What is Teamwork and Team?

A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.

Teamwork has become a critical issue for many organization and self-managing teams are often viewed as the goal of team work development programs. The increased stress on professionals to perform their tasks with fewer employees, at faster speeds, and with more quality and customer responsiveness creates the need for team work. This is especially apparent in research and development organizations where the complexity of new products and reduced life cycle of new products makes team work a necessity.

Research and development activities, however, have unique characteristics which might facilitate or reduce the effectiveness of self-managing teams. An important leadership competency for any size organization, the ability to build and lead high performing teams is especially critical in small and medium businesses. Here, people must work closely together, where many hats and work effectively across the organization to get tasks accomplished quickly enough to remain competitive

Characteristics for Effective and successful Teamwork is ten as below:

1. Commitment: Commitment to team success and shared goals - team members are committed to the success of the team and their shared goals for the project. Successful teams are stimulated and promoted and aim to achieve the highest level of commitment from team members to work together effectively to achieve team goals and is an important factor in the success of the team. The relationships team members develop out of this commitment are keys to team building and team success.
2. Interdependence - team members need to create an environment where together they can contribute far more than as individuals. Interdependent a positive interdependent team environment brings out the best in each person enabling the team to achieve their goals at a far superior level. Individuals promote and encourage their fellow team members to achieve, contribute, and learn; goal.
3. Interdependence: is expected to impact on the openness of the discussion that in turn affects relationship development and productivity in turn are expected to affect the extent the incident results in commitment to the team and beliefs that the team members is resourceful. Support risk taking and change Good teams support right risk taking and workout for change. They look on first time fault as chance for learning. Open communication and positive feedback - Effective listening to the interests and needs of team members, rating their supporting and expressing this helps makes an effective working environment. Team members must be willing to make and receive constructive criticism and provide real feedback. Team members should be willing to give and receive constructive criticism and provide authentic feedback;
4. Open and honest communication: Communication is the close brother of chemistry. In any team, communication is critical to building a sense of fellowship among members. The manner of communication how freely and frequently team members communicate determines the effectiveness of the team. Simply speaking, the more freely you talk to fellow team members, the more comfortable you will be in sharing ideas and ideas. This is just one major reason why modern businesses emphasize communication and collaboration tools. The most important part of communication is listening. Listening is not just a way to find things out. It's also a sign of respect. So send the message that your discussion partner is important. Listen like you mean it. Demonstrate that you're listening. Paraphrase, repeat, and react to what you hear, ask for clarification and get involved.
5. Defined roles: Roles may transmit to some extent once the team is assembled, but understands the skill sets and thinking styles are needed on the team. If the team needs to develop a new product for the market, it will need a detailed person (the main task holder), a regular system that can keep the team on track. The explorer will be more of big-picture thinkers who can help the team see what is possible. The number cruncher will take responsibility of measurement and metrics. The team may have other roles to fill, but you should have a good role in those roles before you start hiring. Once you have a plan for those basics, begin choosing the strongest team members to carry out the project.
6. Common goals: A main characteristic of any successful team is that members put the common goal above the personal interests. While grading individual goals is great for personal morale, is a motivation for team , when they understand, appreciate and work with a common purpose the teams will succeed
7. Encourage differences in opinions: Agreeing on a common goal is essential. But it shouldn't come at the damage of crush alternative ideas and opinions. Having divergent opinions within a team reinforce team performance; a diverse team is its competitive advantage.
8. Different opinions in one team create imagination and new ideas. Imagination and new ideas stir creativity. Unless the status is intimidated and questioned, you won't find those conclusive ""out of the box"" ideas.
9. Collaboration: Close collaboration is a type shared by every successful team, whether it is the leadership team or one of the member team The idea is simple enough, the more you collaborate and the more you communicate and share the more you create.
10. Team trust: Team members who cannot trust one other or who don't believe in the process and goals of the team they cannot find success. Effective teams focus on solving problems. Trust is an base of effective communication; there can be trust between team members only if they are allowed to say their views freely. This is the reason why organizations often undertake team-building exercises that put team members in positions of trust
11. Mutually accountable: Teams should accept responsibility as individuals and as a team. They don't blame one another for team mistakes and failures. No one should spend any time in personal justifications. They must celebrate their successes together and recognize the special performance and contributions of each member of the team for the work of the entire team. Decisions are made by consensus, open to change, innovation and a creative solution to the problem.

A manager's task is to understand, plan and monitor all these different processes. This seemingly complex and unwieldy task is easier to understand and manage when broken down into its component parts. The open systems model of team work can help to explain and characterize effective team-work processes. Schermerhorn and colleagues suggest that teamwork can be considered as a three stage sequence; inputs, throughputs and outputs.

Such as work, solutions and satisfactions Inputs are factors which are controlled and influenced by management. They include 'climate', the atmosphere under which the team works, and 'group configuration', how the team is put together, who is selected to work in it and why. Management will also influence how a team should work by making sure at the outset that the team strategy is in line with the vision and strategic direction of the organization and that it uses the organization's preferred work practices; for example, face-to-face or virtual working.

