According
to Paul Tesluk (2008), a self managing teams is a team that has formal
authority and responsibility for making their own decisions on how they
organize their work and how they decide how they are going to get their work
done; it is up to the team on how they structure themselves and how they go
about organizing their workflow and processes. There are many benefits to
having and implementing self-managed teams. Some of the major benefits to
self-managed work teams are: confidence, high performance, results, knowledge,
innovation, effective decision-making, cost savings compared to having natural
teams, increased productivity, creativity, commitment, cooperation, trust,
improved employee and customer satisfaction, high work morale, motivation,
focus, resourcefulness, initiative, flexibility, variety of skills, ownership
of tasks, and much more. But, just as there are benefits to something, there
are also drawbacks.
The
biggest drawback to self-managed work teams is the development of
“group-think”. Groupthink brings down the innovation, effectiveness,
resourcefulness, knowledge, focus, the variety of skills, and the diversity of
the decision-making process. Groupthink is when the team begins to think alike,
make the same decisions, support each other even when they know that a certain
decision is not effective but they do it to support the team because they are
comfortable in it. This is very destructive as it reduces the amount of effort
given by an individual within the team and it is disruptive in the organization
as performance goes down and results decrease. The team becomes comfortable
with the team norms that they no longer challenge each other or raise
issues/concerns. Another drawback happens during the first implementation phase
of creating a self-managed work team. While the team learns to do things on its
own, it has a lot of meetings, it takes longer to make a decision, it can be
counterproductive as people learn about each other strengths/weaknesses, and
there is a sense of chaos because members don’t have a leader to look up-to to
ask questions, voice concerns, and so on. In other words, there’s a feeling of
having no guidance, purpose, and importance. Lastly, there is a sense of
inefficiency and high investment for something they may not feel confident or
capable of doing. So until the team learns about itself and how to succeed, it
will take both time and investment.
In
respect to self-managing teams, I admire the way self-managing teams work.
Reason being is that self-managing teams are smart, unique, have a variety of
skills/information, and they are capable of managing themselves both
efficiently and effectively. It’s like a good marriage because they communicate
openly, share the same goals, dreams, they care about each other (workwise) so
much that they empower each other to do their best, to learn new things, and to
continue improving. As a human being, that is basically what we all ask for. We
want to do our best and be the best that we can be and having that type of
support and empowerment just fuels your workplace satisfaction level that it
makes you never want to leave because you enjoy what you do. From my past
experience, I felt this way once with one supervisor named Jackie. I felt
capable of exploring new territory, trying new things, learning new practices,
and overall it just made me feel whole, wanted, smart and so on. So, yes I
would love to feel like this again. I would love to work for such a team that
fuels my creativity, strengths, learning, and so on.
In order
for me to become an effective external manager team I will need to first
develop more skills, gain knowledge, learn new practices, understand my
leadership style, come out of my comfort zone, gain experience, become
comfortable with what I know, be confident, and learn how to lead a team where
I am the leader before I can even think about becoming an external manager of a
self managed work team. It just feels like before I can teach someone else to
be the best that he or she can be, I need to learn to be the best that I can
be. I have the tools to do so, I have the education, but I need the confidence
and the experience. I will also need the trust of the team before I can teach
them how to be a self-managed work team. Being young gives me the opportunity
to be a sponge, to learn good habits, good practice, good leadership and grow
both professionally and personally. Once I’m confident on who I am, I can help
others become confident and use these tools that I have to be an external
manager to a self-managed work team.
Reference:
Tesluk, P. (2008).
Self-managing teams: Debunking the leadership paradox. Retrieved November 17,
2014, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBnR00qgGgM&feature=youtu.be
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