree to which the core team
can operate well as a team.
On large projects, the project team will include extended team members.
These are individuals who are working with the core team members
from their function to accomplish the project activities.
On small projects, the core team members do the work and
no extended team members are needed.
On larger projects, there will be sometimes be a functional team supporting
a core team member to do all the functional work on the project.
Well, we've introduced the concept of business teams.
Many of the remaining modules in this course will focus on
all types of business teams.
However there will be some things that are special about functional teams and
project teams.