Nirali Patel

Article: 8 ways to build collaborative teams

Recap:
The article focuses on how to build successful collaborative larger teams that links to success of an
organization. Executing complex initiatives like acquisitions, merger or an IT overhaul requires a span of
knowledge that can be provided only by teams that are large, diverse, virtual, and composed of highly
qualified team members. While the very same characteristics becomes a problem in collaborative teams,
the authors of this article focuses on what can an organization, executives and team members do to build a
successful team. This article shows the research done by professors that studied 55 large teams and
identified those with strong collaboration despite their complexity. The main agenda was to examine the
team dynamics and environment at various firms in all kind of industries ranging from financial firms,
media companies, an oil and gas company, telecommunication firms, and a hospitality firm. The authors
came out with eight success factors that are: signature relationship practices, role models of collaboration
among executives, the establishment of a gift culture in which managers support employees by
mentoring, training in relationship skills, sense of community, ambidextrous leadership skills or leaders
who are both task-oriented and relationship-oriented, good use of heritage relationships as well as role
clarity and task ambiguity. In most of the companies, teams are growing larger and companies constantly
thrive to change their team practices due to economic down turns, virtual teams, diversity and
globalization. The new complexity of teams requires organizations to increase their capacity for
collaboration, by making long-term investments that build relationships and trust and smart near-term
decisions about how teams are formed and run.
Critical Analysis:
This article seems to be completely relevant in todays age of globalization. I have worked as a software
engineer in an IT outsourcing firm in India. The major problem we faced while working with the team
overseas was collaboration with team members. The team size would range anywhere from 20 to 200
people. The reasons for lack of collaboration were mainly due to time difference, communication gaps,
organizational culture and the age. After reading this article, I think some of the steps can truly overcome

Nirali Patel

the problem of team collaboration. I feel some of very powerful factors that lead to success in building of
collaborative team that concerns with the leader or a manager are building relationships, fostering
communication, modeling collaborative behavior, and demonstrating the skills that are both task as well
as relationship oriented among the team members. While some of the factors for building successful
collaborative teams that team members should focus on are building trust for their leader, maintaining
relationships, and understanding the role as well as the tasks complexity of individual in the team. Above
all to build the successful collaborative teams, an organization should have support from top tier
executives and the strategic human resource management that aligns the goals of an organization to
individuals goal which are in-turn tied to performance management systems. I completely agree with the
authors about the required leadership traits and skills for managing the larger teams. I feel the team
leaders of fairly large teams should have conflict management skills, skills for creating the perception of
fairness among team members, and skills for building and maintaining relationships with and among team
members.

Article: 8 ways to build Collaborative Teams Questions

1. Do you think that an organizational structure plays an important role in building successful
teams? Why?
2. Think about yourself as a manager or team leader. Your task is to build a team. What are
some of the qualities and traits that you think must be present in your team members?
3. What can an organization do for creating mentors and coaches that can help in building
collaborative teams?
4. Imagine your self working in global team, of fairly large size, dispersed across the world.
What are some of the things that will prevent you from performing in an efficient way? What
are some of the things that will help you, to perform in most efficient way?
5. Do you think corporate trainings and education regarding team building really helps to build
efficient collaborative team? Why?

Nirali Patel
6. Why do team formations and structures play an important role in managing complex teams?
Article: Leaders framework for decision making

Issue # 3 Questions:
1. What should leaders do to encourage followers/ employees to be more ethical?
2. Can illegal corporate behaviors be predicted? If yes, how can you predict such behaviors? If no,
why cannot you predict?
3. What measure should leader take to prevent illegal corporate behaviors?
Issue# 4 Questions:
1. How can you effectively change organization culture?
2. How can leaders detect desirable and undesirable characteristics of organization culture?
3. What are the qualities or traits that are must for leader to influence organizational culture?