BUILDING EFFECTIVE TEAMS IN THE

TOURISM INDUSTRY CONSIDERING GENDER

DIVERSE MANAGING PERSPECTIVES.

An inside look into the differences and similarities of

male and female managerial Styles in building effective
teams.

BACHELOR PAPER II

submitted at the
IMC Fachhochschule Krems
(University of Applied Sciences)

Bachelor/Master
Tourism and Leisure Management
By

OLAKUNLE KOLIN OTARU

for the award of the academic degree
Bachelor of Arts in Business (BA)

Specialization/ Consolidation/ Programme

Supervisor: LORENZ HUBER

Submitted on: 07.05.2021

Declaration of honour

“I declare on my word of honour that I have written this paper on my own

and that I have not used any sources or resources other than stated and
that I have marked those passages and/or ideas that were either verbally or
textually extracted from sources. This also applies to drawings, sketches,
graphic representations as well as to sources from the internet.
The paper has not been submitted in this or similar form for assessment at
any other domestic or foreign post-secondary educational institution and
has not been published elsewhere. The present paper complies with the
version submitted electronically.”

Date:07.05.2021 K.OTARU

II
III
ABSTRACT
Building an effective team to carry out tasks in the tourism industry is increasingly
becoming a more important success factor for firms in the industry. It is also the
duty of the Managers of the industry to build and develop their teams to make
them effective. This paper aims to decipher if there are any patterns, trends,
similarities and differences between the male and female managers approaches to
building effective teams in the tourism industry and determine the most efficient
ways to do so. Interviews were conducted with eleven participants and analysed in
an attempt to determine any similarities and differences between the two genders.
Important factors and the multiple facets that influence a team’s ability to be
effective are subsequently explored and presented. While there are differences in
the approaches, most approaches are built on the same foundations for the two
genders.

Table of Content
s
Declaration of honour II

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Background of the Study 1

1.2 Scope of the Research 2

1.3 Problem Definition 2

1.4 Aim of the Research and Research Questions 3

1.5 Contribution of the Study 3

2. Methodology 4

2.1 Justification for the Selection of the research methods: 5

2.2 Sampling: 6

2.3 Recruitment 7

2.4 Projected Limitations 7

2.5 Ethical Considerations 8

3. Chapter Outline 8

3.1 Project Plan (including timetable): 9

4 Data Collection 10

4.1 Recruitment and Interview Processes 11

4.2 Interviewee Profiles 12

4.3 Data presentation 13

5. Data Processing 14

5.1. Findings 15

5.1.1 Team building Exercises 15

5.1.2 Goal Setting, performance measurement and Information sharing 18

5.1.3 Trust and Respect, Support, and Communication 22

5.1.4 Environment, Workload, and time pressure 25

5.1.5 Conflict 29

5.1.6 Success, Feedback and Reward 31

5.1.7 Recruitment 34

5.1.8 Other relevant factors that influence team effectiveness 36

5.2 Comparison of Male and Female Managers Approaches to Achieving

Effective Teamwork in the Tourism Industry 38

6 Conclusion 42

7 Limitations 42

8 Recommendations 44

9 Bibliography 45

10 Annex 48

10.1 Questionnaire 48

10.2 Transcripts 50

1
1 Introduction
The tourism industry makes up one in every ten jobs in the world (Peltier, 2016).
Knowing this, it is easy to see how substantial effective teamwork is for all
organizations and firms today. As a matter of fact, many firms rely on effective
teamwork and team-based organization to improve service quality, increase
customer satisfaction, and enhance the work experience for employees (Tepeci,
2008). One of the biggest trials an employer or manger will face is building a
successful team (John R. Walker, 2009). Furthermore, managers are responsible
for the identification of new ways to organize work, foster team spirit, provide new
services and sustain a competitive edge (Jesús Felipe Gallego, 1997).
Hence this paper will focus on the managers perspectives and approaches in
building effective teams in the tourism and leisure industry. This part of the paper will
cover the background of the study. The scope of the research and the aim of the
research will subsequently be addressed. Secondary literature has been considered
in this section as well.

1.1 Background of the Study

A team, according to Kozlowski and Bell (Kozlowski, 2017) is defined as “collectives
who exist to perform organizationally relevant tasks, share one or more common
goals, interact socially, exhibit task interdependencies, maintain and manage
boundaries, and are embedded in an organizational context that sets boundaries,
constrains the team, and influences exchanges with other units in the broader
entity.” (Tepeci, 2008). As previously stated, this dissertation is going to focus solely
on the managers perspective of building and fostering an effective team. It is
however going to split these perspectives into two groups and is going to focus on
comparing the differing perceptions and approaches of the genders in managerial
positions in the tourism and leisure industry regarding the efficiency of teamwork. In
other words, what factors are important for efficient teamwork from the perspective
of both female and male managers in the tourism and leisure industry and the
approaches they take to ensure effective teamwork.

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Teamwork is an intangible concept which cannot easily be measured quantitatively
and thus a qualitative approach has been adopted for the most part of this research
paper. This will be further discussed in the methodology section of this paper.

1.2 Scope of the Research

This paper is going to explore what factors influence the development of a team and
how these factors determine their level of effectiveness. As previously stated, this
work is going to focus on male and female managers. These managers were
between the ages of twenty-five and sixty-five and working in the tourism industry in
Austria. They also manage teams with at least three individuals. Furthermore, their
perspectives on what effective teamwork is and what their approach to achieving
effective teamwork will be requested. The focus will solely be on Hotel, event and
gastronomy managers. Other branches of the industry will not be considered in this
paper.

1.3 Problem Definition

Considering the heretofore described background, the problem of this study is to
identify the key differences in the approaches of building and managing effective
teams of male and female mangers/employers. Furthermore, the differences and
similarities in the results will be evaluated in order to find out the most efficient ways
to achieve effective teamwork. “Organisations and workplaces are not gender-
neutral and thus are influenced in their operations, decisions, team processing,
division of tasks and labour by embedded gender consideration” (David Imhonopi,
2012).

This simply means that gender roles of individuals in the workplace influence the
whole work process including team building and management. The Author aims to
find how these roles differ or are similar in their attitudes and procedures in building
and managing effective teams.

2
1.4 Aim of the Research and Research Questions
The aim of this paper is to highlight and evaluate the differences and similarities in
the management styles of the two sample groups i.e male and female
employers/managers, with regard to building and managing effective teams in the
tourism industry. From the evaluation of these styles and approaches, the author
hopes to come to suitable conclusions that could help further knowledge about the
topic of building effective teams in the tourism and leisure industry.

The following research questions are going to be answered in this paper:

I. What are the male and female managers’ perspectives on and approaches to
building and running an effective team in the tourism and leisure industry?
II. What are the similarities and differences that can be drawn from both
perspectives?

1.5 Contribution of the Study

“Eurostat finds that generally, only 1 out of 3 managers in the EU is a woman.
Among the nearly 9.4 million persons who hold a managerial position in the EU, 6.0
million (64%) are men and 3.4 million (36%) are women, a share that has remained
stable since 2012.” (Austria, 2019).

This is especially true in the tourism industry, which has women twice as likely to be
employers than any other industry (World Tourism organisation, 2018). It is therefore
safe to say that there is more information available for male managed firms than
female managed ones.

Due to this fact, this paper assumes that there is not enough data regarding female
approaches to building and fostering effective teams as opposed to male
approaches. That is a very important reason for the choice of direction of this paper.

Analysing the differing perspectives of female and male managers, the author hopes
to discover different approaches that could potentially highlight more female

3
perspectives that may not yet have been considered in building effective teams and
management approaches as a whole in the tourism industry.

2. Methodology
This section of the paper will showcase the planned methodological approaches that
will be used in answering the research questions.

First and foremost, as previously stated, a qualitative approach has been chosen for
the duration of this paper. Qualitative research is ideal for exploring subjective
experience and describing the lifeworld (Tina Miller, 2012). This paper will ideally
include analyses of a variety of secondary literature sources that cover aspects of
the authors topic.

In addition to this, for primary sources to obtain firsthand data, the research method
conducted in this work included interviews with male and female managers of the
industry. These interviews were conducted with a preset questionnaire which have a
pool of questions set around a particular framework that covers the concept of
effective teamwork. The idea was that these questions will draw out the differing or
coinciding perspectives of the managers.

Furthermore, the interview data will be analyzed by developing and utilizing a

codebook, which is a set of codes, definitions, and examples used as a guide to help
analyze interview data and also one of the most important steps in conducting an
interview analysis as it provides a formalized operationalization of the data acquired
during the interviews.

The process of code development is an iterative one, as data-driven codes

necessitate repeated examination of the raw data. The process consists of two
major levels; open coding (breaking data apart and draft concepts to stand in for
blocks of raw data) and axial coding(higher level of coding that helps to identify any
connections that may exist between codes).

The idea is to assign predetermined codes to raw data in order to simplify, interpret
and reconceptualize the data and also identify any connections between ideas and
concepts. The method of coding will also help the author to commence examining

4
how the data supports or contradict the hypotheses of this paper(Jessica T. DeCuir-
Gunby, 2011).

Some quantitative measures would also be utilized to a small extent during the
duration of this paper to compare and contrast ideas brought by the interviews. This
section is also going to look at the selection process of samples, the sample size
and the recruitment strategies as well as a justification of why these processes were
opted for.

An ethical perspective of the methodology will also be considered. This section is

finally going to discuss the limitations that arose as a result of the methodology
used.

Figure 1 - (Tepeci, 2008)

As illustrated in Figure 1 - (Tepeci, 2008), the concept of ‘effective Teamwork’ is

going to be examined and analyzed through a heuristic framework from a secondary
source. The planned questionnaire is largely going to be based upon this framework.
The factors, processes, traits and outcomes that create a framework for team
effectiveness are all going to be considered by the questionnaire.

5
2.1 Justification for the Selection of the research methods:
Due to the nature of the selected topic, the author of this paper has decided for a
mostly qualitative approach to answering the research question. The goal to extract
the perspectives from the minds of the managers/employers warrants a qualitative
approach. As Hall and Harvey (R. Hall, 2018) state, qualitative research focuses on
the nuances between individuals, and aims to gain in-depth information as well as
highlight similarities and differences about a specific topic from the perspectives of
the individuals which is usually achieved through interviews or focus groups (R. Hall,
2018). This qualitative approach of the author for data collection fits the research
problem and although some quantitative elements will be employed for the data
processing section of the paper, the majority of the process will remain qualitative.
The choice to incorporate quantitative methods was made as the author discovered
during the course of conducting the interviews that in order to more easily discern
any similarities and differences, qualitative measures might be insufficient. The
author therefore decided to incorporate some quantitative elements to the
questionnaire to gain further insights.

2.2 Sampling:
„An appropriate sample size for a qualitative study is one that adequately answers
the research question. “ (Marshall, 1996). The sample of choice of the author is
going to consist of a sum of male and female managers in the tourism industry,
particularly in the gastronomy, hotel and event branches of the industry. The sample
size is going to be a minimum of 10 participants. This number could increase during
the course of the research paper depending on the results acquired. The shares of
both male and female interviewees will be between 40 and 60% of the total number
of interviewees.
As stated by Martin N Marshall in “Sampling for qualitative research“, some
participants are going to provide ‘better’ insights than others and these people are
more likely to provide better understanding for the researcher. (Marshall, 1996).

6
To reduce the limitations of the study, the author has opted to only select managers
that have at least 2 years’ experience on the job and have a team or teams under
their management that consists of at least 3 individuals. These managers are also
going to be between the ages of 25 and 65. Managers below the age of 25 will not
be considered either as there is likely not enough data going to be available. This
could however be tweaked during the recruitment process if any interesting
anomalies present themselves. They are also going to be based in Austria.
Nationalities will not be considered for this research paper as gender is the main
focus.

The sampling strategy that is going to be in play here is a judgement sample

strategy where the recruiter/author purposefully chooses the most productive sample
to the answer research question. Below is a table of the details of the participants:

Table 1.

Details of participants Male Managers Female Managers

age 25-65 25-65
Experience in years >2 >2
Number of participants 5 6
Location of participants Austria Austria

Figure 2. (Source: The Author )

2.3 Recruitment
“Successful participant recruitment is an important aspect of conducting qualitative
research. Determining the most effective recruitment methods suited for a qualitative
research study may appear challenging for researchers.” (Apophia Namageyo-Funa,
2014). The Author of this paper intended to go about the recruitment process for
participants in the study by going headhunting in multiple locations/firms in the
tourism industry to find willing participants. Phone calls were made to different
organizations in the tourism industry and some contacts that the Authors had were
also utilized to some extent.
7
2.4 Projected Limitations
Every research methodology has its limitations (Neufeld, 2013) and the methodology
of choice in the paper is no exception. The purposeful sampling attempts to select
research participants according to criteria pre-determined by the research question
but also it is only theoretical in nature and the reality tends to be different. (A G
Tuckett, 2004). As a qualitative method was chosen, bias cannot be completely
ruled out. There is no guarantee that the participants, who are managers, would be
willing to provide relevant or actual data as they might not be as open to the idea of
someone asking them questions about the efficiency of a part of their business. This
would especially be likely if the team of a company is not as efficient as the manager
would like them to be.

Furthermore, a lot of complexities might arise, especially if the data varies too much
because of factors like nationality and other age groups that have not been
considered for this paper. These limitations will be considered by the author during
the course of this paper as the data collection and analysis commence. The author
would do good to minimize these limitations as much as possible in the
questionnaire and interview processes.

2.5 Ethical Considerations

When undertaking research, ethical aspects have to be considered. The fair
treatment of the participants is of paramount importance (Tina Miller, 2012). Ethical
problems in qualitative research often arise because of the complexities of
researching private lives and placing reports of findings in the public eye (Tina Miller,
2012). Due to this reason the author has elected that the participants will also
remain anonymous during the data collection process.

Considering the nature of the research, the author will also have to work as hard as
possible to avoid any gender bias during the data analysis portion of the paper.

8
Finally, it goes without a saying that the author of this paper plans to uphold his
academic integrity to the fullest extent possible.

3. Chapter Outline
This section of the paper goes into detail on the table of contents of the Bachelor
Paper II concerned with the topic of ”building effective teams in the tourism industry
considering gender diverse managing perspectives”. Chapter one deals with the
introduction to the paper and defines the research problem, the scope of the
research, the contribution of the study,the aim of the research and the questions that
the paper aims to answer.

The second part of the paper delves into the methodology that will be utilized to
answer the research questions and this portion of the paper includes sampling and
recruitment processes as well as the limitations for the chosen methodology. The
ethical aspects of conducting this research are also considered in the second part of
the paper. The process of the data collection including the recruitment strategy, the
interviewee profiles, and a presentation of some data will be further explored in the
findings.

The findings of the paper will be revealed in the fifth part of the paper offering an in-
depth look into the different facets of effective teamwork as well as an insight into the
differing perspectives and approaches to achieving effective teamwork of male and
female managers in the tourism industry and arguments will be supported by other
relevant secondary data that may be acquired.

Finally, the findings will be concluded, limitations of the paper evaluated, and
recommendations for future researchers will be given.

9
3.1 Project Plan (including timetable):
This section of the paper aims to present the author’s time management from the
beginning of the research process until the submission of the Bachelor Paper II. This
project commences with laying out a framework to write the paper beginning with
selecting a suitable topic and development of research questions. Then a conduction
a literature review, which is an ongoing process starts in November and finishes by
the end of April. The Research Proposal will be completed in the beginning of
December before the begin of the data collection.

The Data collection is going to be a short but ongoing process taking place between
January and April of 2021. As soon as the first interviews with the questionnaires
have been conducted, the information will be analysed by means of content analysis.
Reporting is also a subsequent but continuous task that will stretch from the
beginning of December until the end of April. Proof-reading of the work will take
place in April until the paper will be submitted at the beginning of May of 2021.

Table 2.

Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May

Tasks
2020 2020 2020 2021 2021 2021 2021 2021

Literature review x x x x x x

Research proposal x

Data collection x x

Data analysis x x

Reporting x x x x x

Proof reading x x

Submission of paper x

10
Figure 3. (Source: The Author)

4 Data Collection
This section of the paper aims to summarize the sequence of the processes that
went in to recruiting prospects and interviewing willing and qualified participants.
This section of the paper will also delve into the profiles of the interview candidates
and present relevant information based on the interviews that were conducted. Any
relevant information that the Author deemed necessary to mention concerning how
the processes might have affected results of the study will also be mentioned.

