What is Successful Teamwork
A group of individuals can define teamwork to be a collaborative effort in order to achieve a goal in an efficient way. While this can form a very rudimentary understanding of the concept, teamwork is necessarily a very complex phenomenon and depends upon the fulfillment of a lot of factors. A team functions through the interaction of individuals with complementary skills and sharing of knowledge. However, there seems to be consensus among scholars that for successful teamwork, having a common goal is indispensable. The role of teamwork within the framework of an organisation is extremely important and it is one of the most decisive determinants of organisational success. Individuals in a team should be willing to communicate and cooperate with one another in a positive manner in order to ensure the success of the team (Scott and Wildman, 2017).
Yet, there are various impediments to the development of a successful team where all members put in their best efforts in their zone of specialisation and the same time coordinate their efforts with that of the other members. Subsequently, there have been various perspectives regarding what are the most essential factors of such a team and managers and scholars alike have consistently trying to develop a methodological framework that shall contribute towards the creation of an efficient team.
It must also be observed that a team needs to be analysed in the context of the wider organisational goals and needs. While forming a team a manager has to be sure about what his/her goals are and thereby, form the team accordingly. The manager has to likewise monitor and control certain aspects both external and internal to the team to make sure that it functions effectively. The given case study by comparing one successful team with an unsuccessful one helps in revealing the factors that were essential in maintaining proper productivity levels of the team. The teams were evaluated on the basis of certain standards that marked the efficiency level of the team. It could be seen that the successful team has high level of interdependence and were responsible for the actions of each other. Problems were discussed openly and members were communicative with one another. Despite having substantial differences among one another, the team members were essentially empathetic and helped one another in case of problems.
While on the other hand the unsuccessful team revealed a lot of conflicts going on among the members. Their ethic was fractured by opposing interests and lack of urge to perform. Thereby, these members could not communicate with one another and problems could not be openly discussed. Interdependence was out of the question as none of the members was willing to be responsible for others. Thus, there are certain basic attributes that are indispensable for a team, which includes: commitment to team success and shared goals, interdependence, interpersonal skills, open communication and positive feedback, appropriate team composition and commitment to team processes, leadership and accountability. A manager in an organisation has to therefore, make sure that these attributes are existent in a team before it can start functioning.
Attributes of Successful Teamwork
However, there are more nuances to the development of an effective team. It depends upon the kind of work and the nature of goals that shall be assigned to the respective team (Salmon, Stanton and Jenkins, 2017). Certain teams depending upon the composition of its members shall outperform others in certain situations. For example, in case of homogenous teams, since there are individuals from common social backgrounds, it shall be easy for them to understand one another and thereby get along. However, because of their similar thinking it shall not be possible for the team to be highly creative. In case of heterogeneous teams on the other hand, despite a high degree of conflict can be creative. This is because the team shall have highly contending views, which are more likely to come at intelligent resolutions. Thus, if the manager expects the team to be innovative, it has to be made sure that it is comprised of members coming from diverse social backgrounds (Mitchell et al. 2015).
It cannot be expected of teams to start performing as soon as they are formed. It shall take some time for the members to get acquainted with one another and know about each other’s skills and abilities. Team roles have to be assigned and subsequently, the team can start functioning (Belbin, 2012). In context of the time taken by teams to start achieving goals, Tuckman and Jensen have described five stages of team development (Tuckman, and Jensen, 2010), which are:
- Forming: It is a phase where the team is not yet fully formed. Here, the team members interact with one another in order to know more about each other. The members are apprehensive about the team and are not yet aware of each other’s skills. Thereby, the roles are not well defined either.
- Storming: This is the stage where conflicts start emerging among the members. They start opening up about their views and opinions and thereby, mutual antagonism starts appearing. Certain teams become defunct after the storming stage if they are unable to resolve the initial conflicts (Turner, Baker and Morris, 2017). The manager has to play an active role in this stage in order to ensure that the conflicts do not hamper the functionality of the team (Jordan and Troth, 2004). He has to make his presence felt and mediate among the antagonistic team members.
- Norming: The team starts consolidating in this stage and it becomes ready to handle goals and tasks. The assigning of the roles takes place in this stage depending upon the members’ abilities. The team shall start devising its own rules and determine how they will be using their available resources.
- Performing: Here the team starts actually performing tasks and subsequently achieving goals. Communication networks are highly developed in this phase and the team members work in a synergised manner in order to achieve the goals. They consistently strive for the better.
