The qualities that apply to high-performance teams include thorough preparation, egoless cooperation, and innovative strategy. Thorough preparation shows in the way the team takes time to learn new methods relating to their work to reduce the overall time it takes to service a car in the racetrack. Egoless cooperation comes about from the perceived equality of all team members.
The team works together in such a way that there is no ego related conflict within the team. The team achieves this by sharing responsibilities and rewards, including the prize money, and money earned from personal activities using the team’s name. The third element is innovative strategizing, which shows in the teams’ involvement in developing new ways of managing the pit stop.
As a new pit crew chief, I would expect cooperation rather than competition, role specialization, and loyalty. As a team, the most valuable quality is cooperation (Flannes & Levin, 2005). It is the fundamental character of any team effort. Cooperation is the reason for the establishment of teams because it avails a varied skill set that no single person possesses.
Secondly, role specialization will be one of the desirable qualities to find in the team because the team is not new. As teams stay together for a while, they should make it possible for each member to discover their true potential as a member of the team. There are functional roles and other roles that come about because of personality. All these roles play a part in the life of the team. The third expectation will be that there will be a high level of team loyalty. As a team operating in a highly competitive environment, loyalty is an important quality because of the need to keep the team’s secrets.
It is important to start by settling in as quickly as possible. The new leader will need to learn the team’s culture as quickly as possible because the team is already an entity. As a high-performance team, it is also likely that the team has a high degree of team cohesion, which can be an entry barrier (Flannes & Levin, 2005).
Secondly, the new leader needs to find out quickly the hierarchy and organization of the team to know how the team works. This knowledge is invaluable when assessing how best to improve the performance of the team. The idea is to retain what works for the team while uncovering areas where there may be deficiencies. The new leader is ready to bring about changes only after identifying the things that work for the team and those that do not.
One of the qualities that distinguish high-performance pit crews from the rest is their ability to make decisions that enhance the performance of their driver (Associated Press, 2012). In this sense, they need to make up their minds regarding the optimum ways of handling the cars at the pit stop because they influence the overall lap time.
Another key indicator of a high-performance pit crew is the level of communication the pit crew maintains with the driver (James, 2012). This has the potential to make or break races. The crew chief especially makes many decisions regarding the best way to handle the car in the pit stops. If the communication between the driver and the pit crew is great, then the team achieves higher performance.
References
Associated Press. (2012, March 28). Multiple Segments will Spice up Race.
Flannes, S., & Levin, G. (2005). Essential People Skills for Project Managers. Vienna, VA: Management Concepts.
James, P. (2012, March 28). Little Reality, but Plenty of Fun, in NASCAR’s Sprint All-Star Race.