4.1 Recruitment and Interview Processes

The recruitment process was very straightforward. Firstly, the Author developed an
11-question questionnaire based on the framework discussed in the methodology
section of this paper, then began headhunting for willing and qualified participants.
The questionnaire can be found in the Annex of this research paper.

After a very successful headhunt, the Author was able to interview 5 men and six
women working in the tourism industry. Due to the current situation that is the Covid-
19 pandemic, face to face interviews could not be conducted for most participants so
mostly telephone interviews were conducted and subsequently, were recorded.
There were two exceptions to this. One of the interviews was conducted face to face
in one of the shops of participant 10 ((P10) Tommy. See profile below). The other
interview, with Participant 2 ((P2) Hanna. See profile below), was conducted via
Microsoft teams and done digitally face to face.

In the Authors personal opinion, the method of the interview, by phone, Microsoft
teams or face to face had no effect on the quality of the information given. What
should be noted, however, was that it was easier to make observations of the
subjects’ body languages and physical states and vice versa (the subjects observing
me) during the interviews and this added a more personal touch to these interviews.

11
The interviews lasted about an average of 20 mins each with the longest interview
with participant 7 ((P7) John. See profile below) at 30 mins and the shortest with
participant 1 ((P1) Kristina. See profile below) at 10 mins.

Due to the fact that the author of this paper intended the interviewees to remain
anonymous, the original names of the participants would be replaced with
pseudonyms. Below is the table with the interviewee pseudonyms, their age, sex,
occupation, size of their team and the amount of time they spent managing the
team.

4.2 Interviewee Profiles

Figure 4 (Source: the Author)

As can be seen from the table, the Author has assigned tags to each pseudonym.
Tags P1 – P6 are all the females the author interviewed and P7 - P11 represent the
males. Their pseudonyms are to be found right beside each tag. From this point on
in the paper, every participant will be referred to by their pseudonym and tag unless
the situation requires a different approach. Each participant was from the hotel,
event or gastronomy section of the tourism industry. There are, however, two minor
anomalies: Victoria (P4) and Elly (P5). Victoria does manage a restaurant, but it is
run for social reasons and not economic reasons. To clarify, she works with people
that are not qualified to work on the first job market and who suffer from
psychological ailments. Some of these people are/were homeless and the goal of
the restaurant is to give them purpose and support to enable them to stand on their
feet and manage their symptoms. This was made vividly clear for the author during
12
the interview, however, the author thought information from the situation could be
useful in answering the research questions. With agreement from Victoria (P4), they
proceeded with the interview. The findings will be discussed in a later section.

The other anomaly, (P5) Elly, currently does not work directly in the tourism sector
but does have experience managing in the tourism sector of hotels. Instead, at the
moment, she works in the recruitment sector but not only for the tourism industry. To
simplify, she is the founder of an executive search and is an human resource
consultant. The author also realized that information from her could be relevant for
the study and, with her permission, proceeded with the interview. The findings will
also be discussed and analyzed in a later section of this research paper.

All candidates interviewed for this paper were between the ages of 32 and 63 and all
have at least two years’ experience managing their current teams. The teams also
consisted of minimum four individuals for each interviewee, with some also having
some casual team members like Jennifer (P6). Victoria (P4) also has volunteers
from time to time.

It should also be noted that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, some changes were
made with regard to the team size, team members and so on. This is reflected in
Figure 4 where relevant and will be discussed further in the findings section of the
paper.

Each and every interviewee answered all the author’s questions with their own
opinions and to the best of their abilities. The language of the interviews was in
English for 9 of the participants and the other two, which were Paul and Tommy,
were conducted in German, for an easier interview process. These two were
translated to English during the transcription phase of data collection. Each
transcript can also be found in the annex of this research paper.

4.3 Data presentation

This section of the paper presents important information from acquired interview
data. The questionnaire that was utilized in the interviews incorporated, to a small

13
extent, quantitative methods and can be witnessed in the table below. The author
placed questions that could be answered quantitatively on the questionnaire in order
to be able to see if any trends occur amongst the males, females or both together
and if any conclusions can be drawn to suitably answer the research questions. The
questions also aimed to discern if there are any similarities or differences in the male
and female approaches in building effective teams in the tourism industry. The
sample size is quite small and disproportionate, with a higher ratio of women to men
at 45.45%:54.55% and so the majority of the findings to be presented remain
qualitative in nature.

Figure 5 (Source: the Author)

Each interviewee was asked to state the level of effectiveness of their team at the
moment of the interview and the highest and lowest levels of their team’s
effectiveness ever from their point of view and on a scale from 1-100%. They were
subsequently asked the reasons for their choices and those reasons will be
discussed in the findings section of the paper.

The interviewees were also asked to state if they undertook team building exercises
and how often they did, if they did. These are also presented in Figure 5 above. The
participants of the study were also required to state, from their point of view, how
much their team members had grown personally and professionally as individuals as
well as a team, based on a scale with five levels from “not at all - slightly - averagely
- strongly - extremely”. With the same scale, the participants were also required to
state their current level of satisfaction with their respective teams. Their reasons for
their choices here were also made clear and will be discussed in the findings.

14
Finally, each individual was asked to state how often, if any, do conflicts arise in their
teams on a weekly basis given the options: >2, >4, >6, >8, and >10 or more.

5. Data Processing
This section of the paper aims to interpret, analyze and process important
information acquired from interview data, and with assistance from analysis of
secondary research, attempt to answer the proposed research questions and draw
reasonable conclusions with regard to building effective teams in the tourism
industry. As discussed in the methodology section of the paper, the method of
coding was also used to filter through all the information acquired. For the coding
process, the program “Quirkos” was used to filter through all 11 interview transcripts
and gather all the main ideas and group them. There is also a codebook available
that will be attached to the annex of this paper. The findings will be presented in this
section of the paper and will be delved into using relevant themes and ideas that
were gathered from the interviews and each section of the findings will be presented
theme by theme and then, in a later section of the findings, any differences and
similarities between the managerial styles and approaches of the male and female
counterparts will be analyzed and compared to give reasonable conclusions.

5.1. Findings
In this section, the headlines are based on the themes and topics that the
participants of the study discussed during the interviews and the author found
relevant to the research questions. Relevant quotes from subjects will be shown and
the Author’s analysis of these themes will be presented. Additionally, secondary
sources will be used to support the Author’s ideas. It should be noted that s ome
ideas, due to their similarity in nature, will be thematically grouped together and
further explained.

15
5.1.1 Team building Exercises
“The need for effective teams has led to expanded interest in team-building to
improve team functioning and better achieve team goals. Because of the
performance possibilities that teamwork and team-building offer, they have taken on
increased importance for practitioners and researchers.” (A. L. “Bart” Bartlett, 2015)

The third question of the interview questionnaire: “Do you undertake team building
exercises? How often? Are they effective in building a stronger team? Why or why
not?” was answered by all participants to varying degrees as can be seen in Figure
5.

All participants stated that they do indeed undertake teambuilding exercises, but with
different schedules, different activities, different number of times, and for different
reasons. The most common reason for doing so was getting to know each other
better, both within the team and the manager with the team, with participants
1,3,6,7,8,10 and 11 stating this as one of the reasons why they undertake team
building exercises. Marly (P3), went a step further to explain that “If u know them
better the trust is there and, in a team, I think trust and respect are the main two key
factors and the more you know a person the more you can trust them.” Kristina (P1)
also supports this idea and states that “such activities strengthen the trust within
each other, and the relationships and you get to know each other better and you
bring a more relaxed atmosphere”. Trust is a theme that presented itself frequently
across all interviews but there is a section dedicated to this in the findings.

Clifford (P9) was one of the participants that gave a different reason for undertaking
teambuilding exercises. His reason was that “you fulfill the goals of your team”.
There was no mention of trust or getting to know each other better. This could be as
a result of Clifford having the largest team across all participants with 90 individuals
(see Figure 4) with the others having much less team members.

This however seems to have little to no consequence on the effectiveness of the

team as Clifford recorded that his hotel is highly rated stating that: “We’re among the
top five best hotels in Vienna and among the three best hotels in Kitzbühel. So I
know my team is really good in what they're doing.“ Clifford however has one of the

16
highest rates of conflicts on a weekly basis (as can be seen in Figure 4) stating that
“when you have a team like that something happens always.”

This has some truth to it as bigger teams are more difficult to manage that smaller
ones. According to Martin Hoegl of Bocconi University (2005), the size of the team is
crucial, and smaller teams tend to demonstrate better teamwork. He further explains
that “Team size has been considered an important structural variable determining
team processes (e.g., team collaboration, social loafing, etc.) and, subsequently,
team performance (i.e., the effectiveness and efficiency of task completion).
Laboratory research suggests that smaller teams provide for more direct and
efficient intrateam communication.“ (Hoegl, 2005)

In larger groups, according to Eduardo Salas of the university of Florida, group

members would be expected to be less engaged in the group and less open to the
team-building intervention, and are therefore less likely to perform. “One would
expect that the effect of team building on performance would be weaker in larger
teams and stronger in smaller teams.” (Salas, 1999)

The author concludes from this that it might not make sense for Clifford to have team
building exercises on the same scale or level that other firms do. John (P7), in
addition to stating getting to know each other better as one reason, goes on to give
fun and learning as reasons for undertaking team building exercises. He also has
the highest frequency recorded of team building exercises (see Figure 5) stating that
he does so at least once a week but with different members of the team. He also
states that he does this more on a casual basis and states that “they might not be
seen as team building in the same way as other companies do” and does this to
teach his employees more about their products. He works in a
brewery/bar/restaurant and does these “team building exercises” daily in the
evenings with different members of his team. He does find it effective even going on
to state that during these meetings, they learn about what each other does and they
explain differences and it's up to them to make decisions about what they like more
labor wise. He also states that “it's effective because they get to discuss between
themselves, they get to learn more about one another”.

17
Elly (P5) states that Team building exercises “brings the people together and
everyone has their strengths and their weaknesses and as a team they can build
each other and makes the work performance better and they identified themselves
also much more as a team.”

The author thought this was worth mentioning as another reason for undertaking
team building exercises. This idea can also be backed up by Hanna’s (P2)
perspective on why she thinks team building exercises are effective in building a
stronger team. She thinks that “they are extremely effective and you can really feel
that there is a change going on especially the first days after you did you did a team
building event you can feel that there's a completely different atmosphere and that's
why we repeated on a regular basis every two to three months as I said because the
atmosphere then in the end goes a little bit down but specially over the first days
after the team building you can really feel a bonding between the individual team
members and if you do it regularly over a certain period of time this might lead into
people being longer employed in not only in your team but at the company itself”.

Victoria’s (P4) reason for undertaking team building exercises as she states is to
help change the habits of some of the workers even though in her case, team
building exercises work much slower stating that “the people are very hard to
change their habits because they come from different cultures and different
surroundings and they are not professionals in the field.” As heretofore mentioned,
Victoria’s team is comprised of individuals that are not qualified to work on the first
job market, due to psychological issues.

The author therefore concludes from all this that team building exercises are indeed
highly efficient in ensuring better team effectiveness in the most cases. The factors
that might have an effect on these activities failing to ensure team effectiveness
include, but are not limited to, the size of the team and the psychological state of the
team members based on the author’s analysis of the interviews. Any similarities and
differences between the male and female counterparts will be discussed in a later
section of the paper.

18
5.1.2 Goal Setting, performance measurement and
Information sharing
“Goal setting emphasizes the setting of objectives and the development of individual
and team goals” (Salas, 1999). An effective team should also have an effective
leader and effective team leadership depends on leadership competencies. An
effective leader should be focused on the goal, ensure a collaborative climate,
develop the confidence of team members, sets priorities, demonstrate sufficient
knowledge and manage performance through feedback. (Fapohunda, 2013)

Setting goals was another theme that came up often during the interview processes
with seven of the interviewees bringing it up in one form or the other. The
participants, during the interview process, were required to mention how they
measure the performances of their respective teams. “Objective indicators of
performance include direct measures of countable behaviors, like the number of
units sold or the tons of ore mined. On the other hand, subjective indicators of
performance include ratings of the performance or effectiveness of the team.“
(Salas, 1999)

The interview questions:

 “How do you measure the performance of your team, for example by using
key figures and concepts like “Sales Revenue”, “Reviews”, etc.?”

and the sub question:

 “Do you inform your team of the progress, stagnation or decline in the
company? How regularly?”

were meant to draw out from each participant the methods used to evaluate the
performance of the teams. Also, the questions sought to observe if the participants
found it relevant, economically speaking, to inform their team of the current situation
in their respective companies and how often they think it was relevant to do so.

Teamwork should ideally involve the team being able to approach problem solving,
process improvement, goal setting and measurement together. (Fapohunda, 2013).
Kristina(P1), Hanna(P2), Marly(P3), Elly(P5), and Jennifer(P6), all responded by
19
stating that they have set goals with their respective teams together and evaluated
their performances based on these goals. Kristina stated that she had set yearly and
monthly targets with her team and monitored these goals regularly to see if there
was any need to do so more frequently; and depending on the importance of the
situation, adapted accordingly. Hanna, Marly and Elly, all stated that they have set
both individual and company goals with the team members and have regular talks
with the team members, both together and individually, one on one. Elly further went
on to state that she utilized “an MBO system. Management By Objectives” and used
key performance indicators to observe how well her team was doing on a company
level and on an individual level with a ratio of about 80:20 respectively. Daniel(P8)
and Marly(P3) both mentioned the use of upsells to measure their team’s
performance with Daniel mentioning that if his team reached “a certain number of
upsells then there is a present.” This is in its own right a goal set for his team, and
he does use this to evaluate their performance as well.

Clifford(P9), as previously mentioned, worked to fulfill the goals of his team during
his team building exercises and further adds that his hotel uses the revenue as a tool
to measure the performance of his team. He then went on to mention that “for us
we're very guest oriented and so more what the guests review our workers.”

Other participants that use of both feedback (reviews) from clientele and revenues to
measure the team’s performance, include Marly (P3), Victoria (P4), Jennifer (P6),
Daniel (P8), Paul (P11).

Tommy (P10) used reviews as well but noted that he hardly paid attention stating
that “I know my team quite well and I know what what my team is capable of and so I
realized that sometimes the customers are the problem in particular situations and
try to blame the stewards or the waiter”. He then went further to mention that he
rather measured the performance of his team by the ratio of the amount of money
made in one day to the number of guests present on that day and used the ratio to
measure the effectiveness of his team, stating that “if it makes sense, I see how
efficient my team is working.”

John(P7), explained that he measured his team’s performance more on an

observational basis on sight, stating, “When there's work to be done, they do it and it
20
gets hard, but I look for the ones that go the extra mile so 100% instead of the 95 ”.
He has no mention of setting goals with his team in his interview. No other
participant mentioned that they use observation of the work process to evaluate their
team’s performance. These, however, were not asked during the interview directly
and will be discussed in the limitations of the paper in a different section.

Important business information should be shared regularly with team members,

communicated clearly and honestly with each other and diverse opinions should be
brought to the table to ensure a higher level of team efficiency. (Fapohunda, 2013).

In regard to sharing information on the economic performance of their respective

firms with the team, all participants, except John (P7) and Tommy (P10), made clear
that they share information with their team albeit to varying degrees. Hanna (P2)
States that she does so on a daily basis in her firms Morning daily meetings. Marly
(P3) and Jennifer (P6) both state that they do so on a monthly basis with Marly (P3)
stating extra that on a monthly basis the team “gets a quick glimpse or view of how if
the hotel is doing? good or bad?” and that “twice a year a more detailed information
of the progress or even what's the plan for our hotel” is provided to the team. Clifford
(P9) and Kristina(P1) both state that they do so on a weekly basis. Kristina, as does
Elly (P5), also stated that they provide their team with quarterly updates. Daniel (P8)
states that he does share but on a more casual “non-permanent” basis and
sometimes during morning talks. Paul (P11) mentions that the team members have
the information as they only use one cash register in his coffee house, explaining
that “I run a small team and we work pretty intensively together, and we have like 5
to 6 days of work together and everyone was there we work together so they do
have a picture a clear picture of what's going on in the company ”. Victoria (P4)
states that she does inform her team at least once a year and gives them a review of
the restaurant’s performance.

