DYNAMICS OF CORPORATE TEAM WORK

TEAM AND TEAMWORK

A team is a group of people who collaborate on related tasks toward a common goal. Teamwork involves a set of interdependent activities performed by individuals who collaborate toward a common goal.

Organizations form teams to accomplish tasks that are too large or complex for an individual to complete. Teams are also effective for work that requires different types of skills and expertise. For example, the development of new products involves understanding customer needs as well as how to design and build a product that will meet these needs. Accordingly, a new product-development team would include people with customer knowledge as well as designers and engineers.

The Modern Organization

Teams are increasingly common and relevant from an organizational perspective, as globalization and technology continue to expand organizational scope and strategy. In organizations, teams can be constructed both vertically (varying levels of management) and horizontally (across functional disciplines). In order to maintain synergy between employees and organize resources, teams are increasingly common across industries and organizational types.

THE ROLE OF TEAMS

The primary role of a team is to combine resources, competencies, skills, and bandwidth to achieve organizational objectives. The underlying assumption of a well-functioning team is one of synergy, which is to say that the output of a team will be greater than the sum of each individual’s contribution without a team architecture in place. As a result, teams are usually highly focused groups of employees, with the role of achieving specific tasks to support organizational success.

CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAMS

Some organizations have a need for strong cross-functional teams that enable various functional competencies to align on shared objectives. This is particularly common at technology companies, where a number of specific disciplines are combined to produce complex products and/or services.

TEAM PROCESSES

When considering the role of a team, it’s important to understand the various processes that teams will carry out over time. At the beginning of a team set up (or when redirecting the efforts of a team), a transitional process is carried out. Once the team has set strategic goals, they can begin progressing towards the completion of those goals operationally. The final team process is one of interpersonal efficiency, or refining the team dynamic for efficiency and success.

More specifically, these processes can be described as follows:

Transitional Process

• Mission analysis
• Goal specification
• Strategy formulation

Action Process

• Monitoring progress toward goals
• Systems monitoring
• Team monitoring and backup behavior
• Coordination

Interpersonal Process

• Conflict management
• Motivation and confidence building
• Affect management

KINDS OF TEAMS

Teams may be permanent or temporary, and team members may come from the same department or different ones. Common types of teams found in organizations include project teams, virtual teams, and cross-functional teams.

Project teams are created for a defined period of time to achieve a specific goal. Members of a project team often belong to different functional groups and are chosen to participate in the team based on specific skills they can contribute to the project. Software development is most commonly done by project teams.

Virtual teams have members located in different places, often geographically dispersed, who come together to achieve a specific purpose. Academic researchers often work on virtual teams with colleagues at other institutions.

Cross-functional teams combine people from different areas, such as marketing and engineering, to solve a problem or achieve a goal. Healthcare services are frequently delivered by interdisciplinary teams of nurses, doctors, and other medical specialists.

It is common for an organization to have many teams, including teams of several types. Effective teamwork depends on choosing the type of team best suited to the work that needs to be accomplished.

THE ROLE OF TEAMS IN ORGANIZATIONS

By combining various employees into strategic groups, a team-based organization can create synergies through team processes. With real teamwork we tend to see positive attitudes and behaviors such as:

• Trust in colleagues to deliver what they promise
• Willingness to help when needed
• Sharing of a common vision of the future
• Co-operation and blending of each other’s’ strengths
• Positive attitudes, providing support and encouragement
• Active listening
• All members pulling their weight and in the same direction
• Giving the benefit of the doubt
• Consensus building
• Effective conflict resolution
• Open communication

WHY TEAMWORK

Teamwork motivates unity in the workplace

A teamwork environment promotes an atmosphere that fosters friendship and loyalty. These close-knit relationships motivate employees in parallel and align them to work harder, cooperate and be supportive of one another.

Individuals possess diverse talents, weaknesses, communication skills, strengths, and habits. Therefore, when a teamwork environment is not encouraged this can pose many challenges towards achieving the overall Goals and Objectives. When teamwork is working the whole team would be motivated and working toward the same goal in harmony. Teamwork offers differing perspectives and feedback.

Good teamwork structures provide your organization with a diversity of thought, creativity, perspectives, opportunities, and problem-solving approaches. A proper team environment allows individuals to brainstorm collectively, which in turn increases their success to problem solve and arrive at solutions more efficiently and effectively.

