What you should know about Team Work

Team work should be strongly put into consideration if you will succeed in your business and other projects. Nobody knows it all. Team work has a way of motivating people to become better. The strength of someone is the weakness of another person. Team work helps to bring the strengths together to achieve set goals and target for the advancement or growth of a business and an organization. Great team work is said to be the difference between success and failure.

Here are few Quotes about Team work

"Individual commitment to a group effort--that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work." --Vince Lombardi

"Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships." --Michael Jordan

"Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results." --Andrew Carnegie

"Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much." --Helen Keller

ADVANTAGES OF GROUPS

Advantages of groups include unity, innovation, creativity, encouragement, satisfaction, support and speed.

Group work creates a sense of unity which accompanies a positive work environment.  Implementing a sense of unity promotes a sense of togetherness. This helps the different departments of an organization to meet their goals and targets.

Successful team work increases innovation.  When members of a team brainstorm for selection, it promotes the inception of new ideas and concepts that will move an organization forward.  It helps to reach goals more efficiently.

Exploring different skills, knowledge and personal attributes during teamwork enforces creativity.  This allows new ideas and solution to be generated which will lead the organization to greater heights. 

Development of groups leads to mutual encouragement.  Support of various talents and abilities produces an extremely effective and efficient team.  It creates an atmosphere of weaknesses to grow into great strength.

Group work ensure satisfactory services in an organization. Continuity of interaction between team members produces enthusiasm and more work strength.  This elevates the discharge capacity of the team leading them to achieve satisfactory results.

Team works help to make support readily available for weaker members of a team.  It covers up weaknesses, and possibility of loop holes.  This helps to ensure that the organization records great achievements on the long run.

One of the things that boost productivity and attract the appreciation of an organization is speed.  Team work allows jobs to be finished faster.  It allows an organization to achieve great things in a short while.

DISADVANTAGES OF GROUPS

Complications that could arise during group works include inherent conflicts, unequal participation, longer working process, emotional instability, inferiority complex, superiority contests and distraction of opposite sex.

1. Inherent Conflicts: An organization is an environment that consists of people who are having their first working experience, people who have worked in other organizations and old members of an organization.  These set of people have different perspectives about the operations in an organization.  They have different experiences and concepts of business solutions.  These could sometimes lead to conflicts while working together.  This is because everyone sees their ideas as the best.

2. Unequal Participation: Group work encourages unequal participation.  It creates an avenue for passive workers to relax while others are actively engaged.  This is not good enough as everyone gets equally paid for the job on the long run.

3. Longer Working Process: Group operations sometimes delay the conclusion of a project in some cases.  This can happen in a situation where an organization has new set of staffs. It could also occur if that is the first time a team work is done among the staffs.

4)     Emotional Instability:  People who are emotionally unstable will do work better when they are alone.  Different occurrences are encountered during group work that could stir up a negative emotion like anger.  Such person becomes liability to the group rather than an asset.  It will slow down the job.

5)     Inferiority Complex:  Some staffs of an organization find it difficult to operate among people who are more skilful and experienced than they are.  Such staffs fear being down sized and would rather work alone.

6)     Superiority Contests:  Some staffs do not fully have the knowledge of group work. They lack the ethics.  Contentions could occur among these staffs based on who joined the organization first, who is more familiar at the top management level and who is older.  This allows the staffs to toss the job from one person to another.  Withdrawal to play their parts leads to job delay and substandard services.

7. Distraction of Opposite Sex: Some organizations have lascivious staffs that were successfully able to hide such traits during interview.  These types of staffs will be a threat to the growth of the organization.  This is because they would spend time seducing and lusting after an opposite sex during a team work.  This is bad news for the company.

FACTORS AFFECTING GROUP EFFECTIVENESS

1. Group Cohesiveness: This is the degree to which members are attracted to a group, are motivated to remain in the group and are mutually or positively influenced by one another.
2. Group Attractiveness: When group members are attracted to one another, it helps to build a strong work force.
3. Group Satisfaction: The evaluation that members make of the worth of their membership in the group effect the members satisfaction in the group work.  The values of the members help to determine how satisfied the members are with each other.
4. Group Culture: The culture of a group will influence the norm or expected behaviour of group members.  A low level of commitment among the group members will result in poor performance.  It will go further to reduce the effectiveness of the active members in the team.

Orientating individuals on the roles they have to play to make group work successful will guarantee group effectiveness. Members of a group should identify their areas of interest.  This will ensure that they contribute their quota in any team work.  An effective verbal and non-verbal communication skill will help the team to relate well, have a mutual understanding and achieve great results.