Reference no: EM133096777

The Vancouver International Airport, located in Richmond, British Columbia, is Canada's second-busiest airport, serving over 25.9 million passengers in 2018. It is a community-based, not-for-profit organization. It has been voted Best Airport in North America for 8 consecutive years. Thus, it takes great pride in its employees and their performance.

The Airport Authority oversees more than 300 employees in such areas as project management, finance, human resources, engineering, communications, and emergency preparedness. Employees working for the airlines.

One of the major areas of operations and concern for the airport is snow preparedness. The staff begin preparations for each winter starting in late summer by reviewing and revising plans, preparing specialized equipment, ordering supplies and briefing staff and contractors. These preparations culminate in full training exercises on the airport's runways and taxiways.

Due to horrible bad luck, the majority of the employees who have been part of the snow preparedness team resigned, were promoted to another division, or are on family leave. Thus, only Martha, the snow preparedness project leader and Martin are left. Martin has been on the snow preparedness team for 5 years and Martha for 10 years. Thus, 8 brand new members were asked to join the snow preparedness team. From the minute that the new members were told that they were part of the team, Martin overheard his colleagues say that they didn't understand why they were asked to be part of the team. They were concerned about how much autonomy they were going to have, they were unsure about how much time they would be spent in meetings, and concerned that their work would no longer be recognized and that their efforts would get "lost" in the team. Martha then proceeded to meet with each new member individually to let them know their responsibilities on the project. Each of the members began working on their tasks but didn't seem to care about the others on the team. Even after a month of working on the project, the team members did not help other team members when they needed help. Martha was concerned about the team overall but also whether the team was going to be able to develop the best snow preparedness plan by their deadline.

Taking into consideration what you learned in this chapter on teams and group behavior, what should Martha do to increase her team's group cohesiveness and effectiveness?