- Adjourning: This is the final stage of the team where it shall start disbanding. The team members, after the completion of the assigned project or goals move on to take up other responsibilities and provide feedback about what skills each of them acquired by being a part of the team.
Successful teams undergo this above-mentioned process in the course of their functioning. The manager has to act patiently in the initial part of the team formation and should not expect results all too quickly.
From the above sections, it can be observed that resolving conflicts is of primary importance of the team. The role of the manager is also very important for such kinds of conflicting situations. There are various ways of doing away with conflicts that might arise in a team. In certain situations, non-intervention might work but if not effective, it has the potential of destroying the team. Therefore, a certain degree of negotiation shall have to be taken place. The manager can mediate in such a situation and find solutions to problems by hearing out the views of all the team members (Hong, Na and Kim, 2017).
However, as can be inferred after a reading of the case study, teamwork is contingent upon the cultivation of certain values and ethics within the individual team members. The management of the organization has to first of all carry out effective education of its employees regarding the successful execution of teamwork duties (Cahn and Abigail, 2014). Attributes that are necessary for teamwork are never inherent in individuals. Rather, they have to be cultivated through training and experience.
Main factors for having unsuccessful teams:
There are a large number of factors, which can point towards the existence, and presence of a highly successful team.
- Ineffective commitment towards team success and shared goals:The unevenness in the overall commitment put in forth by team members can lead to failure of the efforts put in by the all members of the team. If any of the team member acts in reluctant manner, it shall lead to mismatch of expectations (Hopkins and Yonker, 2015. Further, due to reluctance showed by any or more than one number of team members, the others may find it not worthwhile to work hard while the others are not doing so. This shall lead to utter failure of the whole team.
- Lack of proper interdependence:Lack of coordination among the staffs in a team can also lead to failure in the group efforts of the team. Many of the time, it is seen that some of the team members may work very efficiently, while others may not be able to work and perform in such smooth manner (Tarricone and Luca, 2002). In such cases, it is soften seen that the people who are able to perform better do not help or guide the others. This is done by them mainly because of getting the credit of success onto themselves (Joseph, 2015). This leads to disempowerment of the team spirit and often in these cases, teams form to be utterly successful.
- Lack of Interpersonal skills:Often it is seen that members act in disrespectful manner towards the others in a team. They have less supportive behavior, do not have proper trust on others and feel that the members who are less efficient do not have the right to express their own ideas and feeling (Tarricone and Luca, 2002). This leads to the disdain among the team members working in a team. Lack of care, commitment and confidence on each of the team members by the others also welcomes unhealthy relationships to be possessed between team members. This leads to utter failure of the team efforts and thus, the team fails to attain their goals and objectives (Brock et al. 2017).
- Conflict Behavior:Presence of conflict in the behavioral patterns between the team members also bring in different kind of issues. Often, it is observed that team members try to avoid their tasks and responsibilities. They do not specify the things they require to perform a job.
Often poor accommodation and collaboration among team members leads to the rise of unhealthy relationships to be shared among them. Team members are often forced by the other efficient or superiors team members to take up a difficult task, leading to demotivation to affect the specific person (Turner, 2014). These all factors creep in negative kind of empowerment among team members and thus, their failure is certain.
- Ineffective communication and negative feedback:Many a times, it is observed that team members are not open to criticism and open ended discussion with the others. They do not feel the urge to pass on order and decisions to the other team members and this leads to misunderstanding among them (Tarricone and Luca, 2002). The utter failure in the ability to be able to communicate creeps in different kind of errors and issues while carrying out with any project (Casper, 2017). Team members are often seen to be not effectively listening to the things conveyed to them whether by superiors or their peers and presence of truthfulness and sportsman spirit among them bring in failure. They do support or respect the ideas of others, do not receive criticism in a positive manner and gets into frequent conflicts. This destroys the overall team spirit and the efficiency, making it vulnerable to failure.
- Inappropriate team composition: It is also seen that member roles, relationships assignments and responsibilities do not remain specified in a team working in any organizational environment. This happens due to reluctance and presence of inefficiency among the executive and managerial body of an organization (Sundberg et al. 2017). Further, the places where each of the members has to contribute and align their efforts also do not remain properly explained. Thus, this factor also brings in failure among the team members.
