Good teamwork provides an organisation with a diversity of thought, creativity, wider perspectives, more opportunities, and improved problem-solving approaches.
There are numerous benefits to be gained from encouraging and developing teamwork across all functions within a business and here are a few examples:
Teamwork Provides Improved Efficiency and Productivity
Teamwork allows the workload to be shared, reducing the pressure on individuals, and ensures that tasks are completed on time.
Goals become more attainable, performance is enhanced and crucially it improves job satisfaction and increases work pace.
Ultimately, when a group of individuals works together, compared to one person working alone, they promote a more efficient work output and are able to complete tasks faster, due to many minds collaborating on the same goals and objectives of the business.
Teamwork Provides Great Learning Opportunities
A team that is working well enables all team members to learn from each other. This can be,
- showing by example
- how to get things done to a high standard
- learning from each other’s mistakes, thus avoiding errors in the future.
Gaining insight from differing perspectives helps both experienced and new members develop fresh ideas and develop their skill sets – which in turn leads to more effective approaches to idea generation and creativity.
Teamwork Promotes Workplace Synergy
Shared goals across functions builds the platform for mutual support and cooperation and leads to a greater sense of accomplishment. Being collectively responsible for outcomes, gives individuals within all team, the incentive to perform at higher levels and helps team members appreciate that their actions and output, can impact on others.
I have been fortunate to have worked in teams that have demonstrated exceptional levels of teamwork and they all showed strong elements of:
- Commitment and trust in their colleagues
- Open lines of communications at all levels across the organisation
- Diversity of capabilities – successful teams usually have a mixture of skills and experience – not everyone has to be a superstar or a rainmaker!
- Adaptability to changing conditions and an ability to cope with adversity
- Confidence in each other and a creative approach to objectives and problem solving
A final thought on teamwork from a sporting context which I think it transfers easily to a business environment as well:
