The Importance of Teamwork and Leadership

In business management, a team is said to a group of people who work together while depending in each other together with cooperating each other in order to satisfy to accomplish common objective or goal. A team can be create to achieve long term and/or short term objectives. For example a team for product development will last more longer to achieve planning and operational objectives. Other example of teams lasting for longer time are senior of company.

Some people also use the word “team” when they mean “employees.” A “sales team” is a common example of this loose or perhaps euphemistic usage, though interdependencies exist in organisations, and a sales team can be let down by poor performance on other parts of the organisation upon which sales depend, like delivery, after-sales service, etc.. However “sales staff” is a more precise description of the typical arrangement.

Groups develop into teams in four stages. The four stages are: dependency and inclusion, counterdependency and fighting, trust and structure, and work. In the first stage, group development is characterized by members’ dependency on the designated leader. In the second stage, the group seeks to free itself from its dependence on the leader and groups have conflicts about goals and procedures. In the third stage, the group manages to work through the conflicts. And in the last stage, groups focus on team productivity. [5]

Teamwork and leadership

There is no single of definition of team but generally agreed definition with with team is group of people with a different technical knowledge who join each other to achieve a common objectives or goal.

Working in a team is generally everyone agreed that would benefits every one whether its participant and company.

There are number of reason why the way teams were used are changed including the changing technology together development of new ways of doing business but the benefit that can obtain from are not changed together with the underlying principle for the formation of teams.

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In the working of team distance is not very important barier and changing technology and communication methods allow people to work in a team despite of being separated wide a part with in different location with in same country or at diferrent location spreaded across the globe.

Infact in some companies due to difference in time zones team members can work and make progress on a project around 24 hours in a day six days a week and by doing so they are actually utilizing maximum time.

As practically seen people working in organization use this geographical different and difference in time zone in the advantages of company in such a way that for example a company office in Australia or in the UK with location in other countries have benefit from such arrangement.

One of the common example of this is virtual team s which are getting more and more common with time and there member of teams are never saw each other face to face but they collaborate through vaious channels through telephone, online meeting methods through use of internet and of course emailing.

Many organization are now aware with the benefits of working in teams and importance of team as most effective and efficient of running a business and doing a task. The old job title of supervisor is now used as team leader.

And the reason why more and more companies are using this ways is because it gives benefit and produce desirable results and also because in this companies can motivate their employees and keep their morale up through making them feel themselves being valued and realizing them of their role in achieving overall objective.

Its very motivating for people to become part of something that give them recognition and where their worth is acknowledged.

The key question to ask here is why some companies fail to obtain any worthwhile benefit from teamwork which why should have.

The are number of answer for this question but most importantly is why a team fail to achieve is objective depends on poor composition of team.

The composition of team is very important and should be said as critical for the overall success and the reason why its is essential hidden in the definition of team.

The definition of team says that a team is what we called a group of people who possess some specialize but individual knowledge and/ or skills when join with each other to achieve a common objective then a synergy( when the sum of individuals potential result in more collective whole ) is obtained but it can on work when teamwork is consistent and effective.Team work give benefit to company because not every individual can be perfect and therefore in team one member overcome the lacking of other member.

In order for the team to perform well and achieve synergies, people working in the team must work with a positive attitude and with firm commitment to the achievement of the objectives of team. Working in harmony with effective communication and cooperation within team is critical to achieve the success and if team is not follow above principle the team can’t obtain the expected benefits as it should have.

In order for a team to work effectively, a very clear and common understanding of the objective and goals and strategies to achieve those objectives is very critical. Team members must know why reason behind the existence of the team and what are its objectives and goals.

The above mention three factors are very important for the formation of a team and therefore must be in place in order for the team to achieve its objectives as not every team get success or formation of a team is not gurranteed to success but one has to make sure that above mention characteristic must be there for its success.

And important thing companies need to ensure in order to make an effective and efficient team is to make sure that team has all the required knowledge and resource whether its financial or human resource or any other one. Team members selection must be done with care and companies need to ensure every required knowledge is present in the team and together with teams need to have firm commitment towards the achievement of goal of a team.