- Lack of commitment to team processes, leadership & accountability: Division of the work among members and synchronization of the efforts also brings in different kind of issues. Act of individual accountability, lack of innovation and new practices adopted by the leader, improper motivation and guidance provided to the team members by the leaders and inefficient decisions taken leads to failure of the team (Driskell et al. 2018). The leader of a team is equally responsible for the success or the failure of the efforts and the performance of a team. Many a times, leaders do not monitor the work of the team members and due to biases, proper work evaluation is also not taken by him/her (Tarricone and Luca, 2002). This leads to improper service or product delivered by the team as a whole. Thus, being an inefficient leader also can bring in failure for the whole of the team.
- Team members need to be guided, trained and motivated in proper order so that they may be able to work effectively.
- Responsibilities have to be properly allocated among the team members so that there may not be any ambiguity in the things that need to be done by them.
- Care and understanding have to be instilled among the team members so that they may be able to work in a united manner (Morton and Weinstein, 2015).
- The ladders has to ensure such kind of an environment where all the things are discussed in an open manner, the views of the other team members are respected and criticism from various ends are taken treated in positive manner and taken into consideration.
- If any kind of trust issues or conflicts arises among the team members, then the leader should be the main person who should take a lead in trying to solve them and get the team away from any kind of failures (Sun et al. 2015).
- Creative discussion should be encouraged among the team by the leader in order to create innovate problem solving mechanisms.
- The team leader should maintain accurate composition of the staffs in a team based on their abilities and understanding of the work (Goetsch and Davis, 2014).
- All kind of decisions should be made by taking in the views and understanding of the team members. If a joint decision is made, it shall not create discern among the team members and they shall be satisfied with their work (Tarricone and Luca, 2002).
- The authority of the team leaders has to be used in an appropriate manner so that team members may feel the urge to work effectively and may not feel that they are being forced to work and blatantly exploited by the organization.
- Team leader should value the efforts put in by the team members and should reward them based on their overall performance.
- Challenging objectives should be given to the team members so tha6t they may aim for the goal and work for achieving it.
References
Belbin, R.M., 2012. Team roles at work. Routledge.
Brock, S.E., McAliney, P.J., Ma, C.H. and Sen, A., 2017. Toward more practical measurement of teamwork skills. Journal of Workplace Learning, 29(2), pp.124-133.
Cahn, D.D. and Abigail, R.A., 2014. Managing conflict through communication. Pearson.
Casper, W.C., 2017. Teaching beyond the Topic Teaching Teamwork Skills in Higher Education. Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice, 17(6), pp.53-63.
Driskell, J.E., Salas, E. and Driskell, T., 2018. Foundations of teamwork and collaboration. American Psychologist, 73(4), p.334.
Goetsch, D.L. and Davis, S.B., 2014. Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
Hong, A.J., Na, M.I. and Kim, Y.J., 2017. Managing Team Diversity: Effects of Shared Leadership and Dynamic Capability. Proceedings of The 9th MAC 2017, p.163.
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Mitchell, R., Boyle, B., Parker, V., Giles, M., Chiang, V. and Joyce, P., 2015. Managing inclusiveness and diversity in teams: How leader inclusiveness affects performance through status and team identity. Human Resource Management, 54(2), pp.217-239.
Morton, L.H. and Weinstein, J., 2015. Teamwork. Print
Salmon, P.M., Stanton, N.A. and Jenkins, D.P., 2017. Distributed situation awareness: Theory, measurement and application to teamwork. CRC Press.
Scott, C.P. and Wildman, J.L., 2017. Developing and Managing Teams. The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of the Psychology of Team Working and Collaborative Processes, pp.503-529.
Sun, R.C., Garvey, E.M., Hogan, J. and Economopoulos, K.P., 2015. Talking the talk: The keys to effective workplace communication. Bulletin of the American College of Surgeons, 100(8), pp.16-22.
Sundberg, M., Paul, R. and Verghese, G.R., 2017. Teamwork and Collaboration. In Patient Safety and Quality in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology and Stem Cell Transplantation (pp. 51-65). Springer, Cham.
Tarricone, P. and Luca, J., 2002. Successful teamwork: A case study.
Tuckman, B.W. and Jensen, M.A.C., 2010. Stages of small-group development revisited. Group Facilitation: A Research & Applications Journal, 10, pp.43-48.
Turner, J.R., Baker, R. and Morris, M., 2017. Complex Adaptive Systems: Adapting and Managing Teams and Team Conflict. In Organizational Conflict. IntechOpen.
Turner, M.E. ed., 2014. Groups at work: Theory and research. Psychology Press.
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