Katzenbach and Smith’s Essay

Using Katzenbach and Smith’s article as a guide, what might you do if you wanted to encourage team performance? What risks would you face in doing this, and what would you have to be careful of? What I would do to encourage team performance is to set goals for them, in the Katzenbach and smith’s article, they have mentioned the 4 main elements that make team functional, common commitment and purpose, Performance goals, Complementary skills and Mutual accountability. Team functional, common commitment and purpose, this is like given the team a goal for them, having a goal can let the team work more effectively as they can achieve something, the more meaningful the goal is, the more likely the team will live up to the performance potential. For a team, it is very important to have almost everyone doing what they are best at, everyone has what they are good at and is important to have them using their own skills, in this way the job will be done more efficiently. Also the team needs to meet the deadlines, also to attend all the meetings, this is because the team will need to be update to all the new information so the team will understand what they are doing and having group discussion, also to know if the competitors has any new moves on their business. If the team can spend a lot of time together, in this way the team will get to know each individual’s working method or getting to know each other, in this way the relationship will be better which will make a much better team. A specific goal for any individuals can let them stay focus on one subject, this is so all the control for this person can focus on one thing which can give a much better result. Also the reward they can get from working to its performance potential, a reward can be very differently; it can be the manger will buy the team a dinner or give bonus, or even a promotion, this can improve the behaviors of the team, also will encourage them to work better or faster for the reward they can get. But the methods above doesn’t always work, having goal doesn’t mean that the team can achieve it, in the long term if they cannot achieve, is common sense that people will start to give up on the task, I think the task needs to be achievable and the team must know before they start how badly things can be, if they knew this, the chances of the problem will is less. People in the team will always dislike someone in the group, this can always happens and the disadvantage of this is the information between them might not be shared  which can cause problems. The rewards can also be a bad thing for the team, most people would like to have a promotion, but having promotion mean cause problems in the team, teammates can be fighting for the promotion and this can break the relationship between them.