John (P7) and Tommy(P10), as previously mentioned, are the only ones who don’t
see it fit to give their team information on the economical situations of their
respective firms, and again, for different reasons. John states, or rather, implies that
he does so selectively, specifying that “I would prefer not to tell people that things

21
are sh*t even when they are. Sometimes I have but I would prefer not to because I
want to be positive.”

On the other hand, Tommy demonstrates a lack of trust in his team responding, “N o.
But sometimes I do tell them today was good, but I don't wanna do that all the time
because then they get it in their head, that we are making a lot of profits and that's
not always the case which can lead to some other problems”. The Author of this
paper identifies this as a sign that trust is absent from Tommy to his team. In another
instance, during the interview with Tommy, he mentions that “if there's a big event
and I'm not there to manage then the effectiveness is less. and if someone is there
to guide and manage the team and is on ground then it works but if you leave the
workers to themselves they're not as independent they do sometimes what's on the
list and but they don't take the extra steps. so I think I need to have another person
there managing or being there myself”. Tommy also records that the lowest
efficiency that his team ever had was 25% (see figure 5) which is the second lowest
on the list next to Elly (P2), and the quote from him was in response to the
interviewer asking what factors he finds responsible for this.

For comparison Elly’s (P2) reason for such low efficiency was due to a major
shakeup in her firm at the middle of the pandemic in the year 2020. She explains
that “in the middle of last year for example there was a was a low where there was
nothing really to do a lot of stuff members left us unfortunately and all that job, that
work was done there was only a bit to do here in our HR apartment that's when it
when the lowest 10% came into place”

From these given situations and interviews, the Author concludes that, to ensure and
promote the efficiency of the team, it is necessary for the team leaders and
managers to set goals with the members of the team, share relevant information
about the business with the team, and also monitor the goals that were set with the
teams on a regular basis in order to be able to properly observe and evaluate the
performance of the team and its individuals.

Teamwork is ineffective if the goal and vision of the team is not clear (Musab Işık,
2015). The team leaders and managers also should display competence and
confidence toward their team members for better results regarding efficiency.
22
“Robbins (1998) affirms that teams need access to resources such as money, time,
equipment, technology, people and information for them to operate effectively.
Providing the resources depends on trust on the part of the organisation and
responsibility on the part of the team members.” (Fapohunda, 2013). There are
definitely other factors like trust and communication that do affect the efficiency of
the team that also need to be present for the above-mentioned processes to be
carried out. This will be discussed further in the next section of the paper. Any
similarities and differences between the male and female counterparts will be
examined in a later section.

5.1.3 Trust and Respect, Support, and Communication

“A team that will be highly successful consists of members who care for and trust
each other. They know how to listen to each other as well as express their own
ideas. This will form interdependence within the team. The interdependence leads to
a team collaboration. They find that working together will be more effective then
working apart. Efficiency will increase, as well as team morale.” (John R. Walker,
2009).

Across multiple sources, including the conducted interviews, trust and mutual
respect between the teammates and also between the manager and their team were
themes that came up often in relation to the efficiency of a team. As a matter of fact,
“trust” has been mentioned already in the previous sections of this paper already.
Demonstration of support towards team members was also frequently mentioned
across multiple sources and is said to be efficient in building team morale. (El-Said,
2014). All of these themes and actions also lead to greater communication amongst
members of the team and to the team leader. They in turn lead to better work
processes, higher morale, faster conflict resolution, and better all-round team
efficiency. (El-Said, 2014).

All the interviewees were required to rate their current levels of satisfaction with their
corresponding teams and give reasons for their answers. Hanna(P2), Marly(P3) and
Elly (P5) all stated that they were extremely satisfied with their teams (see Figure 5)

23
and gave differing reasons for this but all mentioning trust as a major factor for their
choices. Hanna (P2) mentions in her interview that “our trust amongst each other is
almost endless”. Marly (P3) mentions in her interview that “everybody respects each
other, we’re loyal to each other. If somebody has a problem then everybody knows
they can call somebody else. Or you can talk openly if there a conflict and just sort it
out immiediatly. Theres no bickering or backstabbing. I mean I feel comfortable and I
hope everybody else does too”. Elly (P5) states, “I trust my team extremely it's like a
little family”.

Also, very interesting was the fact that both Hanna(P2) and Marly (P3) stated that
they especially felt this trust and bond in the last year which were the most difficult
times for them due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and both reported that the
saw growth in the strength of their team bonds. Clifford (P9) also mentions that the
three most important actions he takes to improve his team’s performance are “trust,
appreciation and gratitude”.

On the other hand, if the trust isn’t present in the team dynamic, then other problems
arise and lead to lesser team efficiency. Teamwork loses its efficiency when top
management does not support the team enough and there is not a climate of trust
within the team. (Musab Işık, 2015). This can be seen with Tommy’s (P10) situation
in the previous section where he mentions that he does not share certain information
with his team members. He also gives a further explanation for stating that the
lowest efficiency he recorded for his team was 25% by saying “for example if I go on
holiday for a week or something then the waiters are probably drunk the place is
very dirty the deliveries don't get taken and so on or they forget to open the bar”.
This could be because of, but not limited to, the lack of trust that should be given to
the team. It could however be argued that trust is earned and is a two-way street.

Trust is a factor by which interpersonal relations can be sustained at very high levels
and by which organizations can survive for lengths of time. Trust happens through
past and positive impressions that humans or organizations have left on other
individuals or organisations. In the eyes of the team members or employees, trust
forms when the organization protects the interests of workers and does not behave
in a way by which it can harm those interests and for the organization, “trust is

24
evaluated in terms of the self-sacrifices, identification and commitment towards the
organizational goals of its employees.” (Musab Işık M. K., 2015).

Communication contributes to the emergence of trust and develops bonds within the
team and between managers. “Communication also promotes members to listen to
each other and advance mutual knowledge, fosters cooperation, participation, the
sense of belongingness to the group and consensus among team members and,
lastly, allows for creative and qualitative results to emerge”(Musab Işık, 2015).

According to Kristina (P1), communication is key to avoiding conflict, stating that she
thinks “it's about the team spirit and how you communicate with your your team and
how you include them from the beginning in order to avoid conflict”. Kristina (P1)
then goes on to state that she doesn’t believe conflict should be avoided but should
be spoken and talked about and then they arise less often. The Author strongly
agrees with this notion.

Support is another theme of high importance and studies suggest that there is a
strong relationship between the perceived organizational support of the employees
and their morale arguing that support from the organizations and firms instills
feelings of obligation in employees which in turn pushes them to respond with acts
and behaviours that benefit the organization and makes them more likely to
experience high morale and commitment (El-Said, 2014). Organizational support is
necessary to strengthen social ties, enhance communication and organizational
commitment and create mutual trust among employees (Chang-Yen Tsai, 2015).

Victoria (P4), who manages a team in a different situation as previously mentioned,

responded one of the interview questions about the personal and professional
growth of the team on an individual and team levels, by stating that “ I think it's the
trust then we put in them. then we trust them that they can work and we tried to take
some measures to help them and we care about them and their social life and we try
to support them”. She also mentions that the team had grown averagely given the
options “Not at all – Slightly – averagely – Strongly – extremely” and goes on to
mention that some grow more than others depending on the limitations that they
have as individuals.

25
To summarize, communication between all individuals of a set team and its
leadership is highly important towards fostering trust and increasing respect for one
another. Support for the team members in different aspects of their life, also outside
the workplace if necessary, is also very helpful in that regard. These, in turn,
increase team morale and company loyalty, boost work efficiency and team
effectiveness.

Similarities and differences between the male and female approaches to these
factors in managing their respective teams will be evaluated in a later section.

5.1.4 Environment, Workload, and time pressure

The growth and survival of a company are generally perceived to be highly
dependent on employees’ effort, behavior, and creativity as they perform service or
product innovations. Some scholars have argued that organizations can efficiently
encourage creativity, behavior, and motivation among employees through the work
environment. This includes various attributes of the work environment including
those related to the physical environment, such as physical elements, challenges,
freedom and independence, support, coherence, threats in the work environment,
and the effect of status quo (Chang-Yen Tsai, 2015).

The final question of the interview questionnaire was designed to find out from all
participants if the established working environment has an impact on the team
development and in what way. The Author designed this question to decipher if and
when the job tasks, intended workflow and the physical setting amongst other
factors in the company have any impacts on the teamwork and development. All
participants recorded that the established work environment does indeed have an
effect on the team development with most in a positive direction and others in a
negative one.

John (P7) states that this is especially vivid when there is a new member of the team
and mentions his process for making the new team member’s integration into the
team easier. He mentions that his team is rather diverse and that “if they have a new
person starting, because we're mostly foreigners, I let the person starting work with
26
someone who speaks the same native language so the task can be communicated
better and more fluently so if a Spanish person is starting, we put him with the
Spanish person and if a Greek person is starting, we put him with a Greek person
and so on.

Paul (P11) also mentions diversity as an important factor he considers when building
his teams stating that he tries “to make sure the team is a little bit more mixed so
gender age nationality and if it's mixed and I think it makes more fun for everyone to
interact with each other and learn from each other”. Paul (P11) manages a coffee
house and says that the location has a chill and relaxed atmosphere with a small
team that works intensively together and not only allows for team development but
also connections with regular customers that further boosts team morale.

Marly (P3) mentions that in her hotel department team, a familial bond has been
established which lays the groundwork for a calm and welcoming environment and
that new team members automatically have to “adapt to the environment” as it feels
like a family.

Victoria(P4) explains that she operates a good restaurant and that she “thinks the
environment is mainly important or really important for the outcome of the
restaurants on the work of the employees”.

Daniel(P8) mentions that his hotel works with more relaxed rules than most other
hotels as he previously worked in a “5-star hotel chain” and states that his new hotel
is “a different product”. He explains that in the hotel, people “can work in the private
clothes” and noticed that “when they're not in the uniform they work differently than
when they are and it's very good for their performance in their friendliness as well.”
He then further goes on to state that “we hire no matter what gender, orientation or if
they have tattoos and that motivates a lot of people that we don't have any
restrictions or we don't have many restrictions and that motivates. He mentions
getting many eager applicants because of this factor.

Brand pride is another factor of the established work environment that was
mentioned by Jennifer (P6) and Clifford (P9). Jennifer (P6) mentions it gives
meaning to the team and bolsters motivation. She also mentions that a short
adaption period was necessary for the employees to function better as they came
27
from a more corporate working environment and were not used to a lot of the
systems of working with a smaller team and more independence but have long since
adapted.

Jennifer (P6) records extreme satisfaction with her team while Clifford (P9) mentions
that his team works with a high level of independence, are very “proud of the brand”
and their “high ratings” and that this has a strong impact on his team’s development.

Kristina (P1), Hanna( P2) and Elly (P5) mention that the Work that each of their
respective teams do has a strong impact on their development. Kristina (P1) works
with events and states that “the work they do, and the experiences definitely have a
strong impact” and goes on to record that it “makes them happy and stronger”. Elly
(P5) says that every new job they get as an organization provides “positive
reinforcement” for the team and the workflow explaining that the success factor
along with the money has a “good impact on the team development”. Hanna (P2) on
the one hand states that the amount of work and situations where there are less
obstacles present increase the groups creativity and motivation but on the other
records. The opposite effect stating that “if you're not that motivated you know
everything is a bit slower, everything is a bit you know it needs more, you need to
overcome more obstacles to do things rather than it's really something that you like
that you enjoy and that you are actually supposed to do, that you were actually hired
for. We were not actually in the end hired for doing what we're doing right now but
we hired on a different for different purpose and yeah this is when you really see the
departmental achievements decreasing”.

Tommy (P10) mentions one of the advantages of the work environment he

established is that the employees get to meet interesting people explaining that he
“books nice artist and DJ's the motivation seems to go up because there's more tips
and more people”. On the other side, he mentions that due to the nature of the work
being a night job, he recorded some negative effects on the team development such
as the employees “get older faster” or “drink more alcohol”.

According to Wendy Bedwell of the University of South Florida (Wendy L. Bedwell,

2014), team workload could be explained by the connections between the
performance capability of a team and the demands placed on the team by its
28
performance environment. She also argues that team workload consists of three
primary demands namely, “teamwork, taskwork, and requirements to time-share
task performance with team interactions”. (Wendy L. Bedwell, 2014). Nine of the
eleven interviewees, with the exemptions being Marly (P3) and Clifford (P9)
recorded that the amount of work to do in their respective firms have an effect of the
level of efficiency of the team. P1 also mentions that time pressure, due to the
nature of the job (event management), is a factor that greatly affects the level of
effectiveness of the team. In other words, the tasks and jobs to be completed have
an impact of the effectiveness of the team.

The diagram below goes into a bit more detail regarding the relationship of the
teams’ characteristics (knowledge, skill, abilities, coordination, etc.) and the tasks to
be completed in relation to the work environment and how this affects the teamwork
and its efficiency.

29
Figure 6. Source: (Wendy L. Bedwell, 2014)

To clarify, the “task characteristics” are influenced by the variables of complexity,

difficulty and meaningfulness. The work environment consists of the resources of the
organization (e.g. equipment), performance cycles of the employees and
environmental stressors like time pressure and work load. The team interacts with
these elements on both individual (knowledge, skills, and abilities) and group levels
(coordination, potency and shared mental models) and depending on the situation
and “values”, for lack of a better word, of the aforementioned variables the team
workload capacity and subsequently the effectiveness (Wendy L. Bedwell, 2014). It
is the task of the manager to ensure the quality of these variables to be as high as
possible to establish more effective workflow and teamwork (Chang-Yen Tsai,
2015).

30
Visible trends, similarities or differences between the male and female managers will
be discussed in a later section dedicated to answering the proposed research
questions.

5.1.5 Conflict
“The implementation of teams is, fundamentally, an organizational change and
development process. Teams are, therefore, susceptible to all the challenges that
can occur during any organizational change process. The interviewer asked each
and every participant to state how often conflicts occur within their respective team
in a work week.

The intent of this question was to compare and contrast the frequency of occurrence
of conflicts of the teams of the male and female managers. The responses are
presented on the table in Figure 5. There were no follow up questions to this,
however, some of the managers did explain the reasons why they gave their
responses.

John (P7) does state that although he measures about “4-6 conflicts” weekly with his
team, it could be “10 or more” in the eyes of others. He states the reason for this
being “we have 20 females in a team of 24 and so it comes down to what the
definition of the conflict is. I come from a family of five siblings and I have 100 first
cousins so for me my definition of a conflict is probably very different to others who
have like one or two siblings”.

Daniel (P8) mentions that it is “normal” but also thinks that it is “quite limited and you
can solve it quite immediately”. He also states that some individuals simply do not
work well together but takes the initiative to separate them when planning
schedules.

Elly (P5) stated that conflicts rarely happen in her team due to the size of the team
being small.

The opposite of this is true for Clifford (P9) who has a team of 90 members and
states that there are 4-6 conflicts weekly and that “when u have a team like that
31
something always happens.” He also mentions that the efficiency of the teamwork
can be significantly reduced if “you have someone in the team who is not playing
with others” implying that conflict, though originating from a specific source, has
impact on team effectiveness and performance.

Paul (P11) provides an opposing situation where he states he has no conflicts at all
stating that his team is “conflict free” and this is due to the fact that “they play well of
off each other” but that “it can be hard to take a new member into the team because
the team is pretty tight knit”. This tends to happen as “employee resistance may
result where employees are required to work with other employees with whom they
are unfamiliar. In this case, the new teams are breaking up established social
relationships. One way in which this can be overcome is through teambuilding.”
(Fapohunda, 2013).

In the previous section exploring the work environment, it was made clear that Paul
(P11) has a very diverse team stating that this was something he looks out for when
choosing a team explaining that “It makes more fun for everyone to interact with
each other and learn from each other”. This does ring true as Globalization is a
current trend and has a great impact on the tourism and hospitality industry and
people with diverse backgrounds work more effectively together and there is a
greater number of new perspectives when executing tasks when compared to less
diverse teams. (Korjala, 2012). The opposite effect could also happen, and a greater
number of conflicts could occur due to different cultural values, beliefs, thoughts and
actions. (Korjala, 2012).

