West Coast Transit Case Study

1 West Coast Transit Case Study In most organizations, developing effective teams is one way long-term success can be guaranteed. However, the process of building a team that works together towards a common cause requires that team leaders adopt viable leadership strategies. According to the text by Osborn et al. (2010), the three characteristics of effective teams are high levels of task performance, member satisfaction, and team viability. Once a team leader finds a way of ensuring that these characteristics are in place, an organization will have a higher likelihood of meeting its goals.

Effective Teams . Task performance refers to the quality and quantity of the work produced by a particular team. It may also refer to the nature of services that are typically provided by an individual, team, or a specific organization. Task performance indicates how employees feel not just about their work, but also about their work setting.

On the other hand, member satisfaction speaks to the belief which members have concerning their participation (Osborn et al., 2010). A satisfied team member is one who has positive experiences and can meet their critical interpersonal needs.

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2 Finally, team viability refers to the extent to which team members can be said to be sufficiently satisfied to continue to work together on an ongoing basis even after a particular team project has come to an end. In other words, when one task/project has come to an end, the members of the team look forward to other projects.

To analyze whether the team assembled is effective, there will be a need to consider the three characteristics of effective teams in turn. As has been noted above, a team with high levels of task performance is where the members produce quality work (Thomas et al., 2019). The case scenario reveals that, even though innumerable challenges were facing them in carrying out their duties, the employees always delivered quality work within a tight deadline framework. Thus, it is possible to argue that the team of managers assembled by Pete Denson was composed of people who had high task performance levels. In essence, then, the first characteristic of an effective team was met.

The second characteristic to consider is that of member satisfaction. Here, it is evident that there are challenges in so far as the team assembled by Pete Denson is concerned. Two of the team members suggested that they were overwhelmed by the work that was to come. Even though some of the material used in the meeting had previously been sent to them, it is only one member - Lea Jing - who had gone through the material. The other two managers indicated that they were less than willing to embark on a project whose viability they did not understand. This second characteristic of an effective team cannot be said to have been met (Osborn et al., 2010).

The third characteristic is team viability. As discussed above, this characteristic speaks to the extent to which the team members of a particular team feel that, once the project/task is complete, they will work together on another project (Black et al., 2019). In this case, it is noteworthy that the present conflict could complicate the team's viability. From the case

3 scenario, it is clear that Katarina Tanney was offended by the remarks directed at her concerning her personal family life. As such, she believed that, until an apology was tendered, she would not participate in the team's efforts. Due to this conflict, it is arguable that the team as constituted does not have real viability (Dimas et al., 2017). For this characteristic to exist in the assembled team, it will be necessary for the team manager to devise a strategy of solving the conflict.

4 References Black, S., Gardner, D. G., Pierce, J. L., & Steers, R. (2019). Team development over time. Organizational Behavior.

Dimas, I. D., Rocha, H., Rebelo, T., & Lourenço, P. R. (2017, July). A neural network model for team viability. In International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications (pp. 560-573). Springer, Cham.

Osborn, R., Hunt, J., Uhl-Bien, M., & Schermerhorn, J. (2010). Organizational behavior. John Wiley and Sons.

Thomas, J. S., Loignon, A. C., Woehr, D. J., Loughry, M. L., & Ohland, M. W. (2019). Dyadic viability in project teams: The impact of liking, competence, and task interdependence. Journal of Business and Psychology, 1-19. doi.org/10.1007/s10869019-09647-6.