Leadership and Teamwork
I intend to explain about some of the different types of teams who work in the public services, some teams will be formal, some informal, some will be temporary, others permanent. I will also discuss how team building exercise can have a positive effect on team cohesion.
A team can be described as an interdependent group of individuals who work together to achieve an objective or target and who share responsibility for the outcome of their actions A team can comprise of a group of people of different numbers who are organized to work co-operately together for either a short term project or permanent basis. They usually have a defined task or tasks, which were already set, and everyone in the team has a specific or defined role to play. An effective team is one that achieves its aim in the most efficient way and is then ready to take on more challenging tasks if required. Members of an effective team are likely to be united in a common purpose, trust each other, be committed, be open with each other, accept consensus decisions, and support one another and work through conflict.
The teams can be made up as formal or informal teams; A formal team has structure with clear goals and objectives probably with a system for monitoring progress to ensure goals and targets are achieved. They possibly have senior management overlooking the team activities to ensure a particular problem is solved. An informal team has flexibility allowing members to go in and out of the team generally only needed when their particular strengths, skill or expertise are required for the project in hand. The team allows for new innovative ideas to be considered.
Teams can be either temporary or permanent; Temporary teams only come together for a limited time to solve a particular problem until the objective has been achieved. As they do not normally work together they may take a while to get used to the way each other work, however this doesn’t make them less efficient. These particular teams may come together in emergency services incidents. Permanent teams are common in the uniformed services, for example, regiments can carry the same team members year after year. Because they get to know each other , their strengths, expertise, knowledge as well as weaknesses they become a strong team in achieving their objectives. The size of a team can vary tremendously from just two in a group to a very large number, however very large groups can be broken up into several smaller groups and given small tasks to contribute to a larger task or group. The armed services in a war zone are made up of thousands of soldiers who are made up of many smaller groups who are given a task or area to patrol.
Types of Teams in Uniformed Public Services:
Divisional
Police Forces used to use the term division for its territorial sub division then in 1990’s a reform restructured them into Basic Command Units. In the Police Force there are many different teams and divisions i.e. in Humberside force there are four divisions otherwise called Basic Command Units (BCUs). The divisions are made up of teams of community officers , response teams and investigation in certain areas each having a Superintendent who would cover a wide area, town or part of a city as his command.
Departmental
There are many different departments within each public service, each is a valid department which has a particular role and made up of many different teams. The Police Force for example may have these types of departments; Specialist Operations such as Dog patrol, Firearms response, Traffic, and Air Operations. Criminal Justice Department who deals with prosecution and detention of offenders.Community Safety department is responsible for local issues of community safety.CID is the Criminal Investigation Department who provide advice to chief officers on crime related matters.Professional Standards Department deal with complaints and