Kristina (P1), as previously mentioned, states that conflicts hardly arise in her team
due to clear communication and the established team spirit, but that conflict should
not be avoided but rather spoke and talked about. This is indeed valid as fear of
conflict is as a result of failure to build trust and is dangerous because it sets the
stage for a third dysfunction in a given team which is the lack of commitment.
“Teams that lack trust are not able to engage in vivid debate of ideas. Instead, they
resort to roundabout discussions and guarded comments. Without having expressed
their opinions in the course of passionate and open debate, team members rarely, if
ever, commit to decisions, though they may simulate agreement during meetings.”

32
Victoria (P4) does also record 1-2 conflicts weekly as “routine” due to the social
orientation of her organization and working with individuals who deal with
psychological issues. She goes further to elaborate: “of course in every work team I
think conflicts arise I cannot imagine a team in which conflicts do not arise. That
wouldn't be normal I think conflicts in the working field and in a social field happen as
routine.” This is however not the case as 2 of the participants, Hanna (P2) and Paul
(P11), record almost never having any conflicts present and Victoria’s (P4)
perspective could be influenced by the people that she works with.

The varying perspectives and attitudes of the male and female counterparts towards
conflict will be addressed in a later section.

5.1.6 Success, Feedback and Reward

Successful teams consist of a collection of efficient individuals who are experienced,
knowledgeable, have problem solving ability, are open to addressing the problem
and are action oriented. The ability of team members to give and receive feedback is
also vital for success. “When performance expectations are achieved there should
be a combination of public recognition and private compensation so that their feeling
of success is enhanced and reinforced. With this, employees can develop
accountable, productive, meaningful and participatory teamwork” (Fapohunda,
2013).

In the hospitality industry, feedback is highly valued with employees in this sector
known to seek even greater levels of respect than those of other industries often
complaining about being underappreciated, not respected and not rewarded on par
with their efforts and this has a negative effect not just on an individual level but also
on the team effectiveness (El-Said, 2014)

Seven interviewees do make mention of these factors in relation to the actions that
the take to develop their team’s effectiveness. Clifford (P9) explains that one should
never change a winning team and boasts that his team is highly professional and
work independently with “solution-based approaches to solving problems” and says
that the three most important actions he takes to develop his team to be “trust,
33
appreciation and gratitude and that his team is “very proud to work” in his hotel. Elly
(P5) states that the success is a great motivator for her team, not just in monetary
terms but the feeling of accomplishment and that when the team sees results, this
provides “positive reinforcement”. Hanna (P2) explains that she always has an ear
open for her team to listen to any issues they may have, whether it be private or
work related, and that she has “regular development talks with each staff member
where we are looking into: where are you at? where would you like to go in the
future?”.

Kristina (P1) states the most important actions she takes to support her team’s
development to be “giving positive feedback, giving clear rules so being clear in
general and working on a very clear communication and setting and sharing targets
and goals”. Daniel (P8) mentions that he gives frequent evaluations for individual
team members over the course of their employment in his hotel stating that “the
most important action is that you tell the good staff members about their strengths
their work and what you like about them also a little bit of criticism what they can
improve, and I think this is a very important action to improve the performance”.
Paul (P11) points out that he uses the team meetings that they have to clear the air
on situations and give feedback to one another, both positive and negative, to help
“bring new ideas, talk about the past and future” and set goals for the organization
questioning what they “should change or we should keep the same and so on”.

Marly(P3) goes more in-depth talking about this factor stating, in response to what
actions she takes to boost team development, that “rewards and praise I would say
because if they are always performing good then you definitely have to reward and
praise and state they have done a good job and put it together. A high five at the end
of shift if it was a good shift or for example if they made a really really good upsale
then I will check if we can have a nice dinner at a restaurant and meet together so
that a reward and its team building at the same time”.

Walker states that “one way a leader may increase positive team norms in the
hospitality industry is by giving rewards for high sales. This could be a nightly,
weekly, or monthly contest where the server with the highest sales gets a reward.
The rewards could range from dinner on the house or a gift certificate. This creates a

34
positive norm among the team members and allows them to have fun, while all of
them all striving for the same goal” (John R. Walker, 2009). Walker also explains 10
steps to total quality management (TQM) continuous improvement process as can
be seen in the image below which begins with strong leadership, with an emphasis
on exempting theory X style leaders perhaps due to their limits in their scope of
management (H. Kristl Davison, 2015) , that can see these steps through with the
team and train them accordingly.

The steps go through the building and development of the team, setting of goals with
the team, empowering the team to reach the set goals, controlling and measuring
the targets set, analysing and solving any problems and conflicts that arise,
modification of processes and continuous monitoring and ends in the recognition
and reward of employee’s work. (John R. Walker, 2009) This last step is crucial to
reinforce the feeling of success which in turn boosts morale for the team.
(Fapohunda, 2013)

35
Figure 7 Source: (John R. Walker, 2009)

5.1.7 Recruitment
The interviewer asked all participants what attributes they look for in an individual
when recruiting a new member of a team during the course of the interviews. Walker
states that before the plan of building a team, managers should consider exactly
what they want out of the team they are about to build and establish what needs to
be the focus of the Team (John R. Walker, 2009). He also states that there is a need
to loop in existing team members if any to avoid unnecessary conflicts and problems
in the future and clarifies that managers should be very picky and selective of who
the hire and recommends conducting a reference check during the recruitment
process because managers, especially in the tourism industry, are known to make
rash decisions on recruitment due to time pressure but this, more often than not,
backfires (John R. Walker, 2009).

The most common answers from the interviews to the question were the personality
of the applicant, willingness to work, the projected role and fit of the applicant in the
team and passion for the job amongst others.

John (P7) mentions that he looks for applicants that “don’t just want a wage but want
to work” always looks at where the applicant might fit in the team acknowledging that
“Everybody has a different characteristic about them and it's about utilizing
everyones positives to the best ability you can as a manager rather than looking at
everybody having the same capabilities”.

Daniel (P8) also looks for where the applicant could fit in the team and mentions that
he looks out for the personality of the individual which he explains he can see from
the first meeting due to his years of experience in the industry and looks to make
sure they have a service-oriented personality and “a good background and
references”.

Clifford (P9) also identifies having a service-oriented personality as essential in the

hospitality business and further states that he looks at the “human itself, himself or

36
herself” and the attributes of the person like kindness, openmindedness, friendliness
and a supportive nature.

Tommy (P10) states that the factors of highest importance to him are the “skillset” of
the applicant, “professional honesty” and emphasized the value of a “good
reference” which he no longer takes for granted due to unpleasant previous
experiences.

Paul (P11) added that he tries to ensure “the team is a little bit more mixed so
gender age nationality and if it's mixed and I think it makes more fun for everyone to
interact with each other and learn from each other”. He also the importance of the
applicant’s willingness to work and ensure that from both sides, requirements are
fulfilled to the best of their respective capabilities.

On the side of the females, Kristina (P1) explains that the personality of the applicant
should “match her opinions” and the individual must be “willing to work” and “open to
learn new topics and skills”.

Hanna (P2) mentions that for her, the applicant must possess a “passion for
hospitality” and elaborates that experience is of low importance to her as skills can
be learned if the participant is willing and has a passion for the job.

Marly (P3) points out that for her, “Respect loyalty and honesty” are the tree most
important things she looks for as these are qualities that are essential to the
hospitality business due to the High rate of diversity in the industry, both with guests
and colleagues stating about these attributes that “its something you can’t learn if
you don’t have it”.

In the case of Victoria (P4), the ability and willingness to work is important due to the
social orientation of the business and the people she has to work with. She mentions
her goal is to provide “stability” to the people who want to better themselves. From
this the author deduces that in her case, many attributes that other managers
consider can be sidelined in her case as the applicants “are not qualified to work on
the first job market” anyways.

Elly (P5) keeps it short and states that she looks at the “personality” of the individual
and makes her decision based on this.
37
Jennifer (P6) states that she considers the experience firstly and the characteristics
of the person mentioning attributes like “empathy” “communication” and “passion in
the field of work”.

Based on these responses, the Author concludes that first impressions of the
applicants are of high importance as are the willingness and ability of the applicant
to work when recruiting a new member for a team. Walker recommends hiring
applicants based on the idea that the applicant may provide something for the team
(skills, personality, good attitude, etc.) (John R. Walker, 2009). These hiring
decisions should not be made lightly as bad choices will affect the whole group
dynamic in a negative way (John R. Walker, 2009).

5.1.8 Other relevant factors that influence team

effectiveness
All the above-mentioned factors that tend to influence the effectiveness of a team
are but a fraction of the actual total inputs that have a total effect on the team’s
efficiency (Tepeci, 2008). Due to the limited scope of the paper however, not every
factor could be mentioned. Nevertheless, the Author decided to dedicate a section to
mention other factors of importance that came up during the course of researching
and interviewing the managers. Some of these factors include the trainings for the
team, sufficient remuneration and benefits, adequate level of independence and
autonomy for the team, a good work-life balance for team members and in many
cases the structure of the organisation which influences the level of creativity and
innovation of the team (Adriana Galan, 2008) (Jason A. Grissom, 2012). There are
many other factors like the characteristics of the team members including age,
nationality and many more that this paper does not cover (Korjala, 2012). Some of
the interviewees brought some of these ideas and themes up during the course of
the interviews.

Clifford (P9) states that his team works with a great amount of “independence” and
work with a solution-based approach to problems with great success.

38
Jennifer (P6) also states that she gives her team a great level of independence
commenting that she “gives them enough freedom too as long as they get the job
done” and states a reason for this mentioning that “they're older also so that's
important”.

Paul (P11) also mentions the value of adequate remuneration as he states “the
sharing of the tips is very important. I mean they work for it and I make sure
everyone gets a fair share because the cash register is only one and I also make
sure that the work process is easy so that the tips are good for them also and it
motivates them if they have a little bit of extra money in their pockets”.

John (P7) and Daniel (P8) provide insights to what their respective firms do to train
their employees during team building exercises. John states that “our exercises are
more related to our business and will be more in the scheme of learning more about
our business” and Daniel (P8) mentions that in his hotel “Department heads are
responsible for that in terms of training”.

With regard to the work-life balance Elly (P5) explains that one of the main actions
she takes to improve her team’s development to be “giving them very individual
working times so you worked how you feel best so you can start at 9 or 10 as long
as the job gets done” and that “there's a very good work life balance that I provide
and six weeks’ vacation instead of five and individual possibilities to develop their
careers and themselves”.

To summarize, there are countless facets that affects a team’s ability to be effective
(Adriana Galan, 2008). This paper does go in depth into some of these facets,
however, this paper does not intend to cover all these aspects of effective teamwork,
but rather to compare and contrast male and female approaches and insights where
effective teamwork is concerned. These comparisons will be discussed in the next
section of the paper which aims to answer the proposed research questions.

39
5.2 Comparison of Male and Female Managers Approaches
to Achieving Effective Teamwork in the Tourism Industry
If the readers recall, the aim of this paper was to highlight and evaluate the
differences and similarities in the management styles of the two sample groups i.e
male and female managers in regard to building and managing effective teams in
the tourism industry. After a multifaceted look into the factors that influence a team’s
effectiveness in the tourism industry, this section aims to present any trends,
similarities and differences between the managerial styles of the female and male
counterparts that the author was able to discern over the course of the research for
this paper in hopes of answering the research questions to the readers satisfaction.

To recap the research questions that were proposed were: “What are the male and
female Managers/Employers perspectives and approaches on how to build and run
an effective team in the tourism and leisure industry?” and “What are the similarities
and differences that can be drawn from both perspectives?”

From the interviews that took place, the Author was able to notice a few trends that
occurred whilst combing through the interview transcripts and analyzing the findings.
The Author learned that, whilst the perspectives and approaches of the managers
were highly subjective and varies from individual to individual regardless of gender,
similarities were present in these approaches to achieving effectiveness for the
mangers team. For example, all participants, male and female recorded that they do
undertake teambuilding exercises in one form or the other with their respective
teams and comment on the importance of such activities. They all undertake these
activities with differing frequencies. There is however no discernable pattern here
and this could be due to the fact that they all work in different branches of the
industry which will be further explored in the limitations.

Three situations where the Author was able to notice trends were with the frequency
of conflicts on each participants team, their level of satisfaction, and the sizes of their
team. Based only on the information gathered from the interviewees, making note of
the fact that the participants work in different branches of the tourism industry,

40
women, on average, record generally having less conflicts than men do with their
teams. This is potentially due to the fact that the men, on average, seem to manage
bigger teams. Bigger teams are harder to manage and are prone to having more
conflicts within them than smaller teams (Hoegl, 2005).

In response to the Interviewer asking the interviewees what their current level of
satisfaction was with their teams, five out of the six women recorded being
“extremely satisfied” with their team which was the highest rating possible from the
five options given, with the exception being Victoria (P4). Victoria’s situation is
however completely different from the rest of the women as she did mention that her
team is not qualified to work on the first job market and recorded that she was
“averagely satisfied” with her team which was the third highest rating from the five.

Victoria nevertheless acknowledges their efforts stating “I think they really try, and
they want the job. But it's not in the sense that they get better and better and they
get to work in the normal field of restaurants. they don't overcome their problems
which are behind their personality so they just can get better in our restaurants
which has a social background. They learn a lot and live a stabilized life.”

On the opposite side of this coin, only one of the male managers, John(P7), records
extreme satisfaction mentioning the reason why to be “at the moment they are
putting an effort in staying positive. they are mostly building a community keeping a
bond so that when the lockdown is finished that they can rebond as a team and
reactivate and when we're allowed to open again I'm looking forward to watching
them interact with each other.”

All other male managers record being “strongly satisfied” with their teams which was
the second highest option next to “extremely” despite that fact that participants like
Clifford(P9) and Paul(P11) acknowledge the work their respective teams do to be
good. Clifford mentions that his team is great at what they do and uses the high
ranking of his hotel to support his argument and Paul states, to respond to how
much his team has grown “definitely strongly and some of them even extremely
because we really play well off each other so everyone knows what everyone is

41
doing, and the work process just became easier but it's a coffeehouse so everything
is very chill and there doesn't seem to be any problem and they're running fine”.

The Author was interested in the reasons for their choices and while conducting
secondary research discovered that some researchers suggest that women have
certain acquired behaviors and attributes that make them suited for relations-
oriented leadership and that “female leaders frequently exhibit a more cooperative
style that includes nurturing team members”. It has also been suggested that Male
managers are more inclined towards a “command and control, militaristic leadership
style”.

Furthermore, scholars suggest that women find participative management more

natural than men because they generally feel more comfortable interacting with
people than men do. (Titus Oshagbemi, 2003). These comments also apply to the
fact that five out of the six women interviewed mentioned setting goals with their
teams together with the exception being Victoria (P4) for the same previously
discussed reasons, whereas only Daniel (P8) on the male side of things hints at
doing the same with his utilization of upsells as a measurement tool for the
performance of his team suggesting that women are more prone to set goals
together with their teams than men are. Paul (P11), however, does state that one
major action he takes to boost his team’s performance is putting himself with the
team and working alongside them if and when the situation calls for it, but this
seems to be an exception compared to the other males in the study.

As previously mentioned, this thesis uses predominantly qualitative methods in

attempts to answer the proposed research questions, but also has some quantitative
elements present. An example of this is the current levels of effectiveness,
measured in percentage, that the managers were asked to state from their objective
perspectives of their respective teams (see Figure 5). They were subsequently
asked to state the highest and lowest levels of effectiveness that their teams ever
achieved, also in percentage, and the author noticed another trend in their
responses.

42
The women, on average, mention higher values where the highest ever level of
efficiency that their team ever reached was concerned, with the lowest being 90%
and the highest, 120%, with an average of 100.83.

On the male side of the equation, where the highest ever level of efficiency was
concerned, the lowest value recorded was also 90%, but the highest, 100%, with an
average of 94%. As for the lowest ever recorded level of efficiency, the women gave
lower values than the men on average. The lowest value was 10% and the highest,
65%, with an average of around 51.66% (some participants gave a range instead of
exact figures). The men had the lowest value at 25% and the highest, 70-80%, for
the lowest effectiveness ever recorded, with an average of about 62%. There could
be many reasons as to why this is the case, but during the conduction of secondary
research, the author discovered a rather interesting possibility as to why this was
potentially the case.

In an occupational setting, there are descriptive and prescriptive norms for the
female gender role that contradict the requirements of the leadership role which can
lead to disadvantages for women in leadership positions.

