Teamwork is a consistent effort put in by a group of people working for a company, organization or doing something for their own interest. In teamwork, the work is done by several associates with each doing a part but all subordinating personal prominence to the efficiency of the whole, hence a group of people do work on different aspects but they all have a common goal. Teams are generally formed when individuals with some common interests, preferences, likings, and attitude are put together to work for a common goal achievement. Teams play a very important role in organizational works or projects as well as in our personal lives too. Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is a success; this is the main idea of teamwork.
Teamwork is defined as those behaviours that facilitate some effective team member interaction. The team can be defined as a group of two or more individuals, who are working for some task or goal, interact with one another positively, have a common thinking and interest, have a shared future, and share a common fate related to their project. Teamwork plays a highly valuable role in organizations, with teamwork among employees every bit is important for achieving organizational goals, and individual effort is collaborated among members of a sporting team to achieve the final result. Though managers and business owners have a little role to play in teamwork, they often work to encourage their employee’s teamwork, while some may even not realize just how important the phenomenon’s role in an organization can be.
Team Work Process
The process of teamwork starts right with the planning and allocation of a project. Once it is decided that a project is to be done, the first thing that comes to mind is, that who will do it? With the answer for this question, the planning for effective teamwork starts which begins with choosing right people who share a common interest, work capabilities, mental abilities and can work together as one team for achieving organizational goals. Once the working team is decided, then the rest of the work is left on the team members do decide and accomplish it within the given time and maintaining the quality as well. Once the team gets intimation to start with the project the planning process begins which include goal setting and time management, this planning process can be done in the following steps:
- The Transition Phase: Transition phase is the time period between the project allocation and the active period. During this phase, the whole team studies the project carefully. The first sub-step is mission analysis; about what has been asked to do and how will they accomplish the given task and what all is needed to do. Once done with the mission analysis process, the goals are set. It is predefined as to how much time should a team take to complete a particularly assigned work and how much time they will give to a particular portion of the project and set the deadlines for the process is all done on this sub-step. Once done with mission analysis and goal setting, it is the time to start formulating a strategy as to how the team will proceed step by step and allowing time for various quality checks side by side.
- The Action Phase: As the name suggests, the action phase is a time when the real practical working comes to play and is time for some action-oriented work towards the achievement of set goals. The action plan formulated during the transition phase is followed and the team works according to that plan. The head of the team monitors whether the process is moving on as per their planning or not and take some necessary steps to speed up the operations if needed. During the monitoring process, the individual effort of every team member is also reviewed and an assessment is made if everyone is working as desired or not, and if someone is found to be unsatisfactory then some back-ups are being considered, as poor performance of even one member can bring down the hard work of the whole team. So it is better to replace those people who are not serious in their work. Co-ordination is an important aspect of teamwork, hence co-ordination among the team members is also reviewed and if there are any conflicts that are also discussed and solved.
- Miscellaneous Works: This miscellaneous work may be a part of action phase or intermediate transition phases, and these may include works like team management, quality checks, managing conflicts if any, motivating the team etc. When working on a project there are many other factors also that would influence the timely completion of the project with satisfactory results. Some conflicts may arise among the working members of the team, which need to be resolved at the right time before it hampers the project. As underperformance of a single individual may harm the project, therefore there is also a need to regularly motivate the whole team regularly towards task completion.
Hence these are the steps to be kept in mind to facilitate some effective teamwork, and it is necessary to keep timely checks and take necessary steps for the smooth and effective working of the team towards timely goal achievement.
