TEAMWORK
Following on from my accountability story, thought I would share this with you.
There are certain characteristics that a team must have to work effectively.
Group cohesion must be strong within the team. There has to be a positive relationship between group cohesion and performance. If not this can lead to bitterness and agitation within the team and a loose, loose situation for everybody.
Communication is another vital characteristic of effective teamwork. Members must be able to effectively communicate with each other to overcome obstacles, resolve conflict, and avoid confusion. Communication increases cohesion. That seems simple, however, I have seen cases that two team members that literally sit next to each other in the office will send each other e-mails instead of having a verbal discussion. Do not do that, please communicate properly.
Communication is important within teams to clearly define the team's purpose so that there is a common goal. Having a common goal will increase cohesion because all members are striving for the same objective and will help each other achieve their goals.
Commitment is another important characteristic of teams. It occurs when members are focused on achieving the team’s common goal.
Good old Accountability comes up again.
Accountability is necessary to ensure milestones are reached and that all members are participating. Holding members accountable increases commitment within team relations.
Open communication is great and it can help to avoid any unnecessary conflicts.
The team must have effective coordination to avoid confusion and make the rest of the team what their goals are.
All team members must cooperate to perform the tasks promptly and produce the required results, especially in the form of workload sharing.
This is a positive, share the workload, work smarter not harder.
Team members must be interdependent to maintain high levels of trust, risk-taking, and performance.
Team members encourage and support each other on their individual tasks.
Teamwork performance generally improves when a team starts to tell together and to trust each other. Enhanced coordination and communication between the team members will increase teamwork and collaborative work.
A good solid team can also help with the following:
Problem-solving: A group of people can bring together various perspectives and combine views and opinions to rapidly and effectively solve an issue. Due to the team’s culture, each team member has a responsibility to contribute equally and offer their unique perspective on a problem to arrive at the best possible solution. Overall, teamwork can lead to better decisions, products, or services. The effectiveness of teamwork depends on the following five components of working together as a team:
Communication, coordination, mutual support, effort, and cohesion.
Healthy competition: A healthy competition in groups can be used to motivate individuals and help the team excel, be supportive and when things are not working take a time out and discuss together what is not working and what we can do to change and get back on track.
Developing relationships: A team that continues to work together will eventually develop an increased level of bonding. This can help members avoid unnecessary conflicts since they have become well acquainted with each other through teamwork. By building strong relationships between members, team members’ satisfaction with their team increases, therefore improving both teamwork and performance. I always recommend taking the team away for a bonding session where that be to clay pigeon shooting, paintballing, or just down to the local bar for a few beers. This is VERY IMPORTANT, trust me been there, got the t-shirt.
Individual qualities: Every team member can offer their unique knowledge and ability to help improve other team members. Through teamwork, the sharing of these qualities will allow team members to be more productive in the future.
Motivation: Working collaboratively can lead to increased motivation levels within a team due to increasing accountability for individual performance. When groups are being compared, members tend to become more ambitious to perform better. Providing groups with a comparison standard increases their performance level thus encouraging members to work collaboratively.
There is always a however I feel when discussing motivation, you need a good, no GREAT team leader/boss/coach, that is very important. Ah I hear you say what is a great coach, well to be a great coach/boss, the team leader is somebody that inspires their team, listens, has empathy towards their team members, gives feedback, preferably positive and is a great communicator, keep it simple.
Seems simple really, well not really it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to become a great TEAM but I know all you budding team leader out there can do it if I can you can. Keep the faith.
Thanks for reading.
Eddie