Furthermore, these norms have been shown to reduce women’s leadership

aspirations as sometimes “gender nonconformity leads to backlash only when
status-violating; specifically, when women act in powerful ways”. (Julia B. Bear,
2017). This could be a potential reason why the women rate higher effectiveness for
their teams than the men, due to fear of gender nonconformity in their places of work
and the potential backlash attached to this, however, to begin to understand this
phenomenon, more research with a broader sample pool is required.

Furthermore, there were no discernable patterns with the recording of the current
effectiveness of their team between the women and the mean. This could be due to
the current global pandemic situation which affected a lot of the organizational
structures of the interviewee’s businesses.

There were similarities between the male and female counterparts where the topic of
recruitment was concerned with the majority of the participants stating that they
make their decisions based on personality and characteristics of the applicants. The
same conclusion can be made in the area of trust, feedback and reward systems
43
with nearly all of the participants emphasizing the value of trust, feedback and
reward and the influence it has on their teams’ developments.

6 Conclusion
In summary, there are countless factors that affect the effectiveness of a team
including trust, feedback, the work environment, culture and so on. The intention of
this paper was to observe and discern any trends that occurred from the managerial
styles of males and females in leadership roles in the tourism industry. The process
of doing so required the explanation of some of these factors and extracting, from
the conducted interviews, the male and female perspectives regarding some of
these factors in an effort to answer the proposed research questions.

The use of secondary literature was effective in collecting relevant teams and the
more important aspects of effective teamwork from the perspective of the author.
While this paper does present valuable findings in attempting to compare these
different perspectives, the fact is that there are simply too many facets of effective
teamwork and each managers perspective and approach to achieving their teams
developmental goals was highly subjective(Adriana Galan, 2008).

The Author therefore concludes that while there are some similarities and
differences to be drawn from the approaches of the different genders, many other
aspects simply need to be considered in order to fully determine just how much the
role of gender plays in establishing effective teams. This will be further discussed in
the limitations and then recommendations will be made for future researchers.

7 Limitations
Every research has its limitations, and this situation is no different. Firstly, during the
course of the research and especially the interviews, the author realized that the
current situation, the Covid-19 pandemic, had a rather strong impact on the quality
of the information that was obtained due to the nature of the study being about team

44
effectiveness. To explain, as many work processes have changed in the last year
and Managers everywhere have had to adapt accordingly, the quality of the data
obtained is not what it would be, were the situation “normal”. (Chi, 2020).

Another limitation of the paper was the fact that 2 of the interviews were conducted
in German and then transcribed and translated to English. The author fears that
some intended ideas and themes that the interviewee attempted to convey might
have become lost in translation and led to a lesser quality of the information
conveyed. The third limitation of this paper was the interview questionnaire failing to
cover some more important aspects and facets of building effective teams in the
industry.

The final and potentially most significant limitation was the fact that the participants
work in different branches of the tourism industry and despite the authors attempt to
limit this to just the three branches of hotels, gastronomy and Events, there were still
too many variations for the author to fully focus on the role of gender in building
effective teams.

45
8 Recommendations
Future researchers looking to discern and discover any similarities and differences in
the managerial styles of male and females in leadership positions in the tourism
industry would be wise to keep a more focused approach and stick to one sector of
the industry for potentially more accurate results. Furthermore, the author
recommends the incorporation of more quantitative methods, perhaps in addition to
the qualitative one utilized for this paper for a better perspective when attempting to
compare and contrast the different perspectives of male and female leaders of the
tourism industry.

46
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Julia B. Bear, L. C. (2017). Performance feedback, power retention, and the gender
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10 Annex

10.1 Questionnaire
The data collection will be treated strictly anonymously and confidentially. In
accordance with the Research Organisation Act section 2f(3)(1), your data will
be stored for 10 years. The scope of your data will be used for this particular
research only.

Subject:

age?:

M/F?:

Branch of the Tourism industry:

Interview questionnaire

1. What is the size of your team?

2. How long have you managed the team?

3. Do you undertake team building exercises? How often? Are they effective in
building a stronger team? Why or why not?

4. How often do conflicts arise within your team, if any, in the average work week?
<2 - <4 - <6 - <8 - <10 or more?

50
5. In your professional opinion, has your team grown personally and professionally
as individuals and as a collective since they have been working for you?
Not at all – Slightly – averagely – Strongly – Extremely

-Which factors do you find responsible?

6. How satisfied are you with your team as a whole?

Not at all – Slightly – averagely – Strongly – Extremely

-Why?

7. What is important for you as a manager when building a team? What do you look
for specifically in the members of the team?

8. How do you measure the performance of your team, for example by using key
figures and concepts like “Sales Revenue”, “Reviews”, etc?

-Do you inform your team of the progress, stagnation or decline in the
company? How regularly?

9. If 100% is the maximum, which effectiveness does your team have now?

-What was the lowest; what was the highest level your team reached? 

-Which crucial factors made the difference?

51
10. What are the three most important actions you take for improving your team’s
performance?

11. Do you think or feel that the established working environment has a strong impact on the
team development? in what way?

10.2 Transcripts
Interview transcripts male:

John male

I: First of all, I have to read you The data collection will be treated strictly anonymously and confidentially. In accordance with
the Research Organisation Act section 2f(3)(1), your data will be stored for 10 years. The scope of your data will be used for
this particular research only. Is it ok?

P7: yes

I: perfect. Thank you. okay first off. I need an age

P7: 39

I: male obviously and the branch of the tourism industry you work in?

P7: well it's my right to decide if I'm male. with the branch of the tourism industry I work in is a brewery/restaurant and hotellerie

I: so you manage the team right or multiple team

P7: the main team I manage is 24 staff but I also have to work in between two extra teams so that comes to about 54 in total
that I have to interact with. Tho First direct team is 24

I: and how long have you managed the team

P7: so my direct team I've been directly being involved with since 2008

I: so about 12 years

P7: 12.5 years

52
I: OK do you undertake team building exercises and if so how often

P7: we do team building exercises but they might not be the seen as team building in the same way as other companies do
like when they go out for a day and shoot laser or something but our exercises are more related to our business and will be
more in the scheme of learning more about our business and we don't get to do this with the full team but we do it with as many
of the team as often as possible. So maybe once a week, daily evenings we do different things with different people also
depending on what's comfortable with them so we also work with their comfort.

I: and do you think the team building exercises are effective in building a stronger team and why or why not

P7: I think they are effective in building a team in the way that do they have fun while they learn more about the products that
we sell and they learn about what other people do and they explain differences. and it's up to them to make decisions about
what they like more labor wise. And I think it's effective because they get to discuss between themselves they get to learn
more about one another but we also get to say it doesn’t matter that everyone agrees with each other because it all comes
down to personal taste. Yeah. The next question.

I: yes thank you. Next question how often the conflicts arise between your team within the average work.week you have five
options less than two times less than four times less than six times less than eight times and more than 10 times .

P7: my understanding of conflict could be different too many other peoples version of what conflict is

I: in your opinion

P7: for me, conflicts maybe between 4:00 and 6:00 but in other people's eyes it could be 10 or more. we have 20 females in a
team of 24 and so it comes down to what the definition of the conflict is. I come from a family of five siblings and I have 100 first
cousins so for me my definition of a conflict is probably very different to others who have like one or two siblings .

I: the next question in your professional opinion has your team grown professionally and personally as an individual and as a
collective since they have been working as a team for you. you have five options not at all slightly averagely strongly
extremely.

P7: I would go with strongly to extremely

I: what factors do you find responsible

P7: there can be one person who has issues and that can highly affect the team and other people. I mean I have been
managing this team for over 12 years and I've seen some of my old teammates come back so often for food to drink to hang
out and they were working with students and their career paths since then have grown as half day in there also regular
customers now and they also bring their children here.

I: the next question how satisfied are you with your team as a whole not at all slightly averagely strongly or extremely

P7: I would have to go at the moment with extremely. Yes they annoy me at times and some of them more than others but at
the moment they are will you putting an effort in staying positive they are mostly building a community keeping a bond so that
when the lockdown is finished that they can rebond as a team and reactivate and when we're allowed to open again I'm looking
forward to watching them interact with each other.

I: alright thank you the next question what is important for you as a manager when building a team what do you look for
specifically in the members of the team

53
P7: what I look for specifically is people who want to do something so they don't just want to have a wait but they actually want
to have work. and when they have that then I can look and what the choices are and where they fit in the team because if you
look at football you cannot have 11 top scores on your team everyone has a place on the field so some people are great. at
selling, some people great at carrying and some people are great at pleasing. Everybody has a different characteristic about
them and it's about utilizing everyones positives to the best ability you can as a manager rather than looking at everybody
having the same capabilities.

I: you answer that very beautifully actually just for the record. the next question how do you measure the performance of your
team. for example by using key figures like revenue or reviews and do you inform your team of progress stagnation or decline
in the company and how regular would you do that.

P7: I wouldn't give exact figures in sales and I wouldnt give information on stagnation or decline in the company. I would prefer
not to do that. I would prefer not to tell people that things are **** even when they are. sometimes I have but I would prefer not
to because I want the be positive. And as far as measuring the performance of the team I think that when there's work to be
done they do it and it gets hard but I look for the ones that go the extra mile so 100% instead of the 95. Sometimes we have
exceeded our own expectations

I: alright if 100% is the maximum which effectiveness does your team have now

P7: it's a difficult one to say because of the lockdown. And it is possible to reach 100% at the moment but because they work
maybe once in two weeks there are others confident as when it's busy. and when it's busy they are at 90% and if it's quiet
maybe 80 or 70%. this is something that is very pronounced in the industry still when its quiet motivation is low but when it's
busy everyone is bringing their A game.

I: thank you I'm good so there are two more questions: what are the three most important actions you take for improving your
team's performance

P7: have a beer with them, having a shot with them and ensuring theyre fed. being fed is more important than anything else. It
can even change their feelings on wages in other things when people are happily fed.

I: very good to know food is important. Last question do you think or feel that the established working environment has an
impact on team development and in what way

P7: I do believe that when …so what I understand from the question the one new member of the team starts they walk into the
training field and they see the team and how the team behaves with each other and it must be a positive feeling among all the
current team members to create a good environment for the new team member to learn and to fit in and understand how the
team works. I have listened to ex colleagues who started in other companies and they got written 100 messages put on the
table where they wrote leave now while you can. that will be a negative working environment. We also tried that if we have a
new person starting because we're mostly foreigners let the person starting is working with someone who speaks the same
native language so the task can be communicated better and more fluently so if a Spanish person is starting we put him with
the Spanish person and if a Greek person is starting we put him with a Greek person and so on.

I: thank you very much for the interview appreciate it. have a nice day

P7:you too thank you .

END!

Daniel male

54
I: First of all, I have to read you The data collection will be treated strictly anonymously and confidentially. In accordance with
the Research Organisation Act section 2f(3)(1), your data will be stored for 10 years. The scope of your data will be used for
this particular research only. Is it ok?

P8: sure

I: First off I need an age

P8: my age is 52 and I'm male

I: and the branch of the tourism industry

P8: I'm working as a hotel manager no tell called hotel Daniel with 116 rooms on one restaurant

I: thank you very much and what's the size of your team

P8: at the moment we have 25 employees but because of the short term work since one year already. but when we operate
normally we have 35 up to 38 employees depends on high season or low season

I: and how long have you managed the team

P8: seven years

I: do you undertake team building exercises and how often and do you think they are effective in building a stronger team

P8: we have Department heads so front of his manager a service manager and chef and engineer. so for the team building
exercises the Department heads are responsible for that in terms of training or going out and knowing each other . and I do it
with the Department heads every three or four months and once a two times a year we have a staff party

I:are they effective in building a stronger team why or why not

P8: yes of course because it's bonding you know each other we are very small so it's very important to a team building. But you
know that we are closed at the moment

I: yes but it doesn't matter in this case because my paper is about building effective teams and I'm trying to compare the
perspectives of male and female managers in the industry

P8: do you think that there is a difference

I: I'm hoping they are different.

P8: well you have one female Department head and she's responsible for the restaurant and she does things a little bit different
then the front office manager who is a male so she's preparing some cake and doing a Department meeting and having a

55
coffee and chit chat to motivate the people and a fun office manager who is male is not doing the coffee thing. it's also
important to have training sessions

I: the next question how often do conflicts arise within your team if any during the average work week so I have less than two
less than before less than six less than 8 and more than 10.

P8: between 2:00 and 4:00 conflicts arise that's normal and I think it's quite limited and you can solve it quite immediately but
they are two or three

I: thank you #5 in your professional opinion has your team going professionally and personally as individuals and as a
collective since working for you.

P8: it's not so easy to say in one because the people are different. some are students they just come here do their job and
some of work here for many years. and I would say yes they have gone personally and professionally. but students just come
and do their job and go so I would say rather no they just want the tips but the people who were here for many years yes so I
would say some averagely and some strong

I: what factors do you find responsible?

P8: when we make the plans we look at which workers were good together to have good energy and I take care of this factor
so for example if someone is not as good in the early shift isn't the late shift then we plan better for that and I think this is a
factor that define the right people for the right job and this it helps with growth.

I: #6 how satisfied are you with your team as a whole

P8: strongly

I: and why

P8: first of all it's a quite small team, it's like a family business , of course I stand behind them, of course there are some
employees you have to separate because it doesn't work but as a team we are really strong they also meet each other in
private time. not myself but the people working usually meet up for drinks or something when there is no pandemic going on

I: what is important for you as a manager when building a team what do you look for specifically in the member of the team

P8: I look for special people who are… you know I don't like staff members who say that's not my job and I'm not responsible
for that. I'm looking for people who are multitasking. service oriented. really good with guests . have a good background and
references but a good personality. and of course you have to look at the team really fits together. If there are conflicts then
you have to have a conversation with them and that helps

I: just to touch upon this when you say fit together how do you see that in advance if they haven't started working yet

P8: you don't know it 100% but from experience. you know when I worked in a five star hotel chain they choose people
differently but now in the hotel Daniel we are a different product. so I ask when I do the interviews I mean of course I look at
the appearance, the character, the personality and now I have seven years the feeling to see if the team fits together of course
sometimes I failed you make mistakes also but it's also an age thing if you have a team member in the same team with the
same age then it's easier to make them work together.

56
I: thank you #8 how do you measure the performance of your team. do you use key figures like revenues or reviews from the
guests something like this

P8: reviews of course, then up sales so in restaurant and rooms divisions they're upstairs so if a guest books a standard room
and the reception upsells into a higher category then we measure that. And if they reach a certain amount of up sales then
there is a present. but many companies are doing this for motivation.

I: a subquestion for number 8 do you inform your team regularly of any progress stagnation or even a decline in the company
and how regularly do do so if you do

P8: it could be better but in the rooms division yes. we do that in service we inform them at the end of month how are the
figures how is our performance or why don't we have the revenues like last year . we discussed that of course and we find
solutions but we don't do it on a permanent basis. it's more like in the morning so we talk like we had a good week or a bad
week and we need to do better and we have a conversation about that

I: so it's a more casual thing than an official thing

P8: yes

I: thank you if 100% is the maximum which effectiveness does your team have now

P8: I would say about 80%.'cause they're stronger team members and they're weaker ones but I would say about 80% and I
think 100 is a little hard to achieve.

I: what was the lowest and the highest that your team ever reached

P8: 70% and 90% is the highest

I: which crucial factors made the difference

P8: depends on the occupancy. so when we're fully booked, the team works more effectively than when we have less
occupancy people get lazy.

I: what are the three most important actions that you take for improving your teams performance

P8: so we do evaluations. So for example one month after they start,then after half a year and after 1 year. So for me it's the
most important action that you tell the good staff members about their strengths their work and what you like about them also a
little bit of criticism what they can improve and I think this is a very important action to improve the performance so if I don't
know if my manager is happy or not happy with me then my motivation might go down.. Sometimes we make sure they have a
good staff meal but if they're happy with the food they work better. And people can work in the private clothes and we noticed
when they're not in the uniform they work differently than when they are. and it's very good for their performance in their
friendliness as well. so we hire no matter what gender was ********* with orientation if they have tattoos and that motivates a lot
of people we don't have any restrictions or we don't have many restrictions and that motivates

I: thank you and the last question do you feel or think that the established working environment has a strong impact on the
team development and in what way

57
P8: yes of course the hotel Daniels are very young hotel and we have a lot of applications because the people like the style of
our hotel and we are free but there are obviously rules but is not like we have a a good job description how to serve against
and it's good for the environment and it's good for the people and it's good for the hotel

I: alright thank you. would you like to add anything else

P8: no everything is OK thank you have a nice day .

