All our lives, we consciously or not take part in teamwork. Any society of people with the same or similar interests or activities turns us into something like a team. Kindergarten, school, university, work. At each of these stages of life, we either form a team, or it is created by itself. This is not to mention sports, the army, medical workers, and other jobs, which require working in a team as very important. The whole society is one big team with its small teams inside.
Well, or at least it should be ideally. But not always teamwork leads to good results and not always everything goes smoothly, because there are a lot of nuances in the formation and work of any team. In this article, we will try to work out what affects the success of good teamwork and how to set up the workflow so that everything works like a clock.
What is teamwork?
Before discussing something about coordinated work and rules of customisation, let’s try to understand the teamwork definition. Business vocabulary tells us that:
teamwork is a process of work of different people in collaboration on the achievement of one common goal.
businessdictionary.com refers to this definition of teamwork:
the process of working collaboratively with a group of people in order to achieve a goal. Teamwork is often a crucial part of a business, as it is often necessary for colleagues to work well together, trying their best in any circumstance.
Teamwork means that people will try to cooperate, using their individual skills and providing constructive feedback, despite any personal conflict between individuals.
That is, by definition, we understand that this should be collaborative teamwork and that there should be certain goals. There are a lot of things between these two reference points, but let’s push off from them and see a little more in detail.
Proper team building
The main problem of the work of any group of people over something common is that teamwork does not mean teamwork. Moreover, if a group of people is very large, you can’t just collect motivated enthusiasts who are ready to sweat over something and shout out something like “Our goal is to build a ship! Let’s go!”.
Although, unfortunately, many companies operate on this principle. Best of all, when a group is selected to fulfill an already formed specific goal. Because it is easier to understand who should have what skills, what should be the size of this group and how long their work should take.
But it’s not always the case. For example, in the field of startups, investors seeing an average quality product still invest in it and give creators a lot of money precisely because they see potential in people, not in the product. They invest in a team that can then create anything like that because they are worked out and are friendly with each other.
Regardless of whether you have a goal or not, there are certain rules for creating teams.
- the team should not be huge. For effective work, 4-8 people are enough. Otherwise, it will be chaos and destruction
- each team member must have a set of skills that will complement the skills of other people
- each person should strive to achieve the goal using a common method and carrying out his tasks according to a general plan
The team must have a sense of purpose, internal communication, the ability to clearly plan anything, work together, and most importantly have a synergy, which means two properly selected people will be able to work for three. This is a collaborative work. And if you are not interested in the tasks assigned, people do not know you, and you don’t know how to work with them at all, and what they can do, you are forced to work, what does teamwork mean to you?
Goal setting
Correctly setting a goal is no less important than choosing the right team. Let’s look at the example of a group of students who are working on one common task. Suppose they know each other, they are friends, their skills and knowledge cover all the necessary tasks in the assigned task. What could be the problem? That people are always people.
No matter how ideally you pick up a team, there is always something that will make the job much harder than you expected. For example, someone from the team will be very strong precisely when his skills will be needed most. Someone will have better things, or a friend relationship will somehow affect the communication within the team.
Therefore, setting goals also has its own characteristics.
– First, put a deadline with a small margin. Deadline before the main deadline is usually called “redline”. Usually, this is the moment when the work needs to be completed and simply brought into the human form, to make minor edits.
– Secondly, the goal must be such that the team wants to strive for it because it is important to understand that it suits everyone and no one wants to offer something else. This is one of the difficulties of teamwork – you need to listen to everyone or be such a leader so that no one argues with you.
– Finally, it is also worth considering that the goal should consist of the same number of sub-goals and tasks that can be divided among all people and it should be really feasible.
Summing up setting the clock mechanism
If you are loaded with homework and you do not have time to work on an important project, you can always delegate the work to professionals. For example, use tools available on the Internet like the PapersOwl UK writing service. With the help of such services, you can forget about working on boring or complex topics, reading tons of unnecessary literature or burning deadlines that can work on something else or relax. Win yourself a little time, pull up the scores for any subject you need and get the highest quality work in terms before the deadline.
Delegation and the ability to prioritise are important skills in any teamwork. If the task is too difficult for you, give it to someone who will make it better and faster. Do not let the team. If you have too many tasks, prioritise and take on the most important at the beginning. Take care of strength and be able to relax.
If someone who is ready to do everything appears in the team and immediately uses all of their skills and internal resources, this can be a huge disadvantage for the final goal. Because everyone knows that at his maximum speed a person will not be able to work for a long time and sooner or later he will burn out leaving the team with a bunch of unfinished tasks that no one else can do. Such upstarts often do more harm than good and need to be avoided or calmed down in time.
Try to always take into account the above rules for setting up fir trees and grouping people. This will help you avoid many problems and achieve your goals much easier and faster. Always remember that problems will wait for you always whatever you do.
But by adhering to simple tips, you can significantly reduce their seriousness and quantity to a permissible and one that does not affect the work. To keep track of the team’s command and understand where the error occurred, it is important always to record everything. Not only the initial and final stages but any discussions, decisions, and negotiations. To appoint a responsible person, to appoint a leader, to appoint a performer for each specific task with clearly defined deadlines.
All these little things will affect the final result of the work, time and quality. Understanding the importance of all these rules comes only with time and experience. And it is not always necessary to include a great schedule when the schoolchildren team is faced with the task of making several stools. Sometimes it is even superfluous. Now you really know why is collaboration important and how to set up a team to almost perfect condition — good luck!