Improved efficiency and productivity

When incorporating teamwork strategies, you become more efficient and productive. This is because it allows the workload to be shared, reducing the pressure on individuals, and ensure tasks are completed within a set time frame. It also allows goals to be more attainable, enhances the optimization of performance, improves job satisfaction and increases work pace.

Ultimately, when a group of individuals works together, compared to one person working alone, they promote a more efficient work output and are able to complete tasks faster due to many minds intertwined on the same goals and objectives of the business.

Learning opportunities

Working in a team enables us to learn from one another’s mistakes. You are able to avoid future errors, gain insight from differing perspectives, and learn new concepts from more experienced colleagues.

In addition, individuals can expand their skill sets, discover fresh ideas from newer colleagues and therefore ascertain more effective approaches and solutions towards the tasks at hand. This active engagement generates the future articulation, encouragement and innovative capacity to problem solve and generate ideas more effectively and efficiently.

Promotes workplace synergy

Mutual support shared goals, cooperation and encouragement provide workplace synergy. With this, team members are able to feel a greater sense of accomplishment, are collectively responsible for outcomes achieved and feed individuals with the incentive to perform at higher levels. When team members are aware of their own responsibilities and roles, as well as the significance of their output being relied upon by the rest of their team, team members will be driven to share the same vision, values, and goals. The result creates a workplace environment based on fellowship, trust, support, respect, and cooperation.

Higher Quality Outcomes

Teamwork creates outcomes that make better use of resources and produce richer ideas.

• Higher efficiency: Since teams combine the efforts of individuals, they can accomplish more than an individual working alone.
• Faster speed: Because teams draw on the efforts of many contributors, they can often complete tasks and activities in less time.
• More thoughtful ideas: Each person who works on a problem or set of tasks may bring different information and knowledge to bear, which can result in solutions and approaches an individual would not have identified.
• Greater effectiveness: When people coordinate their efforts, they can divide up roles and tasks to more thoroughly address an issue. For example, in hospital settings teamwork has been found to increase patient safety more than when only individual efforts are made to avoid mishaps.

Better Context for Individuals

The social aspect of teamwork provides a superior work experience for team members, which can motivate higher performance.

• Mutual support: Because team members can rely on other people with shared goals, they can receive assistance and encouragement as they work on tasks. Such support can encourage people to achieve goals they may not have had the confidence to have reached on their own.
• Greater sense of accomplishment: When members of a team collaborate and take collective responsibility for outcomes, they can feel a greater sense of accomplishment when they achieve a goal they could not have achieved if they had worked by themselves.

CHARACTERISTICS OF EFFECTIVE TEAMWORK

An effective team accomplishes its goals in a way that meets the standards set by those who evaluate its performance. Effective teams share following characteristics:

• Shared values: a common set of beliefs and principles about how and why the team members will work together
• Mutual trust: confidence between team members that each puts the best interest of the team ahead of individual priorities
• Inspiring vision: a clear direction that motivates commitment to a collective effort
• Skill/talent: the combined abilities and expertise to accomplish the required tasks and work productively with others
• Rewards: recognition of achievement toward objectives and reinforcement of behavior that supports the team’s work

TEAMWORK SKILLS AND IMPORTANCE

Teamwork skills are the qualities and abilities that allow you to work well with others during conversations, projects, meetings or other collaborations. Having teamwork skills is dependent on your ability to communicate well, actively listen and be responsible and honest. You will be required to work alongside others in every industry at every level in your career. Doing so in an empathetic, efficient and responsible manner can help you accomplish career goals, grow your resume and contribute positively to your organization. It can also help you build rapport with others. 

 Teamwork skills

Here are just a few examples of qualities that can help you improve your teamwork skills:

Communication: The ability to communicate in a clear, efficient way is a critical teamwork skill. When working with others, it is important that you share relevant thoughts, ideas and key information.

Responsibility: Within the dynamic of teamwork, it is important that the parties involved both understand the work they are responsible for and make the effort to complete said tasks on time and up to the expected standard.

Honesty: Practicing honesty and transparency at work might mean working through a disagreement, explaining that you were not able to complete a certain task on time or sharing difficult updates. Without transparency, it can be difficult for a team to develop trust and therefore work together efficiently.

Active listening: Much like communication, Active listening skills can help a team to understand and trust each other. Active listening is the act of making an effort to focus intently on one person as they share their ideas, thoughts or feelings. You might also ask follow-up questions to dig deeper into what they are communicating.