End!

Clifford male

I: First of all, I have to read you The data collection will be treated strictly anonymously and confidentially. In accordance with
the Research Organisation Act section 2f(3)(1), your data will be stored for 10 years. The scope of your data will be used for
this particular research only. Is it ok?

P9: ist okay yeah

I: okay i need an age first.

P9: 54

I: 54 male and the branch of the industry is hotel yes ?

P9: yes hotel business

I: the size of your team is the first question

P9: so it would be 90 employees in total

I: how long have you managed the team

P9: 25 years

I: do you undertake team building exercises regularly and how often

P9: yes I do regularly most of the time twice a year

I: do you think they are effective in building a stronger team why or why not

P9: because you fulfilled the goals the aims of your team

58
I: how often do conflicts arise within your team if there are any in the average work week. I have less than two less than four
less than six less than eight or ten or more

P9: less than six because when you have a team like that something happens always

I: OK thank you and in your professional opinion has your team going personally and professionally as individuals but also as a
collective since they have been working for you ?

not at all, slightly averagely strongly for extremely

P9: strongly

I: what factors do you find responsible

P9: well you have to make a lot of decisions, you're working a lot with the guests, you have to find solutions for the guest and
the team helps each other and solves problems together. Ans sometimes alone and they grow from doing so

I: how satisfied are you with your team as a whole

P9: strongly for the same reasons because they are very independent always on a solution based approach and it's a great
team and they work very close to each other and they help and support each other

I: alright thank you. what is important for you as a manager when you're looking to recruit a new member of a team So what do
you look for specifically?

P9: I look at the human itself himself or herself the kindness they have to be open for new things they have to be friendly they
have to be supportive helpful and all these things and we're working in the hospitality business, so these are very important
things

I: if someone comes to you for the first time to apply for a job how can you see this characteristics or attributes after one
meeting?

P9: I. want to find out about the human. Do I have the feeling that this person fits in our team? Are they supportive or kind etc.

I: alright thank you and the 8th question, how do u measure the performance of your team? Do u use key figures like sales
revenue or reviews from the customers.

P9: so we use we the revenue of course but for us we're very guest oriented and so more what the guests review our workers.

I: do you inform your team regularly of any progress stagnation or decline in the company and how regularly do you do so

P9: yes I do and weekly

I: #9 if 100% is the maximum what effectiveness does your team have now

59
P9:85%

I: and why?

P9: well because we're ranking very high. We’re among the top five best hotels in Vienna and among the three best hotels in
Kitzbühel. So I know my team is really good in what they're doing.

I: 85 is less than what I've heard so far that's why I'm wondering but the next question is was the lowest and what was the
highest levels of efficiency that your team has reached

P9: 70% is the lowest and 95 is the highest

I: what factors made the difference

P9: the difference is sometimes it happens that you have someone in the team who is not playing with others and then the
performance is not as we normally would have it

I: can you give me for example with the lowest what didn't work

P9: for example if you in the restaurant and you have some people who are not serving as they shoul undone if the guest is not
satisfied and angry about everything and that is a problem and that is low efficiency

I: what are the three most important actions that you take for improving your team's performance

P9: trust appreciation and gratitude

I: alright thank you and do you feel or think that they established working environment has a strong impact on the team
development and in what way

P9: I have a very feeling that I have a very professional team and that's why we hold this kind of position

I: and the work that your team does it has a strong impact on the development as a team ?

P9: yes it does

I: can you explain to me in a few sentences what that means. do you think they become better people working in the hotel or
does it stress them out or do you know what I mean?

P9: the normal practice is never change a winning team. and it also helps that the rating is very high and people are very
proud to work here and I think it does have an effect

I: thank you very much do you have anything to add

60
P9: yes at the moment we have a very hard situation so the interview I answered based on my experience before the COVID-
19 situation.

I: understandable thank you have a nice day

P9: you too bye bye

End!

Tommy male

I: First of all, I have to read you The data collection will be treated strictly anonymously and confidentially. In accordance with
the Research Organisation Act section 2f(3)(1), your data will be stored for 10 years. The scope of your data will be used for
this particular research only. Is it ok?

P10: yeah it is

I: perfect I don't need a name an age I need

P10: 39

I: Male and the branch of the tourism industry ?

P10: club lounge bar

I: this is your team and you can use the numbers from before Corona

P10: 25 people

I: 25 and how long did you manage the team

P10: 13 years

I: do you often do team building exercises and how often

P10: yes we do about four times a year

I: and are they effective in building a stronger team

P10: yes and it brings people together and the team becomes better the communication also becomes better between the
team members and less misunderstandings happen.

61
I: in a week how often are there conflicts your team? less than two less than four less than six less than 8 or more than 10?

P10: less than two times

I: and your professional opinion as your team grown personally and professionally as individuals and as a collective since they
have been working for you? Not at all slightly averagely strongly or extremely

P10: slightly

I: and what factors do you find responsible

P10: maybe 2 little team meetings also there is not always a manager on ground 2 control and work and some people just don't
wanna learn anymore especially the older people on my team.

I: how satisfied are you with your team not at all slightly averagely strongly or extremely

P10: strongly because in principle nearly everything works is supposed to and I think that's a good thing so I'm satisfied

I: what's important for you as a manager when you're building a team what do you look for specifically in the members of the
team

P10: professionality honesty, also the skill set and if the person has a good reference from another company is very important.
And and if they don't have any problems privately because then they would bring that into my workspace

I: but you wouldn't notice this on the 1st interview with the person

P10: no you wouldn't but for example some people have some open cases in court or having paid some bills and then this
comes to the workspace and it used to be not a problem for me but I've learned my lesson and it's now important for me. for
example if someone doesn't pay alimony then I get the letter and that's just problems that I don't need .

I: how do you measure the performance of your team from the revenue or from reviews from customers or something else

P10: definitely revenue and I do get reviews from customers over online platforms and I don't really pay attention to the reviews
because I know my team quite well and I know what what my team is capable of and so I realized that sometimes the
customers are the problem in particular situations and try to blame the stewards or the waiter. but what I do control is how
much money we made and how much people were actually in the bar and if it makes sense and see how efficient my team is
working

I: do you inform your team of any progress stagnation or decline in the company and how often do you do so if you do

P10: no. But sometimes I do tell them today was good but I don't wanna do that all the time because then they get in there at
their head they were making a lot of profits and that's not always the case which can lead to some other problems

I: if 100% is the maximum what effectivity does your team have now what level? Let's say before Corona

62
P10: I would say the waiters about 90% and the others maybe 50% so averagely but 70 to 75%

I: what was the highest and lowest levels of effectiveness that your team reached

P10: so 25 and 100%

I: what factors did you find responsible

P10: depends on the people working on the day or if there's a big event and I'm not there to manage then the effectivity or
effectiveness is less. and if someone is there to guide and manage the team and is on ground then it works but if you leave the
workers to themselves they're not as independent they do sometimes what's on the list and but they don't take the extra steps.
so I think I need to have another person there managing or being there myself

I: and for the lowest levels of effectiveness how do you know that it was low if you were not there yourself

P10: so for example if I go on holiday for a week or something then the waiters are probably drunk the place is very dirty the
deliveries don't get taken and so on or they forget to open the bar for example sometimes which is not funny.

I: OK what are the three most important actions that you take to make your team better

P10: manage

I: a little bit more specific please

P10: make the workplace in the workflow efficient team meetings and when I book nice artist and DJ's the motivation seems to
go up because there's more tips and more people eTC

I: do you think that established working environment has an impact on the team development

P10: yes

I: in what direction?

P10: you may interesting people which is a pretty nice aspect but also the job is mostly a night job which also has and negative
effect sometimes so . you get older faster or you drink more alcohol ETC.

I: and does it affect their team spirit and team development?

P10: yes in a good direction.So we work very together so if for example a waiter gets spit on then the security is there in a
second and taking care of the situation the person is not going to get back in and things like this and everyone is a team
supportive of and we change the tables in the rotations in all these things so people feel the team feels comfortable and
everyone kind of just knows and accepts the workflow and it's nice

I: thank you

63
P10: thank you bye bye

End!

Paul male

I: First of all, I have to read you The data collection will be treated strictly anonymously and confidentially. In accordance with
the Research Organisation Act section 2f(3)(1), your data will be stored for 10 years. The scope of your data will be used for
this particular research only. Is it ok?

P11: yes its fine.

I: perfect I need an edge

P11: I AM 56 years old male. And my branch in tourism….. earlier I used to be a hotelier. In a tourism resort and last two years
I've had two firms in Vienna.

I: gastronomy firms?

P11: yes small businesses a cafe a small restaurant

I: what was the size of your team

P11: I had 20 people in my team went working at the hotel and in my situation now I have 5-6 workers. I've been managing
teams since 1995 and the ones in my new locations since 2013

I: OK do you do team building exercises and how often

P11: yes yes monthly and then makes our team stronger and more efficient. we have team meetings after work sometimes
you'll be just sit down have a drink and talk and everyone can talk freely and express themselves bring new ideas talk about
the past and future and I also do the same but I don't like what I like I expressed myself. What we should change or we should
keep the same and so on

I: how often in the work week do conflicts arise within your team ?

P11: the as good as never especially when their guests and because the team plays off each other very well blue one team but
it can be hard to take a new member into the team because the team is pretty tight knit. But if the new member doesn't pass
into doesn't fit the team members then it's probably also for the best and in front of the guests nothing ever happens conflict
wise

I: so less than two

P11: yes we are conflict free

I: in your professional opinion is your team grown personally and professionally ……..

64
P11: yes definitely strongly and some of them even extremely because we really play well off each other so everyone knows
what everyone is doing and the work process just became easier but it's a coffeehouse so everything is very chill and there
doesn't seem to be any problem and they're running fine.

I: OK and how satisfied are you with your team as a whole?

P11: very satisfied so it's like if someone doesn't fit into the team then it's usually a feeling that we both feel and they usually
part ways from us without being angry at each other because we know it doesn't workout but otherwise I'm very satisfied with
my team so strongly

I: the 7th question what is important for you as a manager when you're building a team. So what do you look for specifically in
a new applicant

P11: so I tried to make sure the team is a little bit slow mixed so gender age nationality and if it's mixed and I think it makes
more fun for everyone to interact with each other and learn from each other so something its something I look for. I also look if
they're willing to work if they like working if they and me also fulfill the the wishes of one another to the best of our capabilities
or if we can do that I look for these things

I: take for example that you are doing an interview with the new applicant how would you know that this person might fit in your
team

P11: so in the first moment I usually just feel if this person is and empathetic or not if it's a nice person. but also I have
employed people who were not too nice in the beginning but then miss time went by we started to work very nicely together
and it also worked out fine so…I look at the CVS of the applicants the report cards from their old jobs but the report cards are
not too important for me. Also I always look how long they work from their old jobs from their CVS and it if it's too short for me
sometimes like four months then I always am a bit skeptical. but it always depends on the situation. What's very negative for
me if is if someone was unemployed for a very long time.

I: the eighth question how do you measure the performance of your team?

P11: the revenue and we only use one cash register so we really work as a team also definitely the guests do say some things
and I have to look at it from situation to situation. But I do take this into consideration when measuring the performance of my
team.

I: do you inform your team regularly about any progress stagnation or decline in the company and how often do you do so if
you do

P11: well it was a small team and we worked pretty intensively together and we had like 5 to 6 days of work together and
everyone was there we work together so they do have a picture a clear picture of what's going on in the company which is not
the same situation as it was in the hotel because there everyone only knew what was going on with their cash registers and not
what's going on in the hotel.

I: if 100% is the maximum what level of effectiveness does your team have now

P11: 90% 'cause 100 is basically impossible but we're very good

I: and the highest and the lowest that your team ever reached

65
P11: 70 percent was the lowest and 95% was the highest

I: and what factors made the difference

P11: the motivation from both sides or from all sides so if it's a lot to do and everyone is helping each other and assisting each
other and everyone can rely on everyone else then motivates everyone

I: thank you and the ten question what are three actions that you take to make your team development better

P11: so for me I'm a very old school entrepreneur and one thing I always did is to become part of the team myself so I helped
the team in and I do things also in the kitchen and everything to wash dishes so everyone knows that I'm there also and
everyone can come to me and I teach them one on one if they don't understand anything and we do it together and we get
better. also respect to one another is very important also working with the people to find the strengths and their weaknesses
because I believe their strength and weaknesses sometimes. also the sharing of the tips is very important I mean they work for
it and I make sure everyone gets a fair share because the cash register is only one and I also make sure that the work process
is easy so that the tips are good for them also and it motivates them if they have a little bit of extra money in their pockets

I: and the last question do you believe or feel that the working environment has a strong impact on the team development

P11: definitely

I: in what direction

P11: so we have regulars and they visit often and the people know and in motivates them to know that the people also come
often to see them work or that they they kind of build relationships with their customers and I think it also helps with the team
development

I: alright thank you

P11: thank you have a nice day

I: you too

End!

Interview transcripts female:

Kristina female

I: First of all, I have to read you The data collection will be treated strictly anonymously and confidentially. In accordance with
the Research Organisation Act section 2f(3)(1), your data will be stored for 10 years. The scope of your data will be used for
this particular research only. Is it ok?

P1: okay Yeah

I: firstly I need an age.

66
P1: 37

I: 37 alright, the branch of the industry is events?

P1: Branch of the tourism industry is Event, hospitality and guest experience yes

I: the first question what is the size of your team?

P1: I have four people one full time, two part time and one trainee

I: OK perfect and how long have you managed the team

P1: I founded the company in 2012 but this team constellation exists actually since November last year but I have had
employees throughout my career

I: do you often undertake team building exercises and how often

P1: actually we do an internal workshop every quarter and we're working on new ideas for team building exercises as soon as
possible again like kind of a coffee barrista workshop a first aid course any social cooking activities because I think such
activities strengthen the trust within each other and the relationships and you get to know each other better and you bring the
more relaxed atmosphere and actually we just had our quarterly workshop for second quarter today and it was really good for
the team. you know you talk about things when you don't have time during the year so this is really very helpful.

I: thank you I mean you basically answered already why or why they're not better in building a stronger team but do you have
anything else to add on why team building exercises might be effective in building a stronger team

P1: sorry what do you mean

I: like you said it makes it better you get time to talk to a lot of your employees….

and I mean from this I can assume that it's effective in building a stronger team would you have anything else to add on that
or???

P1: No, I think the most important benefit of any team building activities is communication better understanding for each other
and yeah

I: thank you and the 4th question: how often do conflict arise within your team if any in the average work week I have less than
two less than 4 less than 6 less than 8 or 10 or more?

P1: less than two times

I: less than 2, alright good. Is there anything you want to add to that like because of an easy going Work process or the
teammates are very…. do you understand what I mean?

67
P1: yeah I mean no there are there are no conflicts because I think it's about the team spirit and how you communicate with
your your team and how you include them from the beginning in order to avoid conflict although I don't think you need to avoid
conflict you need to speak and talk about conflict and then they arise less often

I: alright thank you. In your professional opinion has your team grown personally and professionally as individuals and as a
collective since they have been working for you? do you get the question?

P1: I woukld say strongly.

I: and what factors do you find responsible?

P1: I think the more you work together the more you get to know the other team members and even yourself and you learn
how to…. actually how you and your counterparts react in different situations and even if you make mistakes you take
something from that for the future so at the time I think work makes huge part of your life I think it also reflects and shows the
personal growth and what I tried for myself but also for my team to encourage them to make mistakes, to develop themselves,
and learn new things to improve existing skills I think this is yeah the most important.

I: thank you. And how satisfied are you with your team as a whole?

P1: Extremely.

I: Extremely! Alright and why?

P1: I think because every day and actually up to today's workshop I think we really grow together as a team much better
everyday.

I: okay. That’s very nice. The seventh question: what is important for you as a manager when you're building a team So what
would you look for specifically in the in the member of the team that you're trying to recruit?

P1: I learned from my for myself that the most important is not thing is not it's not the hard facts and the knowledge its more
about… I hire personality to match my own opinion and personalities who are willing to learn and open to learn new topics and
new skills.

I: okay. perfect thank you and how do you measure the performance of your team? Do you use key figures like sales revenue
or reviews from customers or something else?

