Supportive Team in an Organization

Supportive Team Climates SLP
Building supportive and reliable teams are an integral part of achieving set goals and objectives. Organizations use multiple strategies to cultivate collaboration efforts and foster better relationships between individual team members. Irrespective of the team approach used, the team climate should cultivate trust-building, equity, and commitment to the achievement of common goals and objectives. Further, the team environment should have a common mindset that guides their processes, activities, and commitments. The main challenge that members are likely to face when building team climates is addressing complex social relationships and managing diverse views. In this review, the goal is to find the collaboration tools and actions for establishing connectedness and improved interpersonal relationships.
Collaboration Tools for Establishing Connectedness
Collaboration is the foundation for team activities and cooperation among teams. For the most part, collaboration facilitates material exchange and streamlines team ideas, and provides new approaches for managing individual contributions. The first collaboration tool for establishing connectedness is Flowdock. Flowdock is a private chat platform that aggregates messages and notifications from other channels, including customer support tools, Twitter, and Snapchat. The aggregate information is evaluated and analyzed for clarity, responsiveness, and completeness. Additionally, Flowdock provides online support and video conferencing services to manage team communications and meetings in a remote environment (Presbitero, 2020). Since Flowdock relies on technology to support major activities and communications, it provides added flexibility, simplicity, and effectiveness. Flowdock supports connectedness by providing an easy, reliable, and effective method of sharing information and discussing ideas among teams.
Another tool that may be used to establish and maintain connectedness is GoToMeeting. GoToMeeting is a recently developed software for supporting online video conferencing. The software allows teams to share screens and schedule online meetings. The effectiveness of using GoToMeeting is that team members do not have to be available all the time to attend the meeting. Instead, team members can record their presentations for other members to view later. Also, GoToMeeting supports multiple devices, meaning that members can log in to their accounts and engage teams in the comforts of their offices, houses, or workshop areas. GoToMeeting supports interconnectedness by promoting efficiency and flexibility through the online video conferencing system.
The third collaboration tool is Slack. As more technologies continue to be developed, Slack leads the way in providing instant messaging services. Additionally, Slack provides powerful message search and file filters for supporting critical activities and operations. Also, Slack supports other communication software like Intercom and Trello (Presbitero, 2020). Building a supportive network and system infrastructure is an essential part of guaranteeing the successful implementation of the use of collaboration tools to establish and maintain connectedness. Slack provides additional features and services for integrating existing communication channels with new and advanced systems of managing team activities.
Establishing Interpersonal Communication
Effective interpersonal communication is an essential part of maintaining team efforts and enhancing the team climate. George Homans developed the social exchange theory in 1958 to explain the information exchange processes among teams (Ogbonna & Mbah, 2022). The theory is based on the perspective that social behavior is founded on the exchange process. Therefore, people examine the potential risks and benefits of their social relationships before they decide on the exchange that will minimize costs and maximize benefits (Ogbonna & Mbah, 2022). Based on the social exchange theory, the team can establish and improve interpersonal communication by building common goals that maximize benefits and reduces costs for all members. The goal is to ensure the free and fast exchange of information and materials for accomplishing common goals.
In their ideas and perspectives on building strong teams, Widdowson and Barbour (2021) emphasize the need to engage, develop, and motivate employees at various levels of priority and experience. Also, the researchers explain that teams must be purpose-driven and committed to shared business goals (Widdowson & Barbour, 2021). The author’s information is in line with the requirements of uncertainty reduction theory, which explains that people connect with others to reduce uncertainty (Ogbonna & Mbah, 2022). Reducing uncertainty is an essential part of promoting team efforts and collaboration because it reduces anxiety and negative emotions among team members (Ogbonna & Mbah, 2022). Moreover, reduced anxiety is an essential ingredient for supporting team activities and development.
Possible Barriers
The potential barriers when establishing team connectedness and interpersonal relationships are diverse cultural views, goal confusion, and poor conflict resolution mechanisms (Dyer & Dyer, 2020). Complex cultural views, values, and positions may hinder communication among team members. The problem can be addressed by supporting cultural diversity and the embracement of diverse views. Another barrier is goal confusion, which relates to the lack of a common point of understanding among team members. Goal confusion will disrupt teamwork and cooperation by disorienting team members. Team members must be focused on common goals and tasks. If team members are disoriented, they will lose focus, reducing their chances of achieving set goals and objectives. The problem of goal confusion can be addressed by creating clear goals and communicating them to team members. Still, the lack of appropriate and effective conflict resolution methods will disrupt team activities and undermine role-playing. The problem can be addressed by developing an elaborate dispute resolution method based on the company’s code of ethics.
Conclusion
Since teamwork and collaboration are the foundation for interconnected and interpersonal communication, appropriate communication tools are needed to facilitate idea-sharing and create a supportive team environment. The goal of improving interconnectedness is to facilitate information sharing and ensure that teams are focused on achieving common goals. However, there are complex cultural and team management issues that must be addressed. The development of new and improved communication technologies provides new ideas and perspectives for creating and maintaining better, stronger, and more efficient team climates.

References
Dyer, G., & Dyer, J. (2020). Chapter 2: Context—the foundation of team effectiveness. In Beyond Team Building: How to Build High Performing Teams and the Culture to Support Them. Skillport. https://trident.skillport.com/skillportfe/assetSummaryPage.action?assetid=RW$2566:_ss_book:148396#summary/BOOKS/RW$2566:_ss_book:148396.
Ogbonna, H. O., & Mbah, C. S. (2022). Examining Social Exchange Theory and Social Change in the Works of George Caspar Homans–Implications for the State and Global Inequalities in the World Economic Order. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 13(1), 90-90. Richtmann Publishing. https://www.richtmann.org/journal/index.php/mjss/article/view/12814.
Presbitero, A. (2020). Task performance in a global virtual team: Examining the roles of perceived cultural dissimilarity and cultural intelligence of member and leader. Personnel Review, 49(5), 1091-1105. doi: https://doi.org/10.1108/pr-2018-0415.
Widdowson, L., & Barbour, P. J. (2021). Chapter 5: Team identity. Why is Team Identity So Important? In Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success. Skillport. https://trident.skillport.com/skillportfe/assetSummaryPage.action?assetid=RW$12895:_ss_book:154235#summary/BOOKS/RW$12895:_ss_book:154235.