If an organization have right team members in place with all the required knowledge and with right approach towards the objectives of team, a team synergy will definitely take over. But first they required element must be there and team members must be kept motivate and participative.

Financial service industry team:

Financial serives industry is a industry which provide service related to finance or in other words financial services are those services which are provided by finance industry which include a very wide variety of companies and other organization as well whost prime activity is to deal with money or to be more precise its management of money. These example of these organization includes banks, companies operating in insurance industry, companies working for consumer finance, those organization which deal with stock commonly known as stock brokerages and also included funds for the management of investment such as mutual funds.

Types of team

There are number of classification to divide team into various types include distinctinction based on the fact that some teams are independent and while others are interdependent for example a rugby team can be said as interdependent due to following reason:

Success of team based on cooperationwith in the team as team members comprises of individual with specialize skills such goal kicking etc and success of team is very much dependent on the team work of team members as one individual no matter how much talented he is cannot win this game on its own.

Now if we look the independent team the most common example of this type teams is chess team.

In the chess individual play either in partner ship or individually and win matched on the basis of their own performance as if a team member win a game or loss it wont affect directly the performance of other individual.

There are many other examples of independent teams such as group of people in class solving individually a particular maths problem and therefore the outcome of one individual performance wont affect the performance of other class mate.

As the teams classification make them either independent or dependent that’s exactly how the approaches to manage them is different for example if coaching provided to interdependent team for example a football team will emphasis on different tasks while coaching of an independent team will emphasis on exactly different factors. The reason behind this argument is the requirement of the team members with in these two different categories differ significantly in terms of intrinsic incentives to motivate them and keep their behaviour positive.

The interdependent team would focus on approach of getting to know each other in order to understand each others behaviour, nature and develop trust on each other.

While on independent these acitivities have no real importance and will be consider by participant of independent team as waste of time while they prefer more training related to job.

Self-managed teams:

Under normal circumstance a manager act as team leader who is largely responsible for and have authority to define the goals, objectives, strategies and proper functioning of a team but there teams which are structure with hierarchical models of control are often unable to properly the issues that may arise due to interdependencies and any possible conflicts across the organization’s different parts. On the other hand use of self manage team create clear borders in order to give freedom and responsibility regarding completion of task in hand with in effective and efficient way.

The key idea behind these of type of teams is mutual consensus to the extend that leaders in these team do not act authority in decision making due to its positioning but in an ideal self managed team decisions are made with mutual consensus through voting.

Organization normally use self managed team for those project which are highly complex in nature which involve normally research, process improvement, design or systemic issues resolution, normally include people from different departments within people involve are of same seniority. As mention the type of leadership required with in self managed teams is very different from the way traditionally leadership style followed in normal circumstance and the reason this difference is due to overcome the problems found in traditional models of leadership but still a self manage team required guidance and support from the top management to keep it working effectively.

The characteristic found in self managed team are very different from the traditional teams and therefore simply calling a team as self manage wont make it self managed team until it contain the characteristic identified above in it.

Once a self manage team start working successfully, organization can delegate more and more authority and responsibility to it which makes it more productive and members of team will develop an understanding and trust within themselves and therefore work in meaningful ways.

Project teams:

Project team is said to be a team which is made for predefine time period with clearly define and comprehensive objectives and purpose of formation such feasibility study team for a particular project etc.

Project team are called team because a group of people work together to achieve a common objective and in most these team members came from across the organization from various disciplines and function with different knowledge and expertise, they work in project team by taking in the teams activities together with continuing the traditional job (some time). They are viewed as one separately identified unit who is charged with responsibilities towards achievement of common goal.

Sports teams:

Sport normally played by a group of people to achiever common objective such as winning the match and therefore sports team are called team as they match the definition of team but it must be remember sports team no only include those people who are playing match but include people who don’t directly play on the ground but still they are crucial for successful achievement and therefore part of the team such as coaches etc.

Virtual teams:

Virtual is said to be a team which use the technology in order communicate and coordinate includes a group of individuals, work for achievement of common objectives, their work may be interdependent and these individual may share same common purpose to achieve with in a time, resource and other boundaries set when developing a team.

