Teamwork

Coming together is a beginning.
Keeping together is progress.
Working together is success.

- Henry Ford

Teams and groups are gathering of two or more people that either exist or are drawn together and constituted for a purpose.

Teaming and self-leading groups are admired in today’s business culture. Although you are able to perform great, you are not valuable asset for a company till you team up and lead organization all together. Successful leadership of team is what companies look for.

Teamwork is a constant balancing act between self-interest and group interest. Self-managing teams are becoming the basic building blocks of America’s largest organizations. Such teams are empowered to solve problems and implement decisions with little or no intervention by management. If a self-managing team is to do its job, team members need to be able to build consensus out of disagreement. Members are expected to set aside personal agendas in favor of the group mission. Yet conflicts must be aired and honored. American lecturer and author of "From Chaos to Confidence" Susan Campbell suggests for teamwork.

It is easy to understand for us that clapping with the right hand only will not produce a noise. Where as here you are looking for just not a noise but excellent jingle, isn’t it so in your case?

Most of the teams worry about conflicts arising in workflow processes. How conflict does arise? What is conflict? It is nothing but a sign of successful team participation.

Susan Gerke, IBM, Leadership Development opines, "Conflict is inevitable in a team ... in fact, to achieve synergistic solutions, a variety of ideas and approaches are needed. These are the ingredients for conflict."

Teamwork is an art. Integrating conflict, change with team decisions, Max DePree said, "The key elements in the art of working together are how to deal with change, how to deal with conflict, and how to reach our potential...the needs of the team are best met when we meet the needs of individuals persons. The key elements in the art of working together are how to deal with change, how to deal with conflict, and how to reach our potential...the needs of the team are best met when we meet the needs of individuals persons."

Coming to again successful teaming, here are few questions. If you are able to answer it positively, then feel proud on your team. Teamwork is to work with every one keeping views and thoughts as if they were told by you. It is not just a case of blue color or white color job, but it is case of respecting someone else thought process.

Go for a jog. Be free. Find a batch under widen tree in so energetic and beautiful morning. Put yourself as third person to decide whatever is right. If necessary take a blink of eye at every question end to answer it wisely and start picking up a question to think on it crossing all other boundaries those stop you in closed cabins of office.

- Have you provided autonomy and responsibilities in your team?
- Is everyone self-disciplined and self-regulated in team?
- As a leader do you monitor direction to achieve goal?
- Have you set unambiguous, organization related, understandable and clear-cut targets?
- Does everyone in your team accept and commit these targets?
- Does your team take responsibility of output process, quality assurance, customer relations and complaints in improvable manner?
- Is your team without psychological distance based job specification and roles?
- Is your reward system based on performance rather fixed percentages or role wise boundaries?
- Is your management style supportive rather bureaucratic or administrative?
- Do you have an open approach and open communication process among you?
- Is your whole team self-committed?
- Do you provide full flexibility at work, multi-skilling and interchangeability between job roles?
- Do you find your team taking great interest of involvement in every project assigned?
- Do you think that your team members have respect and enthusiasm towards one another?
- Have you been always successful in solving grievances and disputes?
- Have you taken enough steps to develop skills, knowledge, and expertise and high performance output in team?
- Is each member able to communicate with every other member of group?

Pat Riley (‘The Winner Within’) expressed "Teamwork isn’t simple. In fact, it can be a frustrating, elusive commodity. Teamwork doesn’t appear magically just because someone mouths the words. It doesn’t thrive just because of the presence of talent or ambition. It doesn’t flourish simply because a team has tasted success.

If you are able to answer ‘YES’ for above questions and likely to continue with your highly motivated and successful team culture, you have done it. YOU ARE THE WINNER.