Teams at Work

Explain what distinguishes a team from a simple group of people. Give an example of each from the following situations: passengers on a bus, a music band, students waiting in the canteen queue, an athletics relay team.

The figure shows the organisation chart of the school fair team, but one of the roles is covered with a question mark.

1. a) Think about which role is missing to ensure the money from the market stall is controlled, and justify your answer.
2. b) Explain what would happen if that role did not exist: two specific problems that could occur on the day of the market.

In a school project team, the following roles emerge: coordination (delegates tasks and monitors deadlines), communication (liaises with outside parties), treasury (manages and accounts for money), and documentation (records decisions). Match each action to its corresponding role: (a) requests permission from the local council; (b) records the $15\ \text{€}$ spent on posters in the sheet; (c) reminds everyone that the deadline is Friday; (d) drafts the minutes of the meeting.

Your team of four needs to prepare for the science fair. Profiles: Ada draws very well but arrives late; Bruno calculates quickly and is organized; Carmen talks to anyone comfortably; Dario builds things with his hands better than anyone. Allocate the tasks — posters, budget, contacting other teams, and model making — according to each person's strengths, and explain how you will address Ada's weakness.

You can do it on paper and send a photo with your answer.

Your team of $6$ people is preparing the escape room for the cultural week. Share out the roles (coordination, puzzle design, construction, communication, treasury, documentation) taking into account these profiles: Amaia invents brilliant riddles but hates public speaking; Bernat organises and remembers deadlines; Clara draws and builds; Iker talks to anyone; Nora is careful with money; Pau writes and documents everything. Justify each assignment and say which role could end up shorthanded.

You can do it on paper and send a photo with your answer.

Agile teams use a board with three columns: "To do", "In progress", and "Done", along with a daily five-minute meeting. Explain what the team gains from each of these two tools and how you would apply them to a short film project for the school cultural week (give two examples of cards on the board).

The jam stall team works without a board: everyone is 'getting on with things' and nobody knows what is missing. Three days before the fair they discover that nobody bought the jars. Explain how a three-column board (to do, in progress, done) would have avoided the scare, set up the board for the last two weeks with at least eight cards, and point out the critical card.

The short-film team has one-hour meetings that drag on without agreements. Propose the new format: $15$ minutes standing up, three questions per person (what I did, what I'll do, what's blocking me) and agreements noted down with an owner and a date. Explain what each piece of the format gains and how you would check in two weeks that it works.

Teams usually go through stages: getting to know each other and acting cautiously; encountering initial friction; agreeing on rules; and finally achieving high performance. Identify which stage each scene of a drama group represents and explain what the coordinator can do to move to the next stage: (a) nobody speaks up to avoid causing offence; (b) two actors argue over the main roles; (c) the group independently delegates tasks for the opening night.

The two partners of a jam stall have been arguing for a week over the product name, and the project is at a standstill. Design a decision-making protocol for conflicts: what steps to follow when the team cannot reach an agreement (written arguments, deadline, testing with customers, voting, tie-breaker) and apply it to the naming issue to show how it would be resolved.

During a meeting of a school cooperative for handmade products, two partners argue heatedly: one defends lowering prices by $15\,\%$ to sell a higher quantity, while the other proposes keeping them and adding eco-friendly packaging. The coordinator cuts them off, saying: «Enough; in a good team there is never any conflict. To avoid bad feelings, we will draw lots».

1. a) Refute the coordinator's statement by distinguishing the nature of the disagreement taking place from a destructive personal dispute, and predict the organisational and economic consequences of resolving strategic disagreements at random.
2. b) Design a three-step decision-making protocol to steer this type of disagreement towards a data-driven solution, ensuring that the debate enriches the project without fracturing group cohesion.