“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress.Working together is success” – Henry Ford.
Teamwork in the workplace allows employees to become acquainted with each other. Teamwork is vital to the success of the company and to the development of employees in several ways. A single person might not be able to take critical decisions by himself. Support and guidance of a group is needed by an individual to come out with useful solutions. Ideally the team members should have common goals to ensure that they are compatible with each other.
As the saying goes, “there is no I in team work”, every individual must place the interests of his team before his personal interests.
To face challenges in a workplace, a strong team environment will act as a support mechanism for team members. Working together, members help each other improve their own performance, enhancing their own professional development in the process. By relying on each other, a bond of trust develops among team members. These bonds help the team face particularly difficult challenges or the departure of a team member while still trying to be productive.
Effective teams in the workplace are often consulted on company issues. Teams that work well together, are made to feel comfortable while offering suggestions. Team members develop the knack of creating valuable brainstorming sessions, and the company benefits from the multitude of suggestions that they offer.
- No business organization runs for charity. Sales and revenue targets have to be met. Tasks must be completed within the specified time period and must not be pushed to the backburner. A single player can’t always come up with solutions or take decisions by himself. He needs to discuss his ideas with someone. In a team, every team member has to contribution equally and each team member’s solution should best suited to the problem. To choose the best alternative, the team members can discuss their thoughts by weighing the pros and cons.
- Teams accomplish tasks faster than individuals. An individual who is single handedly in charge of everything will definitely take more time to perform. In teams, shared responsibilities reduce the workload or work pressure and members are able to help each other. Each team member is assigned a responsibility according to specialization, level of interest and thus the output is much more efficient and faster.
- A team doesn’t let its work suffer or take a backseat. Let’s consider a case where an employee “X” was taking care of an important client and was the only one coordinating with them. When “X” took a long leave, there was no one else who could handle the client in his absence. By the time he joined back after a long vacation, the organization had already lost the client. Had “X” worked in a team, others could have taken the charge when he was not there. In a team, the other team members can perform and manage the work in the absence of any member and hence work is not affected much.
- There is always a healthy competition among the team members. Competition promotes a team member to perform better than his team mates and in a way contributing to his team and the organization.
- Team work improves relations among the team members. Individuals who coordinate with each other come to know each other better, reducing the chances of unnecessary conflicts among them and every individual tries his level best to support his fellow team mate. The results increase the level of bonding among them.
- Team members complement each other. Every individual is unique and and may possess some qualities. A team member can always learn something or the other from his team members which would help him in the long run. Recognition and praise are driving forces for everyone. Team members are motivated to work hard in a collective effort and live up to the expectations of other members. Members can mentor one another and can correct them whenever the other person is wrong. At a time of crisis, a team member will always have someone to fall back upon.
Now that the importance on Teamwork is already established, it is vital to know how can a team work together effectively in today’s business context. As the teams of today are quite likely to be spread out across different offices, various geographies and timezones in the world, they ought to use collaboration tools at work for effective communication and coordination. For example, Google Apps provides a host of applications such as Gmail, Hangouts, Calendar, Google Drive and so on to ensure that team members can work together on a single deliverable while staying closely coordinated despite being geographically distributed. Cloud Computing has indeed made teamwork easier.