The massive development is information and communication technologies make this virtual team idea possible in reality as virtual teams are spread all over the country even sometime all over the globe and therefore may expose to completely different culture who have rarely met face to face with each other. Most of the virtual teams comprises of people from cross functional area whose main objective is to solve the problems of customers or to generate process for the work.

Interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary teams.

Some teams are interdisciplinary or multidisciplary like in the case of medical science where a number of professionals treat same patient with various problems independently, there eeach one emphasise on their own area of specialization. The problems treated by one professional may or may not related with or any connection with the problem treated by another professional .

What is good team and bad team difference

A team can’t be said as good if it got talent but will be good if it is flexible enough to rapidly evolve and adapt to changing methods in order to carryout work effectively and efficiently.

Critical Thinking Is Essential

Team performance is sharpened by rapidly testing and evolving methods that work for each team member, despite personality differences, skill sets, and critical thinking skills.

Participative leadership – creating an interdependence by empowering, freeing up and serving others.

Shared responsibility – establishing an environment in which all team members feel responsibility as the manager for team performance.

Alignment of purpose – having a sense of common purpose about why the team exists and the function it serves.

High communication – creating a climate of trust and open, honest communication.

Future focused – seeing change as an opportunity for growth.

Focused on task – keeping meetings and interactions focused on results.

Skill Utilization – applying individual talents and creativity.

Rapid response – identifying and acting on opportunities.

Sharpen Performance Through Simplification

Good teams don’t just happen, they become good through consistent action and constructive feedback within an high morale workplace. Feedback that doesn’t get bogged down in the realm of vague philosophy or nitpicking.

Business teams happen in the real world; discovering what works and is a process of collaborative learning and then focusing on what works. The results for your business can be amazing.

We want to be in control of our own destinies. But the old hierarchical model of dictating people’s thoughts and actions doesn’t work in this highly networked yet polarized business world.

The characteristics of a good team that we all enjoy, become liabilities and threats under the thumb of a tyrant. Free thinkers and highly talented and skilled team members don’t need the stress or pressure of putting up with a manager breathing down their neck

Develop a Code of Conduct

Staying consistent within a team setting is about not wavering when hardships occur. Coming up with your team’s code of conduct is about setting rigid boundaries about what is acceptable and what is not. This type of team building is not for weaklings, but it’s essential for establishing the characteristics of a good team.

If you’re serious about extracting top notch performance from your team, the code of conduct you agree upon can not be deviated from. So what are some characteristics of a good team Code Of Conduct? It depends upon you unique objectives, purpose, and values.

According to Jim Collins, discovering a company’s core values is about asking the “right questions,” these questions can be scaled down to fit the needs of your team:

1. What can we be best in the world at?
2. What are you deeply passionate about?
3. What drives your economic engine?

Team building is finding the answers to these same questions, but on a smaller scale. To build an effective team the answers to these questions must mesh in order for you to find alignment in your purpose.

Team members must assign similar value to the core characteristics of a good team and their team’s code of conduct.

You Can’t Force Feed Values

Trying to force values onto people who don’t believe in them is a lesson in futility and frustration – kind of like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

Team members, employees, managers and companies thrive within effective systems and culture where people are empowered by their work. Team members want a culture where their unique knowledge, experience, and motivation make a difference for themselves and their team.

People will choose the values that reflect their own, and easily accept a code of conduct that allows them to take personal ownership over their position. They want to be an integral part of the team.

It’s simple, if your team or company cannot meet the needs of your people or customers, they will find one that can.

The characteristics of a good team are those which choose their values and purpose with care, focus and passion. Then they create a culture that holds people accountable for their actions, while at the same time creating a system of empowerment for the team’s members.

Don’t Pull Their Weight: They simply do not contribute enough. They do not live up to commitments. They do not do enough- adding to the workload of others in the team.

Unwilling to Share: While quick to learn from others and find out all that’s going on, they are loath to share their knowledge and experience with others. They think learning and sharing is “one way traffic”.

Not worthy of Trust: They share the wrong things. If you happen to share a confidence with them, they misuse that information. They do not keep a secret. They like to talk of the problems affecting others while keeping theirs to themselves.

