Instructions Managers

any companies use teams to enhance their product or service quality and to improve internal work processes. It is important for you as a business leader to understand how teams can be built to work best for your company. Does your company need to have self-managed teams or self-directed teams? Or should you plan to to have some teams of both types? Knowing something about each type of team will help you to decide.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1

Goal-setting is important for any type of team. Teams need to know what to organizations goals are and understand how they can help to accomplish the goals. Self-managed teams typically receive their goals from their leadership and then they determine how to accomplish their goals themselves. Using self-managed teams will require open communication on company goals and objectives. Self-directed teams not only determine how to best to accomplish their goals, but they set their goals themselves rather than receive them from management. . However, self-directed team may have a goal approval process where management reviews the goals against company criteria or the SMART goal-setting method and approves the goals before the team determines their actions to accomplish the goals. Therefore, using self-directed teams will require two-way communication of corporate strategy between leaders and their teams.

2

Managers must show teams they are committed to decision making by teams and the team building process by selecting the types of teams needed for different tasks or work areas. A self-managed team usually designs their own job procedures and will determine their work processes and member assignments. Self-managed teams are known to build employee commitment to the organization and employee morale increases as teams grow confident in their