Katzenbach and Smith Essay Example for Free

Katzenbach and Smith Essay Introduction For this essay I will be explaining what I might do to encourage team performance by using Katzenbach and Smith’s Article as a scaled directive/guideline. The discipline of teams has been useful to show how to encourage team performance and this I will explain I will explain in the first part of this essay. Main Body According to Katzenbach and Smith, there is an importance to distinguish between Teams and Groups. Why? Because it is believed that Teams are different from Groups because they use collective working whereas Groups are based around individual performance. 8 things that Katzenbach and Smith said about how to encourage Teamwork are: ‘Establish urgency, demanding performance standards, and direction’. Katzenbach and Smith: ‘All team members need to believe the team has urgent and worthwhile purposes, and want to know what the expectations are.’ I can use this to encourage team performance by setting standards, rules and directions so the team will know their purpose and what goals they are aiming for. ‘Select members for skill and skill potential, not personality’. Katzenbach and Smith: ‘No team succeeds without the skills needed to meet its purpose and performance goals. Yet most teams figure out the skills they will need after they are formed.’ You can choose the people to be team leaders, purely based on their skills. This people will need to have good skills most especially the ‘Leadership skills and Motivational Skills’ in order to take charge of the team in absence of the manager. ‘Set some clear rules of behaviour’. Katzenbach and Smith: ‘All effective teams develop rules of conduct at the outset to help them achieve their purpose and performance goals.’ To encourage team performance I would make sure I have the team’s attention with no distractions from phones etc., make sure everyone gets a clear chance to speak with no interruptions and constructive confrontation, agree that the only things to leave the room is what is agreed on, always make sure that everyone has an analytic approach while doing research and last of all make sure everyone gets assignments to themselves and make sure they are done. ‘Challenge the group regularly with fresh facts and information.’ Katzenbach and Smith: ‘New information causes a team to redefine and enrich it’s understanding of the performance challenge, thereby helping the shape a common purpose, set clearer goals and improve its common approach.’ I can use this to encourage teamwork by always making sure that everyone on the team does research to see defects in the way the team works, and then have sessions where we discuss how this defects can be sorted out. ‘Spend lots of time together.’ Katzenbach and Smith: ‘Common sense tells us that team members must spend a lot of time together, scheduled and unscheduled, especially in the beginning.’ This can be used to encourage teamwork as it will create creative insights and personal bonds between the team members as they will slowly star to develop a work relationship between each other. ‘Exploit the positive feedback, recognition, and reward.’ Katzenbach and Smith: ‘Positive reinforcement works as well in a team context as elsewhere. This will help encourage team performance as it allows people in the team to get a sense that yes they are being shown gratitude for all the hard they’ve show. One other way you can encourage team work it to use ‘Emotional Intelligence’ (Goleman) this is needed to improve a team as it brings concepts of love and spirituality: bringing compassion and humanity to work and ‘Multiple Intelligence’ theory which illustrates and measures capabilities people possess, and also help show that everybody has a value in the team. But Teams may also have many risks attached and in this part of essay I will be analysing these risks. For example ‘Conformity’, this is the action of always acting in accordance to prevailing social standards, attitude, and practices etc. An example of this type of behaviour can be seen in Solomon Asch’s ‘Studies in Conformity’ – in one of Asch’s experiment which was design to show how perfect normal human beings can be pressured into unusual behaviour by authority figures, or by the consensus of opinion around them. The experiment was. Eight subjects were seated round a table to prevent suspicion. Only one participant was actually a genuine subject while the others were just actors to give already selected responses. The experiment was each participant was in turn asked to answer a series of question, such as which line was the longest or which matched the reference line. The results came out as ‘over one third of the subjects also voiced an incorrect option.’ Asch’s experiment gives us a slight insight into how conformity affects a team. Another risk team work is ‘Groupthink’. Groupthink is when groups of people in a team harmonise in a decision making group override a realistic alternative as it differs from their group’s alternative. An example of group think can be seen ‘Group Decision Fiascos Continue: Space Shuttle Challenger and Revised Groupthink Framework’. The explosion of the space shuttle Challenger is the worst disaster in space flight history and it crippled the American space programme. The NASA managers knew about the faults if they launched the space craft, but despite a huge amount of warnings from their engineers about the dangers if launching posed by the low temperatures that morning. The NASA managers also failed to adequately repost the problems to their superiors and this was what actually caused the catastrophic disaster. And this is why groupthink is a risk of Teamwork. As people can be shut out and made to look as it they didn’t know what they were talking about or being made to look as if they were outcasts. Conclusion But all in all we have to give credit to Katzenbach and Smith for their work in finding ways in improving team work as they have given us a great insight in to improving performance in a team by setting showing how and what it takes to make a team function properly. But as highlighted teams can be risky as they can cause ‘conformity’, and sticky situations like ‘groupthink’ which cause cost lives and not on lives, in a business environment it could cost sales to drop etc. Teamwork has lots of risks but if team work is carried out properly then it is most like nothing will go wrong for the people in the team.