Empathy: Having empathy for your teammates can allow you to better understand their motives and feelings. Taking the time to listen and understand how others think and work can help you to communicate with them in the right ways.

Collaboration: Teamwork exists so that a group of individuals with a diverse set of skills and talents can work together towards a common goal. It is crucial to work with other teammates to share ideas, improve each other’s work and help.

Awareness: In teamwork, it is important that you hone your ability to be aware of the team dynamic at all times. For example, if one person is dominating the conversation or does not allow others to share ideas, it is important that balance is restored for each teammate to contribute evenly. Alternatively, if one person tends to be shyer and hesitant to share ideas, it is important to create space so that all teammates feel comfortable to contribute their unique skills and abilities.

IMPROVING TEAMWORK SKILLS

Here are a few steps you can take to improve your teamwork skills:

• Get honest feedback. It can be difficult to identify your own areas of improvement. Finding a trusted friend, colleague or mentor that can offer you honest feedback about your teamwork strengths and weaknesses can help you improve them.
• Set personal goals. Using both your own observations and feedback from others to form achievable, relevant and time-constrained goals can help you improve one teamwork skill at a time. Using the SMART goal framework is an easy way to set appropriate goals for your career.
• Practice. It takes time and practice to see improvements in your skillset. Pay close attention to your teamwork interactions throughout the day both in and out of work. Take mindful steps to practice the specific qualities you are trying to build.
• Mimic others with strong teamwork skills. When you see examples of great teamwork, take note and identify why the interaction stood out to you. Apply those qualities in your own interactions when working with others.

HAZARDS OF TEAMWORK

Teams face challenges to effective collaboration and achieving their goals.

The collaborative nature of teams means they are subject to pitfalls that individuals working alone do not face. Team members may not always work well together, and focusing the efforts of individuals on shared goals presents challenges to completing tasks as efficiently and effectively as possible. The following pitfalls can lead to team dysfunction and failure to achieve important organizational objectives.

Individuals Shirking Their Duties

Since team members share responsibility for outcomes, some individuals may need to do additional work to make up for those not contributing their share of effort. This can breed resentment and foster other negative feelings that can make the team less effective. One cause of this is the failure of the team to establish clear norms of accountability for individual contributions to the group effort.

Skewed Influence over Decisions

Sometimes an individual or small number of team members can come to dominate the rest of the group. This could be due to strong personalities, greater abilities, or differences in status among members. When individuals either do not feel listened to or believe their ideas are not welcome, they may reduce their efforts.

Lack of Trust

Effective collaboration requires team members to have confidence that everyone shares a set of goals. When that belief is missing, some individuals may not feel comfortable sharing their ideas with the group. Lack of trust can also lead to miscommunication and misunderstandings, which can undermine the group’s efforts.

Conflicts Hamper Progress

While conflicts are a common aspect of working together and can even be beneficial to a team, they can also negatively affect team performance. For instance, conflict can delay progress on tasks or create other inefficiencies in getting work done.

Lack of Teaming Skills

When team members do not have the collaboration skills needed to work well with others, the overall ability of the team to function can be limited. As a result, conflicts may be more likely to arise and more difficult to resolve.

Missing Task Skills

A team that does not have the expertise and knowledge needed to complete all its tasks and activities will have trouble achieving its goals. Poor team composition can lead to delays, higher costs, and increased risk.

Stuck in Formation

Sometimes the group cannot move from defining goals and outlining tasks to executing its work plan. This may be due to poor specification of roles, tasks, and priorities.

Too Many Members

The size of the team can sometimes affect its ability to function effectively. Coordination and communication are more complex in a larger team than in a smaller one. This complexity can mean that decisions must take into account greater amounts of information, meetings are more challenging to schedule, and tasks can take longer to complete.

Groupthink

Outcomes can suffer if team members value conflict avoidance and consensus over making the best decisions. People can feel uncomfortable challenging the group’s direction or otherwise speaking up for fear of breaking a team norm. This phenomenon is known as “groupthink.” Groupthink can limit creativity, lead to poor choices, or result in mistakes that might otherwise have been avoidable.While teams offer many benefits, their effectiveness rests on how well members can avoid common pitfalls or minimize their negative consequences when they occur.

CONCLUSION

Developing teamwork skills can help you both in your career and when seeking new opportunities. Take time to evaluate your current skill set and identify areas for improvement. With time and practice, you can begin building a strong set of teamwork skills.