Throughputs refer to the activities and tasks that help to transform inputs into outputs. They may have the greatest influence on effective team work as they include team processes such as developing and maintaining cohesiveness, and communication. They also involve task activities which get the work done and maintenance activities which support the development and smooth functioning of the team.

Outputs are those (successful) outcomes which satisfy organizational or personal goals or other predetermined criteria. The success of outputs may be assessed by a number of stakeholders, including the organization itself and team members, and by a range of other stakeholders. Team outputs include the performance of team tasks and individual outputs (such as professional development).

• A lack of leadership: The most reason why people often fail to work together as a team is a absence of leadership. Every team needs a leader to set expectations, and keep the group focused in goals. A leader should be able to provide positive reinforcement to help keep everyone motivated, and team spirits up. However a team leader also needs to be able to hold people accountable. This doesn't mean that they need to be mean and strict. Instead by setting clear standards, and being fair if punctuality is needed, a leader can create the kind of positive environment where teamwork succeed
• Teamwork strengths and weaknesses are not taken into account: In each team there exists a wide range of different types of people with different skills. By taking into consideration what each team member do well you can have them work on areas of a project that they are best suited for. On the opposite end of the shadow team members who have a weakness in a certain area should be given help to bring their skill level up, or if necessary they should be assigned work that avoids this weakness
• Fear of failure: When employees are afraid that their fault will be grasped against them they are often afraid to help come up with new solutions. While there are certain types of mistakes that an employee should be held accountable for, there are others that should be viewed as part of a creative process
• Weak communications between team members: One of the biggest reasons why teamwork is unsuccessful is that there are not enough meetings where open and honest communication is confident. During team meetings the leaders should open the meeting explaining progress or decline. After this the team members should be motivated to voice any concerns, as long as they do so in a positive way. Any time one side misunderstands the words or actions of another, it has the potential to create conflict. Poor communication is frustrating in the workplace and can lead to poor performance, lack of teamwork, low morale and reduced profits. Fortunately, there are ways to improve communication and reduce conflict.
• Lack of incentive: One magnificent way to encourage a team of employees is to give them an incentive to work together toward a common goal. You don't necessarily have to award material awards, but you can offer them something. Giving employees extra motivation to work toward a common goal can go a long way in the team building process.
• Individuals don't feel included: For a team to be successful each member needs to pull their own weight. For this to happen they need to feel welcome, and appreciated. Make sure that you encourage an environment where communication is open and honest, and where team members are never punished for speaking up about a problem.
• Lack of defined goals: If you want a group of employees to turn into a team then you need to give the group a goal, and also give each team member individual goals. By clearly outlining what is expected of them, you can keep your employees focus.
• The presence of disruptive personalities: Another reason why there is often difficulty in employees working as a team is the presence of troublemaking personalities. Sometimes some employees are sad and disruptive, which can have a most important negative impact upon the team of employees. It only takes one bad employee to cause major problems. If there is one of these bad employees in the group, and they cannot be reformed, then ending their employment for the good of the team will probably be necessary.
• Lack of Cohesion: he ineffective team often consists of individuals who do not mix well, or do not have the skills needed to perform the diverse work. Some teams may have too many members with the same skills, while other teams suffer from a lack of proper training. The team leader must draw attention to the specific talents of each member and use them correctly and clearly to determine why each member's assignments are assigned during the process. Daily goals and reviews prevent members from taking on other members' tasks out of habit or circumstance.
• Lack of proper training: If you want your employees to work well as a team then you need to make sure that all of them have proper training. In addition to training new employees you should also conduct additional training on a regular basis to help and support company goals and policy. Ongoing training is a great way to make sure that all employees are aware of their responsibilities, and feel a part of the team. Lack of collaboration, Workplace failures can happen when collaboration and team skills are absent. Without strong collaboration and communication skills, you can lose productivity and money. You need to add in other skill group, such as leadership and decision-making to control your team.

When individuals come together to form a team they don't necessarily possess the skills, attitudes and behavior required to work well together. There are several studies which set the importance of team processes which are important in reaching goals. All teams formed are not effective and it needs thorough process involved to build effective teams. There are certain factors which make team effective; they are clearly defined goals, leadership and equity in terms of power distribution. The democratic tasks of the team, such as participation and involvement of all members, are important and where members feel they are valuable in the team. Work ethic and team culture are very important for a health team, especially in the health sector. The team work can bring quality in the services for the patients in providing services efficiently and effectively provide team are formed well and their capacity building is done and conflict are managed well. There has been lots of example where failure of team works. Most research also highlights on such incidences on failure of team and therefore it's important to build effective team not just following directive.

Ref:

1. Mike Schoultz writes about improving the performance of business. Bookmark his blog for stories and articles. www.digitalsparkmarketing.com
2. Mar 2, 2017
3. The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA First published 2010. This edition 2011
4. Teamwork on April 19, 2014 by belsan.
5. Stanford University: Characteristics of Ineffective Teams

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