Pursue Personal Goals: While there is nothing wrong in pursuing personal goals- indeed all of us do that- this should not be at the cost of team goals. Ineffective team members are not on the same page as the team. They choose their own priorities and areas of interest- which do not necessarily fit in well with the team’s agenda and priorities.

Blame & Excuses: Excuses for non-performance and blaming others is a common behaviour. Faults lie with others, the kind of work, the facilities, the client- well almost everyone other than themselves.

Unduly Pessimistic & Negative: They are gloomy and pessimistic and do not keep this to themselves. Any idea is met with a cynical comment that it won’t work. Any move to be different is met with resistance without understanding what is involved.

Lack of Sensitivity: Feelings and needs of other team members do not concern them. Yet, they expect their colleagues to be very careful about trampling upon their own feelings. As a result, ineffective team members have no sense of timing, bring up issues at the wrong times and exaggerate perceived insults when none are meant.

Quick to blame others: At the first sign of something going wrong, they look for a scapegoat. Their first priority is to protect themselves. Blame is spread over team members, customers, suppliers, well -almost anybody other than themselves.

Quick to hog credit: Instead of sharing credit, they present information in such a way to suggest that they have been responsible for every success. They bask in the glory though the real work has been done by others.

Unwilling to decide, procrastinate: Really tough to get a decision from them, mainly because they spend huge amounts of time and effort in playing their cards as described above. If they get blamed for the delay, the blame is passed on to others. They would rather use the passage of time to solve problems rather than act vigorously and pro actively to resolve them.

Dump rather then delegate: Under the guise of delegation, low priority or the most difficult work tasks are dumped on their team members. The more visible and glamorous parts of the task are kept to themselves. Dumping takes many forms including passing on tasks without adequate briefing about its importance or priority.

Not worthy of trust: Simply stated, they cannot be trusted. They ask for information, opinions and views, which they then retail depending on the perceived value of the idea. Problems shared are not kept confidential and they lose no time in passing them on as pieces of gossip .

Add no value to their team: Team members do not get the value addition they look up to in a boss. Due to a lack of competence, they are not able to solve issues raised by team members, not able to offer alternates and not able to guide them in times of difficulty.

Poor role model: They don’t walk the talk. They say the organization values some trait but behave in ways totally contrary to stated values. They exhort others to follow norms of behaviour that they don’t follow themselves. They have one rule for themselves and a quite different other for team members.

Thing to consider when building a team

A team building success is when your team can accomplish something much bigger and work more effectively than a group of the same individuals working on their own. You have a strong synergy of individual contributions. But there are two critical factors in building a high performance team.

The first factor in team effectiveness is the diversity of skills and personalities. When people use their strengths in full, but can compensate for each other’s weaknesses. When different personality types balance and complement each other.

The other critical element of team work success is that all the team efforts are directed towards the same clear goals, the team goals. This relies heavily on good communication in the team and the harmony in member relationships.

In real life, team work success rarely happens by itself, without focused team building efforts and activities. There is simply too much space for problems. For example, different personalities, instead of complementing and balancing each other, may build up conflicts. Or even worse, some people with similar personalities may start fighting for authority and dominance in certain areas of expertise. Even if the team goals are clear and accepted by everyone, there may be no team commitment to the group goals or no consensus on the means of achieving those goals: individuals in the team just follow their personal opinions and move in conflicting directions. There may be a lack of trust and openness that blocks the critical communication and leads to loss of coordination in the individual efforts. And on and on. This is why every team needs a good leader who is able to deal with all such team work issues.

Here are some additional team building ideas, techniques, and tips you can try when managing teams in your situation.

Make sure that the team goals are totally clear and completely understood and accepted by each team member.

Make sure there is complete clarity in who is responsible for what and avoid overlapping authority. For example, if there is a risk that two team members will be competing for control in certain area, try to divide that area into two distinct parts and give each more complete control in one of those parts, according to those individual’s strengths and personal inclinations.

Build trust with your team members by spending one-on-one time in an atmosphere of honesty and openness. Be loyal to your employees, if you expect the same.

Allow your office team members build trust and openness between each other in team building activities and events. Give them some opportunities of extra social time with each other in an atmosphere that encourages open communication. For example in a group lunch on Friday. Though be careful with those corporate team building activities or events in which socializing competes too much with someone’s family time.