P1: I actually set my team a yearly target which we defined together and which we challenge, or I challenge them once a
month and I monitor the goals which we put up once a month or if important more often.

I: alright, thank you. Do you often inform your team of any progress or stagnation or decline in the company and how regularly
would you do so if you do?

P1: I do it actually more regularly and even due to covid more regular but normally I do it in the quarterly updates and our
weekly meet up whenever necessary.

I: okay OK it's 100% is the maximum which effectiveness does your team have now

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P1: 75%

I: 75%? because of the pandemic or?

P1: I think there's still potential to be more efficient and this is definitely one of my weaknesses 'cause I have to say I think it's
important to you as a leader also to give very clear instructions and that's something I can improve still.

I: alright and the lowest and the highest your team ever reached?

P1: it's a very good question I think during the pandemic we were maybe down to 50 but and whenever it's busy we're up to
100 definitely so stressful and busy times yeah.

I: so the crucial factors that made a difference would be the amount of work?

P1: Time pressure. Yeah the amount of work and the time pressure.

I: Okay alright. And what are the most three most important actions that you take for improving your team's performance?

P1: I think giving positive feedback, giving clear rules so being clear in general and working on a very clear communication
and setting and sharing targets and goals

I: alright thank you. then the last question: do you think or feel that the established working environment has had a strong
impact on the team development and in what way?

P1: yes definitely. Its super important. since for me the working environment the office environment and everything we need to
do with the experience of employees in general, so the employee experience. it has a very strong impact because it makes
them happy, stronger, yeah I guess this is…

I :alright thank you very much I would… very helpful very very helpful thank you for agreeing to do the interview with me.

P1: Really, oh great!

I: yeah that was the last question thank you very much

P1: you’re welome

End

Hanna female

I: First of all, I have to read you The data collection will be treated strictly anonymously and confidentially. In accordance with
the Research Organisation Act section 2f(3)(1), your data will be stored for 10 years. The scope of your data will be used for
this particular research only. Is it ok?

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P2: yeah that’s okay.

I: perfect, I need an age.

P2: my age… puuh it's 38

I: still very young don't worry

P2: Laughs*

I: female obviously. and I need to know what branch of the tourism industry you work in.

P2: hospitality and so tourism and hospitality.

I: so like hotels right

P2: yeah

I: perfect, and for the first question I would like to know what the size of your team is

P2: from the HR team or from the whole team of the hotel?

I: so you are the HR director?

P2: exactly

I: OK well I mean that's even perfect so I would from your team, the HR team, the team you are managing.

P2: I just need to count again because we lost unfortunately we lost some over the year ..2345… so including me it was six.

I: and how long have you managed the team?

P2: two years now

I: alright thank you. do you undertake a team building exercises and how often?

P2: usually we do now but that it's you know Corona everywhere we haven't done it for the past 1 1/2 years probably but before
that we did it on a on a regular basis so every two to three months.

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I: and do you think theyre effective in building a stronger team. you can also compare the quality of work now or the quality of
your team spirit to when you had the chance to do the exercises.

P2: I think they are extremely effective and you can really feel that there is a change going on especially the first days after you
did you did a team building event you can feel that there's a completely different atmosphere and that's why we repeated on a
regular basis every two to three months as I said because the atmosphere then in the end goes a little bit down but specially
over the first days after the team building you can really feel a bonding between the individual team members and if you do it
regularly over a certain period of time this might lead into people being longer employed in not only in your team but at the at
the company itself

I: cool thank you very much. how often do conflicts arise within your team if any in the average work week so I have options
less than two less than four less than six less than eight or ten or more?

P2: almost never I have to admit

I: OK very good very good OK in your in your professional opinion has your team grown personally and professionally…. the
question is a little bit long but try and stay with me in your professional opinion has your team grown personally and
professionally as individuals and as a collective since they have been working for you? not at all, slightly, averagely, strongly or
extremely?

P2: I would say strongly yeah

I: what factors do you hold responsible for this?

P2: because we here have a quite young team so I'm obviously the oldest. so our youngest team member she is think 21 or 22
and having worked with her over two years you can really see not only a personal growth but also a growth in regards to her
professional career so working with such a young team member you can actually experience that with every day how they are
growing.

I: That’s nice very nicely actually it's the first answer of such I've gotten. how satisfied are you with your team as a whole?

P2: extremely

I: extremely yes?

P2: so the highest you can give that the highest rank

I: OK good and why?

P2: because we have gone through a lot of difficult times as a team from private and personal perspectives but also in regards
to the covid infections here at the hotel. so for example the team the half of the team got infected last year and so we as I said
I've gone through a difficult times when it comes to the regular daily work but also on a very private and personal basis and that
has made us even stronger as a team going through these different phases and helps us a lot in our daily basis as our trust
amongst each other is almost endless. The question that Hyatt sometimes asks during surveys is do you have a best friend at
work? and I think best friend can be, stands for….,…. different, doesn't have to be a best friend somebody that you go out with
but somebody you really trust and I think this is really given in our in our team here.

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I: very nice thank you the seventh question: what is important for you as a manager when you're building a team So what do
you look for specifically in the members of the team if they were to be like joining your team what would you look for in the new
person who's coming to join your team?

P2: I'm not necessarily looking for a lot of work experience I'm looking for somebody who's passionate about hospitality and
passionate about the HR work because whenever somebody is passionate whatever they don't know they're eager to get to
know and this is something that I'm looking into if I'm hiring somebody for the Department. so I just had an interview for the HR
Department couple of days ago and the person was really concerned because the person said I don't really have experience,
and I was like you don't really need experience. we have the experience. we have the experience that we can give you we can
teach you. everything the Department needs to know is in US and this is something that we can give you but we cannot give
you is the passion for this certain job so this is for me the most important thing.

I: the passion?

P2: yeah

I: and how do you measure the performance of your team? do you use key figures and concepts like the sales revenue or
reviews from the customers or anything else?

P2: no we don't really have…. I mean we have our own goals within the HR Department but they are rather departmental goals
not individual goals. individual goals will be set on personal development not really personal performance but we have our
regular development talks with each staff member where we are looking into: where are you at? where would you like to go in
the future? and there is a certain Hyatt system that we are using in answering all those questions and putting together
development plan with a certain timeframe that we as I said discuss on a regular basis with the team members but we yes like
in sales we don't have a specific key indicators in regards to numbers for our HR team members.

I: OK OK and do you inform your team regularly of any progress, stagnation or decline in the company and if so how regularly?

P2: within the company, yes. They will be informed like every other staff member during general staff member meetings or
Department head meetings, but we have daily meetings in the morning where we discuss company performance but also
departmental performance, so we regularly discuss except for during covid times where everything was different. But before
covid we obviously as well had our departmental goals, and we would discuss them on a regular basis as well so that
everybody knows are we on track is there anything that we need to? anything that anything else that we need to do in order to
achieve our goals so that everybody really knows not only our company goals but also our departmental goals.

I: OK this question is a little bit strange because of the COVID-19 situation. so I would suggest that you answered like there
was no pandemic now. First one so if 100% is the maximum, what effectiveness does your team have now?

P2:what effectiveness in regards to….?

I: as a team do they work? do they get the job done? you said there's no conflict so like let's say shortly before the pandemic
before anything how was your team working?

P2: full. with level 100% yup.

I: now you can use Corona as well what was the lowest in what was the highest that your team ever reached in percentage if
100 is the maximum?

P2: lowest 10% and highest also during covid 100%.

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I: ok and what factors make the difference?

P2: the amount of work so we have a lot to do with the short time work, or the payments and all the agreements that we have
to fill out in every time there was a new phase for us it was a lot of work so that's why we invested 100%, but for example right
after or in the middle of last year for example there was a was a low where there was nothing really to do a lot of stuff members
left us unfortunately and all that job, that work was done there was only a bit to do here in our HR apartment that's when it
when the lowest 10% came into place

I: alright now two more questions. what are the three most important actions that you as a manager take for improving your
team's performance?

P2: for me the most important thing is really listening. listening to the team members because they can only perform as good if
they have everything yeah or the working material and if they are to stay free and there in their head so if there's anything and
everybody has something that bothers them if it's private if it's work related but you can only figure that out if you really listen to
the team members so there will be a very crucial part but with listening comes really taking time. because yes I also do have a
lot of emails and a lot of work to do but I have to take time for my team members to listen to them and those two are very
crucial. and giving them a platform as well yes I'm the manager but I'm not the one …yes I'm the one leading the Department
but not the one leading all the decisions and leading all the creative ideas this is something we do together as a team and I'm
not really a fan of a big hierarchy for me everybody is the same even though in the end it's my head that's rolling if something
happens that wasn't supposed to happen but in the end it's all of us who are responsible for the success or the not having
success of the Department.

I: thanks that makes a lot of sense. thank you. the last question do you feel or think that the established working environment
that is the hotel or the HR department has a strong impact on the team development and in what way?

P2: sorry can you repeat the question?

I: the work environment. so like you guys, you have you have a job to do and you have to work. you have to go to work and
everyday you do the same or more less the same tasks and do you think that the work itself has a strong impact on the team
development like in the working environment and in what way does it does it have an impact?

P2: well if I understood the question correctly yes but especially during covid we experience that the work we're doing is is
always the same. so short term work and paying out short term work and having to answer the same questions over and over
again makes made us a bit frustrated. I have to say without Corona we are very creative there's a lot that we're doing with our
team members being on sight, a lot of creative ideas that we have to engage them and we really felt the difference and we
really felt that the motivation decreased during covid as it was always the same that we were doing and it was not really
motivating to do. it's not really a motivating job to pay out only a short term work salary to staff members and not having them
here so if I understood it correctly if it's always the same work that we're doing which we are currently doing motivation is quite
low but if we can really fulfill our creativity that we have as an HR team the workload in everything that we're achieving is much
higher than then we have during covid. That’s for sure.

I: alright so I mean an on the team dynamics or like if you want to create, creativity comes out that you notice that the team
dynamic is actually better? you know people interact better, and now it's like a little more frustrating; people probably more
tense if i can understand your answer right. is that…?

P2: yeah absolutely, absolutely and the amount of work that you are covering is probably also less if you're not that motivated
you know everything is a bit slower, everything is a bit you know it needs more, you need to overcome more obstacles to do
things rather than it's really something that you like that you enjoy and that you are actually supposed to do, that you were
actually hired for. we were not actually in the end hired for doing what we're doing right now but we hired on a different for
different purpose and yeah this is when you really see the departmental achievements decreasing.

I: alright thank you very much very. very well rounded answers. I can use a lot of the answers that I got. thank you very much I
appreciate it.

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P2: if there's anything else you need any other questions just let me know

I: I will thank you very much and I can send you a copy of my paper when I'm done so you can also look at it and yeah thank
you very much

P: Good luck! I say thank you too bye bye.

End.

Marly female

I: First of all, I have to read you The data collection will be treated strictly anonymously and confidentially. In accordance with
the Research Organisation Act section 2f(3)(1), your data will be stored for 10 years. The scope of your data will be used for
this particular research only. Is it ok?

P3: yes.

I: so I need an age

P3: 32

I: 32 thank you, female obviously. Um the branch of the tourism industry that you work in?

P3: In hospitality at the front office.

I: thank you. So the questions will start….

P3: may I just ask one question. are the questions about the current situation that we have right now or usually without the…
let's say before Corona?

I: I would say normal times but if any relevant changes occured because of the Corona which I've had so far like that I could
not like escape it completely. you have to compare it but mostly I'm focused on this generally as a team…. like on the team….
without Corona but if it is relevant in any way then It would also be useful.

P3: alright

I: So what is the size of your team ?

P3: so normally the size is 20 people plus two trainies but now, including me we are down to 11. without anything. more or less
half of the team right now alright

I: and how long have you managed the team?

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P3: for two years now.

I: okay thank you. do you undertake team building exercises if so how often and do you think they are effective in building a
stronger team?

P3: yes we do undertake team building exercises. usually there is one quote on quote officially team building exercises at the
beginning of the year every Department in our hotel can pick something for their own team and then you can you will get a an
certain amount of money to do this team building exercise but that’s once a year but we at the front office team tried to meet up
at least… I don't know… 5 to six times a year just to hang out together but it's not really team building exercises. just hanging
out or celebrate a birthday or in summer to have a bbq together .. stuff like this.. so just that that we can build our team better.
What we do individually we usually celebrate every birthday so outside of the hotel and I would say that that's kind of a team
building exercise as well.

I: It is yeah

P3: and they're definitely very effective because you get to know each other better in private maybe they're also different
groups so that different groups and everybody's on the same level there are no shift leaders or no managers so everybody is
the same and the heirachy is not…. it's all a little bit more leisure then. you can just know a person better if you're meeting
outside of work so that’s my take on it. we try to meet as often as we can of course right now in the last year we also we also
switched to zoom calls to Christmas zoom calls or we met outside with 1 meter distance and everything but just try to meet
each other.

I: why else do you think this is effective

P3: well if u know someone better in private it becomes easier to work with them at the hotel. If u know them better the trust is
there and in a team I think trust and respect are the main 2 key factors and the more you know a person the more you can trust
them. Private and at work. So if you give them a chore and you know that they will do it or you know they can handle it you can
trust them and that’s how you build a stronger team I think.

I: perfect thank you. Um,… the 4th question how often does do conflict arise within your team if there are any in the average
work week? so I have less than two less than four less than six less than eight or ten or more.

P3: definitely less than 2 we do have not many conflicts so less than 2 even zero sometimes in a week.

I: alright thank you! in your professional opinion has your team grown personally and also professionally but as individuals and
also as a collective since they've been working for you? do you understand the question?

P3: yeah I do..

I: um sorry one more thing I have four options I have not at all, slightly, averagely, strongly and extremely.

P3: I would say averagely because I was lucky to overtake a really strong team already. At first I worked in this hotel for 5 years
and at the front office desk for five years I started as the shift leader and then I was the assistant front office manager and the
front office manager before me already built a strong and capable team so I was really lucky to take the team over. It was not
so much hard work at the beginning. So I would say averagely because the conditions changed. Some people quit and we got
some new people so I would say averagely.

I: how satisfied are you with your team as a whole? Not at all, slightly, averagely, strongly or extremely

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P3: I’m extremely satisfied with my team. Um everybody respects each other, we’re loyal to each other. If somebody has a
problem then everybody knows they can call somebody else. Or you can talk openly if there a conflict and just sort it out
immiediatly. Theres no bickering or backstabbing. I mean I feel comfortable and I hope everybody else does too. Especially in
the last year, you can see how strong the team was. So normally at work before corona, in one shift there are usually 5-6
people. And now there is just one person because there is not much to do. So we do not see each other at work or in private
due to the current situation. We still manage to stay strong like before and I think that shows that we are a good team.

I: that’s very nice. The seventh question; what is important for u as a manager when building a team? Like what do u look for
specifically in the members of the team

P3: I look for 3 key factors: respect loyalty and honesty. In addition to that: teamwork, openminded people, so in the hospitality
industry especially, you have people from all over the world from different backgrounds. And everybody has to be respectful or
openminded and that’s how you can build a team because you can learn from someone else culture and background and from
each other and if u take that I think u can build a strong team and that’s more important than any working skills because u can
learn how to do a check in or how to talk to a guest but you need to be friendly and loyal and have respect for your team
colleagues but also for the guests. thats something you cant learn if you don’t have it.

I: alright thank you. The 8th question, how do you measure the performance of your team? for example do you use key figures
or concepts like sales revenues or reviews something like this

P3: I measure them by up sell and by reviews. That first part of it is the upsell: room upsale, breakfast upsales all of that stuff.
how much revenue they get and can upsell in a month. they had their monthly targets and everything. we had each an
individual targets but also a team target so its both and then we also have the online review and that's the best way how you
can measure how they perform the reviews are really good and to rating the team and the friendliness of the team and
everything so that's how I measure them.

I: perfect. Thank you. do you inform your team regularly of the progress or stagnation or decline in the company and how
regularly would you do so if u do?

P3: um.. Yes basically every month with the upsell that they're making at the at the end of the month we see how the entire
hotel revenue has done and they get a quick glimpse or view of how if the hotel is doing? good or bad? How the reviews are
doing and so every month is a short quick overview and then I would say twice a year a more detailed information of the
progress or even what's the plan for our hotel and water company and everything

I: thanks. the 9th question. Two more. If 100% is the maximum which effectiveness does your team have now?

