Teamwork is when a group of people work together, unitedly like a glue, towards a common objective or goal, creating a positive and practical working atmosphere while assisting, supporting each other to combine all of their strengths together to build an efficient team.
“It takes not one but many people working together to build a bridge”
What is teamwork?
Teamwork is the combined effect of a group to achieve a specific goal in the most effective way. The basic foundation for building a team is to have adequate size and predefined roles.
Members have clear roles, task and duties assigned to them which could resolve possible conflict in the future. The team size can vary depending upon the size or the seriousness of the objective.
A group of people working together harmoniously and focusing on a particular goal is the core of teamwork. Basically, a glue that holds all the operations of business together which is a necessity, for a business to succeed.
Why is teamwork important?
Creates synergy
It builds a sense of cooperation and collaboration to improve work quality. Synergy is the concept which means that the combined values and performances are greater than the sum of individual forces.
Reduces hierarchy
Predefined roles in a team reduced the self-implied and appointed authorities which benefits in progressing the work further.
Motivation
It promotes quality knit relationships which fosters encouragement, support and flexibility. These relationships motivate employees in parallel and force them to work harder.
Diverse perspectives
collaboration in teamwork provides different perspectives, problem-solving approaches. These differences in the work environment lead to controlled brainstorming collectively to arrive at a solution more quickly.
Learning opportunities
Teamwork provides great learning opportunities, as a member can learn from another member’s mistakes. This enables the members to gain new insights to expand their skillset and learn new techniques for contingencies.
Increases productivity
Working together increases productivity as it helps in incorporating new strategies as it allows the workload to be shared, reducing the pressure level on a member.
Group cohesion
Group cohesion is the most essential element for a business to survive in the corporate world. It is the members sticking and working together like peas in a pod.
Less managerial interference
When employees work together in a team, the managerial influence and interference lessen up as it establishes a sense of self-correcting behaviour when they work by themselves.
Better relationships
Employees working and succeeding together establish a sense of mutual trust and even friendships. Every team leader knows how necessary good teamwork is but only some leader knows how to create it.
How to create a good teamwork environment.
Open communication
Transparency and communication increase the effectiveness of teamwork. Clear and precise communication is needed so there’s no room for confusion. Good teams know how to handle conflict and provide a solution for it.
Conflict doesn’t need to be always negative, if the team members have a good intent behind stating their argument, it can be positive or even constructive.
Organized workflow
For the successful working of the team, they should be equipped with better resources and tools to collaborate efficiently. Teams generally use software that helps them track the progress and the duration in which each member completed their work.
Excellent leadership
A team works successfully when it is led by a great leader. Under great leadership management of, conflict, hostile and aggressive behaviour is quite controllable.
Great leaders are humble. They should view every opinion as equal and respectable. A leader should work with an open mind, to he/she knows about the strengths and weaknesses of their team. Involvement of each and every member enables the team to take productive decisions.
Constructive Criticism
To keep the environment positive, every member should take the criticism in a constructive manner which leads to the business growth and reduction of hostility and tensing of air in the environment.
Commitment towards a common goal
For facilitating a better working environment, every team member should be on the same page. Better teams communicate well and optimize one another’s diverse skills to reach a common objective.
A better team works on the same vision and has the same foresight. They should view the success of the group as their individual success. All member should own up to their responsibilities and be accountable for their actions.
When teamwork isn’t right?
All organizations work in teams in today’s world. While teamwork can lead to innovation and progress, incorrect implementation often leads to conflict. People often fail to cooperate and understand the perspective of other team members.
Perhaps, people can cope up with minor failures with additive inputs, it affects the overall results when it comes to the evaluation of collective team effort.
Teamwork gives a lot of opportunities which can sometimes results in codependency among the team members and in turn people don’t get their fair share of credit.
With highlighting the good aspects of the team playing people tend to ignore the negative ones. Teamwork can be stressful and nobody focuses on that.
This stress in the groups or among the members stems from the pressure the manager puts on the employees. However, some pressure is necessary upon the people but, too much of it can negatively affect their mental health which often results in poor performances, low productivity and high turnover.
Researches where data of surveys regarding the productivity of employees working in teams and individually were separately analyzed. Researches showed that people working in teams had less productivity and bad mental health as too much was expected from them.
The employees felt their teammates relied upon them, which made them feel like they had insufficient time to complete the task at hand and this feeling made them more anxious.
Is teamwork necessary?
Teamwork has both its pros and cons. It can prove to be a perfect strategy for success if it is correctly implemented. For the correct implementation, a great leader well versed in desired traits is needed to balance and manage the team perfectly.
These are the other soft skills one should work on:
- Delegation
- Decisiveness
- Teamwork
By Vrinda Bhasin
