What is Teamwork?
Teamwork is probably the most common term used in organizations around the world. You hear it in meetings, workshops, and conferences. But it is among the most difficult practices to instill. Teamwork is a process and requires diligent effort from everyone involved.
Teamwork is about collaborating to achieve a mutually beneficial goal. This means keeping aside personal differences, conflicting objectives, and upholding professional ethics that benefit the group and the organization. It involves constructive feedback and working in harmony without giving in to personal grudges and feuds.
Let us look at some key benefits that drive home the great importance of teamwork in workplaces.
- Instills Efficiency:
Division of labor is based on the concept of teamwork. It helps simplify complicated challenges by breaking down tasks and sharing the workload. When we work together, we achieve goals faster and more efficiently.
- Develops Specialized Skills:
When we divide an overall objective into individual tasks, we assign the best person to accomplish each task. Achieving a goal may involve a set of disparate jobs- such as analysis, coordination, vendor management, promotional supports, and training. Deploying specialists can lead to better productivity, reduced costs, and greater profitability.
- Inculcates Self-Discipline:
In teamwork, many people have responsibility for the same goal. Teammates depend on the quality of each other’s work. Effective teams often self-regulate their performance, ensuring there is a latent pressure on each individual to contribute their share of work in a timely and efficient manner.
- Promotes Healthy Competition:
When individuals are aware that their contributions will determine their team’s success, they tend to compete with one another to prove their capabilities. With transparency and the right rewards in place, it can promote a healthy sense of competition and improves team performance.
- Strengthens Employee Bonding:
It is human nature that there is bonding when people work together and succeed as a team. It can turn into trust and friendship, which is excellent for any organization. When employees trust each other, they are more likely to communicate, support, and motivate each other.
- Gives Rise To New Ideas:
When diverse groups of people work together, there will almost always be space for fresh, new ideas. This is a valuable by-product of teamwork for an organization in today’s competitive business environment. As a manager, if you create a safe space for individuals to work together as a team without the fear of judgments, new ideas and perspectives will flourish.
- Builds Morale:
Getting people to work together makes them feel better about themselves and the job they’re doing. They realize that their work is valued, that they can contribute to the success of organizational goals, and that they do have something unique to offer.
- Provides a Sense of Accomplishment:
When individuals as part of a team experience a sense of accomplishment, it reinforces and renews their sense of purpose and boosts confidence. In a self-fulfilling cycle, this sense of achievement continues to breed more success.
- Greater Autonomy:
It is a proven fact that when individuals work together as a team, there is a greater degree of self-monitoring than when people work by themselves. Managers do not need to get involved as often as they need to with individuals. It leads to greater trust and encourages delegation of authority, decision-making skills and autonomy.
A final word
Teamwork is the foundation on which all successful businesses are built. However, one should never take teamwork for granted. It needs to be taught and carefully nurtured. A dysfunctional team can be a disaster for organizations. Therefore, managers should be highly conscious about building a team by aligning the right kind of resources. The critical objective of teamwork is to cultivate a sense of unity, making it imperative to bring together people who share common interests and responsibilities.
