How Teamwork Fuels the Organizational Success
By: Dr. Qais Alsiddig Ahmed
Tags: Teamwork, Organizational Success

How Teamwork Fuels the Organization’s Success

“None of us is as smart as all of us.” — Ken Blanchard

In today’s business world, there is no question that teams are a prevalent characteristic of contemporary corporations and teamwork stands as a critical component of organizational success. The significance of teamwork lies in the fact that more and more jobs involve interrelationships between different business units and that tasks and projects increasingly demand cross-functional teams and groups. This emphasizes the need to pay attention to systematically strengthen the sense of team spirit among the organization’s members and promote the values of cooperation, collaboration and complementarity between all parts of the organization. On this basis, individual performance would presumably determine to what extent the individual’s section would achieve success, whereas teamwork would definitely decide whether or not the whole organization would achieve success.

Why teamwork matters most

Teamwork is vitally important in tackling organizational complicated concerns and issues as it allows integrating different ideas, views and perspectives which enable handling the challenges at hand properly and making the right decisions.

Here are four reasons why is teamwork key to organization’s success.

1. Building trust

Teamwork helps build trust. When employees work together, truthfulness comes as a natural consequence of the engagement. However, unless honesty is demonstrated, teams could never be effective enough to attain their goals. Successful team members know how to open up to each other and share honest points of view to settle disputes, where delivering constructive critics can provide your colleagues with productive feedback they can draw on to boost their skills and correct the deficiencies. Such transparent communication triggers strong relationship in the workplace deeply rooted in trust.

Importantly, team members take their colleagues’ feelings into account when working collectively. Establishing such respect and knowing to value other people’s opinions is a significant feature of teamwork. If a team starts to lack to this respect, communication will go wrong promptly, giving rise to arguments among the team members. Therefore, appreciating coworkers’ opinions helps the group build a solid bond of trust between each other through which they can effectively achieve their mission.

2. Boosting productivity

Henry Ford has once said: “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success”. This applies in particular to organizational environment, where sharing the workload is the way by which teamwork would boost productivity. When an individual encounters a heavy workload, it is crucial to consider he/she needs support and resources. Having work consistently divided between the team individuals with duties assigned would help foster the development of employee satisfaction, which eventually enhances their commitment to the organization over the long term.

3. Spurring learning

It stands to reason that different individuals have different talents and experiences. Accordingly, working together as a team allows these individuals to learn from each other. Teamwork encourages learning and creativity, optimizing knowledge sharing and broadening new skillsets. In addition, working together to achieve shared goals can generate eagerness for learning which individuals are likely to lack to when working in silos.

Organizations that value and implement teamwork understand that their organizational success is closely associated with how well their teams work collaboratively in attaining the collective purpose. Achieving significant results is the force that drives organizations to keep pushing ahead.

4. Overcoming Individuals’ weaknesses

Teamwork enables the individuals to understand their own limits and how the others may contribute to bridging their gaps. Working collaboratively in a team uncovers the capabilities that any team member brings to the table and features one’s strengths. By working in a team, if an individual struggles in one aspect, he/she can see how good his/ her coworkers perform and receive helpful advice and tips that could effectively help him/ her work on any weakness he/ she may have. Teamwork, by its very nature, drives team members to openly share knowledge. This results in a stronger team that its members well know and trust the individual strengths of each other.

It is worth mentioning that competitiveness between team members within its constructive healthy framework enhances performance efficiency. Therefore, attention should be paid that the competitiveness does not deviate from its catalytic nature so that it does not turn into enmity and, thus, spark a negative spirit among the team members, which will eventually reflect negatively on the organization’s success and impede its ability to achieve the desired goals.