How teamwork can better your life

“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

Teamwork is a very essential skill for any business to succeed. When people work together efficiently, smartly, and cooperatively, it can boost the level of productivity, creativity, success, and communication.

Every individual is gifted with unique talents, ideas, and skills. And when all of these are brought to the table and explored, it gives the company a competitive advantage.

Teamwork doesn’t work perfectly for just companies. Families, sports, and even music bands, all know the importance of working together. In today’s world, the importance of teamwork cannot be overemphasized.

Successful businesses thriving in the world today rely on teamwork to accomplish their overall objectives and goals.

Using football as a case study to better explain teamwork, each player is responsible and accountable for the success of the team by trusting, collaborating, and maintaining strong coordination with other teammates.

If one teammate is down, the entire football team is affected. The same goes for the office team and team members: collaboration, trust, and coordination are powerful tools.

The benefits attributed to teamwork are numerous, and it benefits both the individuals and company involved.

How teamwork can better your life

New and unique ideas:

Teamwork among different groups of persons is bound to bring about diverse contributions as a result of the enthusiasm to input something. This is because new and unique ideas are necessary and vital in a competitive business environment.

Different, ages, backgrounds, abilities, talents, and experiences can help to bring about unique perspectives all waiting to be heard and explore.

As a boss, creating a safe place for individuals to work together as a team without fear of judgment, objection to ideas, oppression, and criticism will allow the flow of views, techniques, and ideas.

Even at home, the head of the house cannot work alone to improve the home without ideas and contributions from other members of the family.

Enhanced efficiency and productivity:

getting people to work together can boost efficiency and productivity. It is more like division of labor: speedy input and output.

Using the home as a case study, when chores such as cleaning, cooking, gardening, and mopping are shared among members of the family, it results in effective running of the home.

Likewise, in a company, managerial and administrative tasks can be divided into smaller and easier chunks for effective results. It is also great to ensure each individual works on a task he/she is more skilled at or prefer to also boost productivity.

“teamwork makes the dream work”. –John C. Maxwell

Combined Expertise:

Engaging more than one or two persons to complete a task or project can help you achieve a level of excellence generally.

Too much load on one person can be very disappointing and cause inefficiency. When teamwork is involved, the best results are delivered because all hands are on deck and different professionals are working hard to put in their best.

Teamwork leads to proficiency and greater quality on a regular basis simply because you are not relying solely on one person.

“the way a team plays as a whole determines its success, you may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime”. –Babe Ruth

Boosted morale:

People feel better about themselves and the task at hand when done with other people. Self-esteem signifies the importance of teamwork in an organization.

People feel good when their work and ideas are appreciated and valued, that their contributions were part of a successful project and they had something good to offer. This boosted morale can make every part of your business better as employees would want to engage more.

Group influence:

Teamwork can ensure every member has a common and similar goal. Influence is of utmost importance for organizations with a goal to succeed.

Without it, each individual will apply efforts to suit their own goal which can cause a stunt to business growth. So, with every single member of the group working to achieve the same result for a given task, productivity and effectiveness become a goal.

” the best teamwork comes from men who are working independently toward one goal in unison”. –James Cash Penney

Learning opportunities:

Teamwork can reveal the hidden strengths and weaknesses of every member. Hence, it calls for learning and cooperation: each member gets to learn from the others’ strengths and improve upon the weaknesses of the other.

In the process, everyone tends to learn, avoid mistakes, improve, expand their knowledge and skills, do things effectively and build stronger foundations.

“to build a strong team, you must see someone else’s strength as a complement to your weakness and not a threat to your position or authority” –Stephen Covey

Sense of fulfillment:

The encouragement, remarks, and support gotten from the team of persons you work with can boost your mood, enhance a sense of fulfillment, and also the eagerness to contribute more when another project is brought on board.

It becomes a self-fulfilling cycle where accomplishment breeds accomplishment, progress breeds progress and success breeds success.

Quick innovations:

If one person is tasked with a problem to solve, the end result will be less, incomplete, and wouldn’t be done accurately. It is even possible for the problem to be solved after a deadline.

But if a team is tasked with a problem that requires an immediate solution, ideas and results from all corners would surface. This means that teamwork results in rapid and quick delivery of solutions.

Less involvement of management:

When a group of persons work as a team, it brings about self-monitoring and supervision amongst members. This means that managers do not have to involve themselves as often as they do with individual projects.

Stronger working relationships:

People working together as a team can help to form strong working relationships amongst themselves. This may grow to become a strong bond or a mutual and solid relationship based on trust.

This is beneficial for the company as it can breed good communication, firm support, motivation, and cooperation. These traits can be nurtured by teamwork.

Lesser workload=lesser stress:
stress is a silent killer and can cause serious health complications. Working in a stressful environment can have adverse effect on productivity and the overall health of every member.

Teamwork ensures that workload is shared amongst team members to reduce the impact of stress levels. Each team member can work on a task they enjoy and are more skilled at using effective collaborative tools and apps.

Teamwork is fun

Teamwork is inspiring, fun, brings humor and friendship. It is pleasurable because you are not alone. Working solely on a task can become boring and hectic as well.

Teamwork can ensure the working environment breeds positivity and happiness. Try exercising with team members on special days, go out for a team lunch to build bonds and boost team spirit, celebrate small victories, share memories, go on picnics and tours and see how teamwork can make work a whole lot of fun.

“If you take out the team in teamwork, it just works. Now who wants that?” – Matthew Woodring Strover

Promotes risk-taking

A team member feels safe and confident to take risks, think outside the box and come out with preferable solutions. Working alone might cause hesitancy to take risks. When you work as a team, you are trusted to take risks and have the support of the entire group, if you should fail.

“in teamwork, silence isn’t golden, it’s deadly”. –Mark Sanborn

Tips for effective teamwork

Successful teamwork can boost productivity level. For successful and effective teamwork, certain factors need to be acknowledged. While most workgroups are effective, complete their tasks and achieve goals, others remain dysfunctional for a very long time.

Both the team player and team member need to follow certain tips and adhere to certain rules for the good of the organization. The tips for effective teamwork include:

A successful end result is a top priority for any teamwork. To boost capability and eagerness, there should be a reward for successful teamwork.
Each member should be aware of their assigned roles as well as the roles assigned to other members for better functionality and accountability.
A team with a fixed goal and deadline will be able to work effectively. Therefore, a standard goal and a deadline should be set in place.
Team members should be able to express feelings and communicate thoughts, ideas, and opinions freely and other members should pay attention to contributions.
Trust is an important value for successful teamwork. When there is trust, members feel comfortable to communicate, share ideas and take relevant actions.
Decision making should be based on effective communication and collective idea, as a team.
Practices, methods, and processes should be improved. Without doing this, problems will not be tackled effectively.
Team members should avoid discriminatory remarks such as “what a dumb idea” or “we don’t think it can work out”.
Validate the successes of each team member.

Final thoughts

We have come across this proverb that says “two heads are better than one”. Meaning, it is helpful to seek the advice or opinion of another person or even a group of persons and it is also easier for more than one person to solve a problem.

Collaboration and teamwork show that people working together in a group allows for innovation and expansion. Teamwork can effectively double or triple the strength of an idea.