Benefits of Team Work
Teamwork at the workplace or for any other work related to some social cause or something for the community has a lot to offer towards the achievement of some predefined goals. Teamwork offers the company, staff or individuals an ability to become more familiar with each other and learn how to work together and help each other for the fulfilment of some common goals. Teamwork is something that must be given high priority and given constant attention. Every player in the team needs to understand his responsibility and to realize how important it is for them to work smoothly together if they want to be successful. Each player must be dedicated to the whole team and be willing to act unselfishly. There are several ways in which teamwork is important and vital to the success of the company and to the development of each employee. To encourage and appreciate teamwork it is very important to first understand the advantages related to the teamwork. Some of the benefits of teamwork are:
- Cooperation: Teamwork leads to a great sense of co-operation among the different members of a team. When you tend to work towards the attainment of some common goals along with the group of people, you tend to gain support and guidance from your whole group and for common goals everyone in your team is ready to help you at any point of time. There is no evil feeling of competition and everyone is ready to help one another in a team thus promoting cooperation. Many organizations in which employees work alone or in extremely small groups focusing on a single topic may notice a decrease in efficiency when compared to organizations that encourage teamwork, which may be related to the fact that working in a team comes with a lot of advantages. In an organization with an individualistic culture, employees tend to manoeuvre to ensure that they receive the best available resources and there is also a race among the employees to leave each other behind and no one is ready to help their counterparts. In some of the cases, individualistic employees may attempt to block their counterparts from utilizing resources being offered by the firm, through political manoeuvres that can hurt the organization’s overall effectiveness. In a teamwork-oriented culture, team members cooperate with each other to achieve the team’s objectives, often placing these objectives ahead of their own personal issues.
- Problems Solving: A single brain can’t think of new and different ideas to achieve organizational goals all the time. In a team, each team member has a responsibility to contribute equally and offer their unique perspective and ideas on a problem which would help in coming out with the best possible solution. When a team works well together, it allows staff members to feel more comfortable in offering their ideas and suggestions. Team members also become quite used to the thinking process and coming up with some useful suggestions. Teamwork hence leads to better decisions making, products, or services. The quality of teamwork may be measured by analyzing the following six components of collaboration among team members: communication, coordination, the balance of member contributions, mutual support, effort, and cohesion.
- Communication: Working together as part of one team also improves some effective communication among the team members. Employees who work well together and consider themselves part of a team tend to communicate better, which is an important aspect of achieving positive results. Employees working as a team often learn to recognize minor variations in communication among their colleagues, and are able to quickly pick up from the behavior or reaction of their team members as to what they want to convey to them, hence leading to effective exchange of some non-verbal views also which may have gone unnoticed because of lack of communication. Enhanced communication between team members can have a great effect on the team’s overall performance, and the entire project can benefit from teamwork that leads to better communication.
- Trust: A term that is vital for any relationship is the trust. Trust is the basis of every relation, and also applies to a team-oriented environment. Working together and helping out one another with project related problems and some personal issues tend to generate trust within the team. Team secrets, details of new projects or any new development within the team leads to a great bonding between the employees who trust each other and appreciate the hard work of each one. Trust helps to make a lifelong relation among the team members which is of great importance to both employer and employee.
- Cost Savings: Yet another benefit of the teamwork for the organization is saving of some money. Teamwork helps promote an organizational structure that reduces the demand for high-level leadership positions who obviously charge some big pay cheques from the organization. In a teamwork environment, team members are more often themselves their leaders and managers, and a single manager may be able to lead several teams more effectively than a handful of individuals responsible for management positions. Since these organizational leaders often demand a higher salary than individual contributors, this structure can equate to considerable cost savings for an organization that relies on teamwork.
Team Qualities
- Team members should openly support and encourage each other
- They should not have any sense of competitive feeling among them and should be ready to help each other at all the times
- Should possess open and effective communication with each other
- Each team member knows his roles and duties effectively
- Mutual respect for each other
- Team members should trust each other
- The team as a whole should be committed towards development
- All team members should possess equal levels of literacy and experience to avoid any self-esteem or ego issues
- Each member should consider themselves as a team player
- All the members of the team should work with an attitude of “we” rather than “I”.
Need for the Team Work
An important question that arises in everyone’s mind is that, what is the need for teamwork? Why do we need it in our organization? The answer for these questions cannot be confined in of two or three lines or pages, there are so many things associated with teamwork that this whole article would seem too small. There so many needs associated with the teamwork that leads to most of the organizations opting for some teamwork projects. Teamwork can be associated with better output and bonding among the employees in the interest of the organization. These are many facts related to teamwork that leads to most of the organizations giving a green signal to it, some of these are:
- Tasks are completed faster by a team as compared to some individual doing it.
- Chances of error are considerably reduced as more than one person is involved so one or the other notices the error if any and takes timely action.
- There is always a healthy competition among team members as compared to negative competition among individual workers who often try to create the hindrance for their counterparts to perform.
- Teamwork improves the relationship among employees.
- Team members can help each other whenever someone needs help.
- Work never suffers in a teamwork even if someone fails to show up.
- Working alone does not give any opportunity to learn.
