Teamwork is of great importance, be it in the workplace, at sports, or other group activities. Workspirited explains the significance of teamwork in our day-to-day lives. Take a look!
“When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality.”
― Joe Paterno, Football Coach
Teamwork simply refers to a group of people working towards a common goal with a positive spirit. Each individual brings forth his/her skills while coordinating with the efforts of the other team members in order to produce a desirable outcome.
The ability to work as a team has become very vital these days. Most workplaces consists of several teams, each with a small group of individuals. The efficient functioning of all these teams results in a timely and effective outcome, thus earning profit to the organization.
Teamwork and its importance is ingrained in us right from childhood. Children are often taught to work and share, and play together. At school, students are taught to work on projects together or play a sport as a team. Even marriage, in a way, is believed to be a team effort, an effort to coexist in harmony. Also, as said above, ‘fitting in the team’ is constantly expected even at workplaces. So, why is teamwork so important? Here’s why.
Importance of Teamwork
The benefits of working in teams are learning to trust, to take decisions and risks, discovering innate leadership qualities, and cooperating to bring out the best in you. In school, teamwork depends on the way education is being imparted. Educators who encourage students to work collaboratively on academic projects, and at the same time stress upon achieving good grades, are good at promoting the importance of working in teams. This helps children cooperate in order to develop their personal skills and gain knowledge.
Teamwork is taught to a child because the quality or rather ability of working in a team is one of the most vital soft skills required in professional life. Be it a business or a job; both essentially require the spirit to work in a team. The former (business) is not a one-man job; the businessman has to deal with several clients and companies, and additionally with people working under him in order to make his business productive. Similarly, in a job, there are teams as per the nature of the job, for ex: administration team, audit team, advertising team, etc.
The section below explains the importance of teamwork at the workplace in detail.
Importance of Teamwork at the Workplace
As businesses expand and grow, one can no more rely on individual efforts to succeed. People have to work together in order to achieve gross business targets. For a business spanning the entire world, a team may not always be physically present around each other. In such cases, a person representing a set of teams cooperates with the representatives of other teams across the world. This is the reason why the ability to lead a team and work as a team is imperative for the growth of any workplace.
Teamwork enhances our skills of coordination, communication, and in a way, forces us to see the bigger picture, where individualistic dreams have to transcend into collective wants. Trust is vital for holding a team together, especially through failures. Failures are inevitable, but the way in which a team copes, survives, and paves a winning path is where the team’s strength lies. This leads to better learning, work distribution, healthy competition, and immense job satisfaction.
Teamwork is not only reflected in a team’s wins, but also in individual growth. A team in its true sense cannot be built in a day, every member needs to learn and understand each other, and eventually reaches a level where his full potential is utilized in order to foster a team goal. The concept of healthy competition mentioned above is, to a certain extent, necessary to strengthen the team, and utilize the full potential of each of its members.
Healthy competition refers to the struggle to work harder than other members, but ultimately for the benefit of the team as a whole. This competitive nature along with a sense of cooperation is very essential to maintain team spirit. A lot of organizations have appreciation techniques which notify employees about their performance, and also about the best of the lot. This makes all employees work harder in order to achieve the ‘best employee’ tag, thus contributing to the team efforts.
Teamwork is a vital aspect in our lives. There are a lot of things that we cannot achieve as an individual, this is where a team enters. So, be positive about teamwork, have a cooperative outlook, and visualize the bigger picture in order to induce team spirit in yourself.