Rejection in Shakespeares King Lear :: King Lear essays

Rejection in King Lear      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   An important idea present in William Shakespeare's "King Lear" is rejection and the role this rejection plays in the experiences of the involved characters.   The important ideas to be considered here are the causes and effects associated with the act of rejection. The most important situations to be considered in the story of "King Lear" are those that   develop between the two fathers, Lear and Gloucester, and their children, Goneril and Regan, Cordelia, Edmund, and Edgar.   Each case falls on a different plane, but it is important to consider the similarities between the positions of Lear and Gloucester.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The rejection of Lear by his two daughters, Goneril and Regan, can be seen as a type of revenge.   Throughout their lives they had always been far behind Cordelia in the king's eyes.   As a result of this second-hand treatment, Goneril and Regan carried with them an immense amount of hatred and when Lear divided his kingdom between them, they both openly rejected his presence in their lives. " Some other time for that. - Beloved Regan, she hath tied sharp- tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture here, - I can speak scarce to thee ; thou'lt not believe with how depraved quality - O Regan ( King Lear II.iii )! Goneril's response further clarifies this rejection.   " Good sir, no more ; these are unsightly tricks : return you to my sister ( King Lear II.iii ). Lear's reaction is pure rage. He understands that he had not given them too much of his time, but he had given them their percentage of the kingdom only because they had made a pledge to him that they would care for him in his elder years.   The bond broken in this situation is a very weak one. The only thing that held it together was this flimsy pledge that the daughters had no intention of honoring.   But no matter the conditions, he was their father and his well-being was a sort of payment for their very existence.      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Cordelia's rejection of Lear breaks a much stronger bond.   Lear loses his entire life purpose when Cordelia turns Lear away.      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Good my lord, you have begot me, bred me, lov'd me : I

Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence Essay

The book ‘Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence’ that is written by Doris Pilkington is about three aboriginal half-cast girls that run away from The Moore River Native Settlement. At the settlement aboriginal half-cast children are kept and tried to be changed into white people so they can be respected in the community. The book is set in Western Australia in the early 1900’s. ‘This free-Spirited girl knew that she and her sisters must escape from this place,’ is true, she shows her persistence, determination and is toughness. A half-cast child was an aboriginal with an aboriginal mother but a white father. The persistence Molly shows during the book is incredible for a fourteen year old to have to acts as the mother to the other two girls Gracie and Daisy. The girls were taken from there family’s at a camp in Jigalong. They were then taken to Moore river were there was a camp for half-cast children like themselves to be trained into servants and to be turned white. Molly knowing what will happen to them if they stayed at the camp. â€Å"Pack up your things we’re leaving now â€Å"said Molly when she was trying to rush them out the door so they could leave in a hurry so they could get a big head start on the government officials. Molly shows lots of persistence during the book which could show why they were able to evade capture and return home to Jigalong. The determination of the young Molly was repeated as she did the same trip again but this time with her newborn baby. Molly was always trying to look for the bright side on the way home. ‘My legs hurt’ said Daisy when they were walking in the bush so Molly decided to carry her sister and Gracie at different times even though her legs were hurting to. The determination of Molly was evident in how she was able to get the girls on the move, as most of the time they were running away. The saying you’re as tough as nails could easily be describing Molly. The book shows that Molly has lots of characteristics but determination is one of the important ones. The toughness of a fourteen year old girl could be said to be non-existent as todays girls have a luxury life, where any toughness is not needed. Molly on the other hard is as tough as a rock and journey she accomplished with two smaller children who could be very hard to deal with, to make the story better she was sent back to the camp after she had an operation and escaped back to her family after using the same route she took nine years early. Molly shows her toughness though the book in helping these two girls get home with her but she had the strength to do it again with her very young newborn baby, but she had to make a tough sacrifice in her decision to come home as she had to leave her oldest daughter Doris there at the camp, this â€Å"was one of the hardest decision of my life† said Molly while being interviewed for the movie. The toughness of Molly is evident throughout the book showing one of the qualities that not everyone has. The book ‘Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence’ is written by Doris Pilkington is about three aboriginal half-cast girls running away from The Moore River Native Settlement where aboriginal half-caste children kept. The book highlights the journey the girls took back to their home in Jigalong in Western Australia. The main character was Molly who was the oldest out of all three girls. . ‘This free-Spirited girl knew that she and her sisters must escape from this place,’ is true, she shows her Persistence, determination and is toughness. This book shows a true and inspiring story of children that wanted to go home.

A Thousand Splendid Suns, By Henrik Isben s A Doll s...

In Khaled Hosseini s A Thousand Splendid Suns, Henrik Isben s A Doll s House, and Kamala Markandaya s Nectar in a Sieve, women face obstacles that disempower and silence them due to Men s treatment of women, the societal view of women, and the objectification of women. Within the literary works analyzed this semester, disempowerment is a persisting theme that roots from the various obstacles and hardships women encounter. The woman s ability to overcome this disempowerment is particularly challenging due to being oppressed by their peers, specifically men. Women countlessly serve as victims of verbal and physical abuse under their husbands, thus contributing to the idea of female inferiority. There are various stereotypical roles challenged between men and women in society leading to discrimination of women. The preconceived notions of women s roles in society arise from those within society. During this time era, most of society depicts women as uneducated, essentially lacking econo mical and social opportunities, making the female population highly vulnerable to all types of exploitation. Nonetheless, men in these literary works display objectifying and degrading attitudes towards those of the female gender. The objectification of women notably dehumanizes the female population. Within these literary works, the authors exemplify this reality of obstacles that disempower and silence women. Though these women fight for their liberation and equality, they are victims of