P3: I would say 90%

I: because of the pandemic or…?

P3: yes because of the pandemic definitely. the first three months were really difficult I think for all of us it was new and
nobody knew what we had to do and everything but everyone of us grew and made like a 360 degree turn and as a team
everybody knows what what they're doing because usually you have to you have the manager the assistant manager, Shift
leader, you have agents… but now everybody is on the same level and each knows what to do. Does the same work usually a
shift leader does that or the make concierge, and they have they also help out in the F&B Department in the housekeeping
Department so the knowledge as an whole grew this year and everyone grew. So they can work really effectively right now
because we also can understand the context working in the other Departments. they know how stressful housekeeping can be
or how stressful the F&B can be can be and I think one of the positive sides of this current situation right now

I: also for later I think it might also be very helpful after the pandemic it might be quite helpful for the efficiency which might just
be way way way more after the pandemic because everyone knows how everything works better

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P3: I think foreach Department in a hotel but as a hotel team together you know what the other person is doing you can help
them out better. if a guests wants something you have more information and knowledge is always power so that's really good.

I: alright thank you what was the lowest and the highest level your team reached in efficiency sticking to 100% as the
maximum.

P3: the lowest I would say 60 to 70% so let's take say 65 and the highest was 95 maybe a little bit more than we have right
now but we are right now at a really high level I would say

I: what crucial factors made the difference between the lowest and the highest?

P3: um the lowest was because a lot of old team members quit or got another job so we got a lot of new team members.
almost half of the team has changed. It was really difficult to get everyone on a level working wise on the same knowledge level
and getting to know each other and everything like this to build a team again. This took some time and you also could see this
at the work efficiency and everything. other people who were agents are now shift leaders then they have to figure out their
new roll and everything for this. So the entire structure of the team changed and yeah you could see this in the effectiveness.

I: Thank you very much! what are the three most important actions that you take for improving your teams performance?

P3: setting goals, setting goals with the team together and individually and team meeting one to one talk, also the team
building exercises. so meeting in private and building the team there and rewards and praise I would say because if they are
always performing good then you definitely have to reward and praise and state they have done a good job and put it together.
A high five at the end of shift if it was a good shift or for example if they made a really really good upsale then I will check if we
can have a nice dinner at a restaurant and meet together so that a reward and its team building at the same time

I: very nice. the last question do you think or feel the established working environment has a strong impact on the team
development and in what way?

P3: I think the working environment has strong impact on the team. the hotel environment really we have that we are one small
or big family. I've already said like we have to be respectful with each other and that respect was always here so this also if a
new team member arrived it's already there so that the groundwork is already laid like the people who come have to like adapt
to the to the environment and like feels like one big family and also do not forget to have fun solution.

I: thank you very much this was very helpful

P3:my pleasure

End!

Victoria female

I: First of all, I have to read you The data collection will be treated strictly anonymously and confidentially. In accordance with
the Research Organisation Act section 2f(3)(1), your data will be stored for 10 years. The scope of your data will be used for
this particular research only. Is it ok?

P4: yes I just have one comment. The questions are mainly for economic effect and we don’t run an economic project but a
social one. even though we are a restaurant the main reason is not for economic output. people here are not able to work on
the first job market. that’s the only thing I have to tell you before.

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I: for me it's more about the team and not about the economic part

P4: okay but the team is. Okay how do I put this. They are not sick in the transitional sense of the word but they are sick
people. With their psychology they have a disease, but the live with it. They have issues like drug abuse and so on. but it's a
second work market so the rules are a little bit different and I did the interview with you but you know it's not a normal
restaurant.

I:no problem I think it could still be very helpful with my research.

P4: OK OK

I: so I need an age please

P4: my age 63.

I: and female. And the branch of the tourism industry in this case is restaurant.

P4: yes it's restaurant.

I: thank you and what's the size of your team

P4: at the moment we have nine people working in the restaurant. nine people who are not volunteers who have the job there
but we have a lot of volunteers who work there. every project we work with volunteers. but my people are employed

I: how long have you managed the team?

P4: since the beginning of the restaurant and we opened in may 2013

I: so about 8 years ago. I mean I know it's not a regular one but do you undertake team building exercises regularly and if so
how often?

P4: yes of course we do we have meetings and some people try to change their habits of the people especially with hygiene so
we do undertake team building.

I: and how often

P4: how often we have meetings I would say every two months

I: and do you think the team building exercises are effective in building a stronger team if so why or why not?

P4: effective yes of course it's much better than doing nothing but it's very slowly that it has the impact and effect because the
people are very hard to change their habits because they come from different cultures and different surroundings and they are

78
not professionals in the field. They didn't learn cook or server but they come from….. homeless people from the street so there
are people who didn't learn how to be a cook or a server so we have to really undertake some measures as well for the social
working together. But of course they are effective but the people handle it differently.

I: thank you and conflict do they arise often in your team and how often in the work week

P4: of course in every work team I think conflicts arise I cannot imagine a team in which conflicts do not arise. That wouldn't be
normal I think conflicts in the working field in a social field happen as routine. But I would say 1-2 times a week?

I: that's actually a better number than the ones I've had so far. in your professional opinion have your team grown
professionally and personally as a team and as a collective since they have been working for you?

P4: of course of course they have learned to stabilize their life, they learn to have a structure in life they tried to be responsible
in the work they do not very much as someone with a different background but they try and they learn of course otherwise we
wouldn't do these projects.

I: I have five options here to register it: not at all, slightly, averagely, strongly, or extremely?

P4: 5 possibilities.. hmm. I would like average. some more some less. You know it depends on the restrictions they have.

I: and what factors do you find responsible for them becoming better personally and professionally what factors do you think
are responsible for this ?

P4: what factors? I think it's the trust then we put in them. then we trust them that they can work and we tried to take some
measures to help them and we care about them and their social life and we try to support them?

I: how satisfied are you with your team as a whole? not at all, slightly, averagely, strongly, or extremely?

P4: it's a little hard to answer at the moment we have a little hygiene problem and we have to solve it and we all have to take
more stronger efforts to solve this cleaning problems but I think about average. I think they really try and they want the job. but
it's not in the sense that they get better and better and they get to work in the normal field of restaurants. they don't overcome
their problems which are behind their personality so they just can get better in our restaurants which has a social background.
They learn a lot and live a stabilized life.

I: thank you. The seventh question. What is important for you as a manager when building a team I don't know how it works for
you in your industry but if you're building your team yourself what do you look for specifically in the members of the team?

P4: I think the main thing is to be always in contact with them to build a relationship with them to keep track of their lives and to
find out about the resources they have

I: so are these things important when choosing the team?

P4: well you have to find out if they are able to work and if they will be able to keep the job. because it's a big challenge for
someone who lived on the street so we want to try to get them back into normal life into work life so that they have the chance
to live on their own and they can work and be insured and so on. and that's the main thing behind our project so that they get
stable enough in their life. The goal is to make them stable so that they can keep the work and that we can keep the standard
of our restaurants also for the public.

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I: thank you and I don't know if you run on profit but but how do you measure the performance of the team so how do you know
if they're doing good or not so good or if it's not working out , how do you measure it with them revenue with the reviews from
customers or something else?

P4: mainly on the revenue, the restaurant has on the output. but also of course on the happiness of the clients and the
feedback of the clients. I also use as measure what condition the restaurant is in. But with covered right now there hasn't been
anything going on in the restaurant but of course before we measured it with the revenue and reviews and stuff.

I: OK do you inform the team of any progress or stagnation or decline in the company ?

P4: yes, I tell them how we performed

I: and how regularly?

P4: from time to time. Mainly in these meetings. but at least once a year

I: thank you. if 100% is the maximum, what effectiveness does your team have now

P4: 80% if you don't take into consideration COVID-19. But we do take away then I would say 75% now

I: okay. And what was the lowest in the highest level your team reached?

P4: the highest probably 90% and the lowest 60%

I: and what factors made the difference

P4: depends on the demand of the customers. Yeah the first years it was really good

because we did grow very quickly and at that time we had more employees and we could do better work but now it's a bit less
than in the first years. but maybe it's also motivation and maybe we have to change the team or something. At the moment
where the reflecting process if we should change the the aim of our restaurant.

I: what are the three most important actions you take for improving your team's performance

P4: three actions the team meetings being in contact with them and giving them some support by volunteering people who are
working with them and tried to do all the things with them and sure how it should be done. Yeah I don't know…

I: my other interviews some of them said they eat with them or provide food which seems to bring a lot of motivation

P4: but in the restaurant of course there's a lot of food and it's not a special action. but we try to be there if they have personal
problems so we tried to keep in touch of their lives outside of the profession so we see them not only as employees but as a
person who you stay in contact and you try to help and support.

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I: and the last question do you think or feel that the established work environment has a strong impact on the team
development and in what way?

P4: yeah of course we have a good restaurant chat and I think the environment is mainly important or really important for the
outcome of the restaurants on the work of the employees

I: thank you for answering my questions I appreciate it

P4: I hope I could give you an information because for me it's quite difficult because it's not a normal restaurant

I: but it's still very helpful and I think I found some things that are similar with my other interviews and what I'm researching I
think it's still very relevant so thank you

P4: okay perfect. Bye.

END!

Elly female

I: First of all, I have to read you The data collection will be treated strictly anonymously and confidentially. In accordance with
the Research Organisation Act section 2f(3)(1), your data will be stored for 10 years. The scope of your data will be used for
this particular research only. Is it ok?

P5: so that's about the data protection I guess

I: yes

P5: no problem but just help me out a little bit to know what exactly your project is about

I: the topic of my Bachelor is building effective teams in the tourism industry and my approach is to compare the perspectives
of male and female managers in the industry so hotels gastronomy events and I want to compare the approaches of building
effective teams from male and female perspectives.

P5: ok

I: OK so I need an age

P5: 51

I: and what branch of the industry do you work in

P5: I work in recruitment. HR.

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I: in hotels or gastronomy or where

P5: no I'm the founder of an executive search so I work not just for the tourism industry but I did used to work in tourism
industry for a while. In the same position so I do have an HR perspective

I: OK thank you and what's the size of your team

P5: up to five

I: OK and how long have you managed the team

P5: 10 years

I: OK do you undertake team building exercises and how often

P5: so maybe twice a year

I: and are they effective in building a stronger team why or why not

P5: I think they are. I think it depends what team building you're doing but it brings the people together and everyone has their
strengths and their weaknesses and as a team they can build each other and makes the work performance better and they
identified themselves also much more as a team

I: how often do conflicts arise within your team in the average workweek so I have five options here less than two less than four
less than six less than eight or more than 10

P5: less than two it's a small team

I: in your professional opinion has your team grown personally and professionally as individuals but also as a collective since
working for you not at all slightly averagely strongly or extremely

P5: averagely

I: and what factors do you find responsible for this

P5: the day-to-day business. The daily business is basically working reflecting and on team buildings and all things like this and
this takes a little bit of time and then you're going back to your routine and then you forgetting what do you learn and motivation
wise I would say definitely more

I: how satisfied are you with your team as a whole ?

P5: extremely

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I: and why

P5: because we function strongly as a team and everyone has all the information and everyone works individually but also as a
team and we set the goals for the year and I trust my team extremely it's like a little family

I: what is important for you as the manager when you're building your team So what would you look for specifically in the new
member of the team that you're trying to recruit

P5: personality, the skills can be learned but the personality is the most important

I: and how do you measure the performance of your team? do you key figures and concepts like sales revenue or reviews or
something else

P5: yes KPIs and then there's individual talks tasks and goes So what do you wanna reach individually this year do you wanna
work on your personality development or update your skill sets or go to University an MBO system. management by objectives.
you work with key performance indicators. so and also 80% I like company goes and 20% or like personal goals

I: do you inform your team of any progress stagnation or decline in the company

P5: absolutely we have quarterly evaluation will we look at the goals and if we met the goals and there is a weekly talk about
what happened the last week in what we're going to do next week

I: perfect thank you the next question if 100% is the maximum what level of effectiveness does your team have now

P5: I would say between 80 and 90%

I: OK and what was the lowest and highest did your team ever reached

P5: I have difficulties answering that because of my job in recruitment you measure everything you have to perform 90%
otherwise you're not doing your job so effectiveness the lowest I can tell you I think there is no low performance considering
what I'm doing maybe the lowest ever was 60% on some days maybe but barely in the highest would be 120%

I: and what crucial factors made the difference

P5: the more projects we have the more output we have the more efficient we are does it's kind of like a sales job so the more
sales you do the more outcome you get and that's how the eficiency can be measured I think.

I: the 10th question what are the three most important actions that you take for improving your teams performance

P5: OK so I give them very individual working times so you worked how you feel best so you can start at 9 or 10 as long as the
job gets done and there's a very good work life balance that I provide and six weeks vacation instead of five and individual
possibility's to develop their careers and themselves

I: and the last question do you think that the established working environment has an impact on the team development

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P5: yes it does because with no job with the results and every job is a positive reinforcement on the work process and if you
get this on the regular basis and this translates to money and this motivates but it's not only money driven it's just the success
factor that makes everyone happy and this has a good impact on the team development.

I: perfect thank you very very much

P5: no problem have a nice day

Jennifer female

I: First of all, I have to read you The data collection will be treated strictly anonymously and confidentially. In accordance with
the Research Organisation Act section 2f(3)(1), your data will be stored for 10 years. The scope of your data will be used for
this particular research only. Is it ok?

P6: yes it's fine

I: OK good so please I need an age

P6: 40 female and the branch of the industry is event management and tourism consulting

I: what is the size of your team

P6: it's 4 people so 2 owners two staff members and we also have 15 casual members

I: and how long have you managed the team

P6: 10 years. and the current team two years

I: thank you do you undertake team building exercises how often another effective in building a stronger team why why not?

P6: we do but just not formally and I do think they are effective in building a stronger team if you remember there is this chat
about forming norming storming and this is very evident in team building exercises and it just makes the process of working
with the team easier

I: how often do conflicts arise within your team in the average workweek

P6: less than two

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I: in your professional opinion has your team grown personally and professionally as individuals and as a collective since
working for you

P6: I would say strongly

I: and what factors do you hold responsible

P6: I think regular meetings in well my team it's made of 2 employees that come from the corporate sector and they had a very
long adaptation phase because they had to become autonomous which is not what they were used to and which we did not
also realize fast enough initially and they were not equipped to handle the autonomy at the point but overtime they've gotten
better become more Thomas and they're more confident in their roles and it's been a nice thing to watch them grow

I: how satisfied are you with your team as a whole

P6: extremely because they're very independent and like I said before they worked hard and worked on cells and they are
independent

I: what is important for you as a manager when you're building a team So what do you look for specifically in the members of
the team

P6: I look for experience mostly and the characteristics of the person that I see or feel first so empathetic or not communicative
or not and such things and passion in the field of work

I: how do you measure the performance of your team do you use keep the girls or concepts like sales revenue or reviews

P6: so feedback is very important ice cream social media and some other things and we don't use revenue because we're in
events and we have a pre arranged plan of the payments with our workers in how they get paid but I have the goals then we
said and if they're not reaching them then I know that their team performance is not doing too good

I: end do you inform your team regularly of progress that nation will decline in the company and how regularly

P6: yes definitely about once a month

I: I've 100% is the maximum which effectiveness does your team have now

P6: I would say about 90%

I: what was the lowest and what was the highest level you team ever reached

P6: I would say about 60% to 70% the lowest and hundred was the highest with there were just working like clockwork and
everything just makes sense and yeah

I: what factors made the difference

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P6: so we underestimated the new market that we were trying to break into and nothing works because it was a complete
chaos and it took some time and some planning for us too do that but that was a major set back as the work simply wasn't
done and that was our lowest level of efficiency and it was on everybody not the team members only

I: what are the three most important actions that you take for improving your team's performance

P6: so we share statistics I give them enough freedom too as long as they get the job done I mean they're older also so that's
important and we're very social with one another we do the team meetings team building meetings and they're also very proud
of the brand and I think that also improves the performance and you look out for them on the personal level

I: do you think or feel that the established working environment has a strong impact on the team development and in what way

P6: so as I said they're older and they came from a corporate setting and they had to adapt a lot to this new job but they have
really found their group and I think that the work they do mean something to them and they're going and it definitely has an
impact on their team development and they work better because of the job that they do now

I: perfect thank you

P6: no problem

I: have a nice day

P6: you too bye

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