Question

Teams are often utilized to bring an abundance of ideas and perspectives to the table to tackle a problem. While teams a great method to utilize, they often pose their own set of unique challenges.

In your post, describe the biggest challenges you think come from being part of a team. Be sure to think about the following:

• Communication practices
• Ethical standards (taking credit for others work, harassing behavior, inappropriate use of company resources etc.)

Answer 1

Healthcare industry has always relied on team efforts. This has been viewed as a neccessity considering the sheer amount of work that requies attention and hence delegation. The obvious benefits include spreading out of work, ability to benefit from diverse perspectives that bring in unique solutions, lesser time to get the work done etc. But working inteam also brings in its own set of challenges.

• Teams in healthcare often have a heirarchy. All the team members maynot be equally placed. Hence even if it is a team of doctors or nurses, there are chances that the amount of work is not spread equally. This is often necessary too. The team leader may be the one who has to take important decisions regarding patient care and more often than not has little time to spend on individual patients or less skilled works. This however does bring up an issue where the meinal and tiresome works are continuously delegated to junior professionals who can experience higher levels of work related stress and fatigue.
• And in this setting, the credit of work usually goes to the team incharge or the seniors eventhough most of the underlying work may be done by juniors.
• The opinions of all the members in a team whose educational qualifications are the same but experince is different may not be equally valued as well.
• This can eventually lead to gaps in communication, where at times the team leader may not even be aware of what goes further down.
• Such issues often can result in interpersonal conflict among team members and this can affect productivity greatly.
• And as indicated early, the credit of work is often attributed to the team leader even though majority of the work or even some of the better ideas that lead to credible work may have come from the team members.
• And often in the heirarchy the sub leaders or seniors , who often have more access of communication to the team leader may pass someone's work as their own. A system of open communication where even the junior-most member of the team has access to communicate directly with the team leader can often limit these issues.
• Interpersonal conflicts and non cooperation can greatly bring down the efficiency.
• Not all members of the team may be equally talented and sometimes certain highly talented individuals may get stuck in a team that brings down their individual productivity. Individual members may feel uncomfortable to go against the majority when opinions are sought even though they have a good conviction of their ideas and opinions.
• Also, as the size of the team increases, individual members amy put forth less effort than they would have in a smaller team where the accountability is higher.
• In-group favoritism is another issue that burdens teams.