Everyone will have heard the term ‘teamwork’ before. You might have read it in a job advertisement, or perhaps your employer has made it clear that it is an important part of your day to day work. Maybe you are the employer, and you are keen to see teamwork implemented throughout your business because you feel it will help you to get the best results.
There are many reasons why teamwork is something that all businesses, no matter what their size or how long they have been established, should work on and make a part of their processes and systems. Here are some of the main reasons why you should look more closely at teamwork and use it where you can.
Motivation
Sometimes motivation can be lacking at some point in business. Even if the employees who are tasked with doing a certain job have the skills needed, there can be many reasons why they might not feel motivated to go above and beyond for their employer or the business. However, when working in a team that motivation is easier to find.
One reason for this could be a good sense of healthy competition. This will push people to do more than they might otherwise do. Even if this is not the case, working together for a common goal will make people more motivated; they won’t want to be the ones who are holding the team back or making things more difficult than they need to be.
For even more motivation, you might engage someone to be the leader. This could be someone with an advanced scrum master certification, for example, who would be able to allocate tasks within the team to those who are most likely to be able to do them well. Everyone will succeed in their own sphere but work in a team for the final result.
Bonding
Just because people work together doesn’t mean that they are all going to like one another and get on. Different personalities and ways of working will clash, potentially causing upset for not only them, but for others too. You might feel that when this happens it’s best to keep the people who don’t get on well with one another apart, but it can be a better idea to put them to work in a team together.
By the time the project has been completed, the people working in the team will have had to put their differences aside and work together for the greater good. In some cases, they might even bond well enough to become friends, but in others they will at least have learned how to work together and that can be enough. Of course, you will need to remember that not all differences will be put aside through working in a team, and if there is a big problem separation might be the answer.
Better Learning
If the task that needs to be completed is a new one, or there are lots of systems and processes that are involved with it and they need to be learned, it can often be better to work in a team. Working alone won’t give you the support or the confidence you will need to try new things.
When you work in a team, you can ask and answer questions and generally interact with one another regarding the job you have to do. If that involves learning new ways of doing things, a team environment can help with this; you can bounce ideas off one another and really get a much better understanding between you all of what is required.
More Efficient
In many cases, working in a team is going to be more efficient than working alone. The task can, for example, be divided up, and those who are good at one thing can work on that, whereas those who are good at another can do something else, bringing everything together at the end.
If there is just one person working on a project, they will have to work on all of it, even if there are some elements that they are not as good at or strong in. This could lead to a poor quality job. More than one person working to their strengths is sure to offer a much better finish to the task, whatever it may be.
Plus, if the job can be split into small tasks and done by different people at the same time, the entire project will be completed much more quickly, rather than one person having to do everything, bit by bit. This can be a major advantage for your business and ensure that your customers are much happier.
Learn Life Skills
Working in a team will help your employees to develop plenty of useful life skills that will help them in their personal lives, but that will also help them to become better at what they do in terms of their job too.
Teamwork can increase your confidence, for example, and show you how to talk to people. You might learn how to negotiate or how to ask the right questions, and you’ll find out how to put your own point across when you need to. You’ll certainly learn how to break a task down into more manageable pieces. All of this and much more can be used in every aspect of life.
Feedback
When you run a business, feedback is vital. It shows you what is going right so that you can keep doing it, but also what might be going wrong, so you can change it where you need to. When a team are working together, they will be able to come up with the kind of feedback that you need to hear; they will definitely be able to see what is working and what is not.
Plus, the feedback isn’t just for you. It can be useful for them as well. They will be hearing plenty of feedback when they work in a team because there will be lots of other people around them. This can help them to get the job done to a higher quality and, because the feedback will be constant, everyone in a team will be less likely to make mistakes that have to be rectified at a later stage.