A Descriptive-Exploratory Study on Team Talk in Determining the Kind of Team of Ayala Land Incorporated’s Task Force Team Odyssey and its Effectiveness

Abstract

The research is focused on how team talk could determine the kind of team and its effectiveness. The interaction that occurs in teams is called team talk. Team talk is basically the interaction that occurs in teams determined not only through the words spoken by each member, how they combine these words and pronounce them, but also through the manner by which these words were delivered and the intonations by which these words were spoken, which reflects how a team member uses or displays power, manage conflict, negotiate, the degree of his identification with the team, interdependence, and social closeness. The key question of the study is “how does team talk determine the kind of team and team effectiveness?” The objectives of the researcher for conducting the study are: 1) to determine the type of team under study through the six categories of team talk; and 2) to determine how the kind of team determined through the categories of team talk affect the effectiveness of the team based on E. H. Schein’s Eight Characteristics of An Effective Team. The hypothesis of this study states that the effectiveness of a team could be determined through the interaction that occurs among team members during team activities, meetings, and discussions and that the kind of team could in turn affect the effectiveness of the team. The conceptual framework of the study is based on an adapted model of the Basic Interpersonal Communication Model of Nelson and Quick (1997). It shows how interpersonal communication affects the team and how team talk determines the type of team through the six categories of team talk namely: identification, interdependence, social distance, power differentiation, conflict management, and negotiation process. The type of team, in turn, determines the degree of effectiveness of the team. The research design used is a descriptive-exploratory study utilizing the census complete enumeration approach in gathering data. The cross-sectional survey and interview schedule were used as tools for gathering data. There were a total of nine respondents for the survey questionnaire. An interview was conducted with the representative of the team’s leader. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data gathered utilizing frequency-percentile table and mean scores. The results show that Task Force Team Odyssey has identification, shared interdependence, social closeness and low use of power. It also shows that the team uses some collaboration in managing conflict and a win-win negotiation process. The type of team determined from the said results is a combination of an emergent and collaborative team. Moreover, Task Force Team Odyssey has a high to moderate effectiveness having an average mean score of 2.35, which falls under the range 1.81-2.60. This only shows that team talk by determining the kind of team could in turn, determine its effectiveness, thus confirming the hypothesis that the effectiveness of the team is determined through the talk that occurs among its members. Organizational Communication students could further study teams by looking into the other aspects that team talk could affect. They could look into how team talk could affect teams in the media group. They could also look into how team talk could enhance or impair individual performance or study team talk with the intervention of team climate.