For issues that rely heavily on the team consensus and commitment, try to involve the whole team in the decision making process. For example, via group goal setting or group sessions with collective discussions of possible decision options or solution ideas. What you want to achieve here is that each team member feels his or her ownership in the final decision, solution, or idea. And the more he or she feels this way, the more likely he or she is to agree with and commit to the decided line of action, the more you build team commitment to the goals and decisions.

When managing teams, make sure there are no blocked lines of communications and you and your people are kept fully informed.

Even when your team is spread over different locations, you can still maintain effective team communication. Just do your meetings online and slash your travel costs. Click here for a free test drive.

Be careful with interpersonal issues. Recognize them early and deal with them in full.

Don’t miss opportunities to empower your employees. Say thank you or show appreciation of an individual team player’s work.

Don’t limit yourself to negative feedback. Be fare. Whenever there is an opportunity, give positive feedback as well.

Finally, though team work and team building can offer many challenges, the pay off from a high performance team is well worth it.

Motivation of team members :

Motivation is described by psychologist Shay McConnon as ‘the inner desire to take action’. Tap into people’s motivation and you will strike gold!

Motivation can be reduced to a simple form of self-interest more commonly known as what’s in it for me? Individuals need to see and feel the reward or benefit to themselves by taking action. The greater the perceived valued to self, the greater the level of motivation.

There is no universal source of motivation – it cannot be bought in a one size fits all form. Being thanked personally may motivate some people whilst others may want to be given challenges as a thank you. Money may motivate some people, but not others, and more often is not the big motivator people think it is.

What motivates us – is it respect, the chance to be creative, the opportunity for success, the time to think things through and develop and plan? What ever the answer, it is important to note that different people have different needs and different motivators. So the key question is, what motivates your people, employees and team – why will they do, what they do, even better?

As a manager or team leader, there are more people out there that are not like you, than like you, so be aware of using your criteria for being motivated to motivate others. Ian Botham, as captain of the England Cricket team, rarely gave motivating talks to his players as he felt that putting on the England cricket strip should be motivation enough. General Norman Schwarzkopf went to great lengths to take care of his troops, personally, engaging with them. Who is right?

The best managers and team leaders know their staff or team, and know the individuals’ motivations and can tap into these strong sources of energy, with integrity, to create an even more successful outcome, more easily, that will benefit the people and the business.

It is considered that some 75% of a team or companies success will come from soft skills such as motivation and attitude – not from hard skills or knowledge. If people are not motivated it is highly unlikely they will use their skills and talents and this will negatively impact on the bottom line whether you are a premier football team, an events company of a private business.

Motivated teams of people far out perform other teams, no matter how qualified they are. Keys to motivating your people include;

• Find out people’s criteria for being motivated and set goals in accordance.
• Create a rewarding environment where people can feel good about themselves.
• Invest in people – and they will invest in you.
• Understand how to thank people, so they feel thanked.
• Maintain integrity and honesty.

There are many ways to find out about what motivates and drives people, how to engage with your staff or team members, to build better working relationships, increase motivation, trust, respect and rapport, whilst reducing costly personality clashes, mis-trust, stress, sickness and disputes. By increasing staff motivation and engagement, you can directly increase the energy levels, interest, desire and productivity, which can lead to increased productivity and profit.

Tools such as the SDI (Strength Deployment Inventory), DISC, Myers Briggs Type Indicator and even Belbin, are all good foundations from which to run People Development programmes to develop communication, understanding and engagement. PJ Stevens of LEAP favours the SDI model, as it is easy to use, accurate and highly effective in developing communication skills, leadership, understanding, teamwork, conflict resolution and performance. The SDI model is also part of the Rewarding Relationships programme developed by Shay McConnon and delivered by companies such as People First and LEAP. If you want to understand how to motivate your people, the Rewarding Relationships programme is a crown jewel in anyones teambuilding plans.

Increase staff motivation and engagement, and you can tap into a Gold Mine!

Conclusion

Teamwork as a concept has grown over the last 20 years. However, teamwork success is not automatic. Teams have to be established for the right reasons. Team member selection is very important, as is ensuring that the team purpose is clear and agreed upon