Advantages of team work

(Synopsis: Definition of team work – Terms similar to team work – Features of Team work - Advantages of team work)
A team is a group of people who work together for achieving a common goal. Often, we use two terms “group” and “team” as synonyms. But, there exists a difference between the terms such as team, group and crowd. If you go to a market, you may find a crowd of people on the road. Those people form a crowd but neither a group nor a team as they visit market with different purposes. They may be found together but, they do not either work together or have a common goal. Now, let us discuss about ‘group’. If go to a park during evening hours, you can find a group of evening walkers. They form a group but not a team as they do not work together though they visit the park with same intention.
Co-operation and co-ordination are prime features of a team and in fact, they are the life and blood of a team. Team may be a software team, network team, sports team, army or political cabinet. In a team, there never exists the concept “I” but, “We”. In present day global village, teamwork is not merely important but, essential and compulsory. Teamwork has become such an important concept that several MNC’s started conducting tests to determine teamwork abilities of the candidates.
Present day organizations can not work and in fact, can not exist without teamwork though there are good many one man show organizations with limited scope of operations. Hence, a large number of schools are introducing several programs that assign the students several team assignments.
In order to make a team successful one, there must be a team leader with a vast experience and expertise. A few decades ago, there used to be positions such as supervisor and manager, which are by now renamed as team leader or team manager. To be successful in a team, one must be extravert and communicative. Introverts with poor communicative skills can not easily withstand in present day highly dynamic world that keeps on changing itself every nanosecond.
Advantages of team work: Following are some of the advantages of team work.
More Output: A team can produce more output than the aggregate output of the all the members. It is not mere wisdom but, proved scientifically with the data collected by several statisticians and industrial experts. To understand the concept, let us take a small and simple example. Take ‘A’ and multiply it with the same value and you will get ‘A2’. Let us take ‘B’ and multiply it with the same value and you will get ‘B2’. Now, you add both the results and you will get ‘A2+ B2’. Now, as a part of second illustration, let us add A and B at the beginning itself and you will get A+B. Now, you multiply the value with the same value and you will get A2+B2+2AB. Here, you are getting 2AB as an additional value, which is the result of team work.

Scope for learning from others: When we are part of a team, we can learn from rest of the members of the team. Team members all can share their experiences, knowledge, and views. They can also know the success as well as failure stories of other members. Here, we must remember a proverb that fools learn from their own mistakes while intelligent people learn from the mistakes of others. If you are a part of a team, you can learn not only from your mistakes but also from the mistakes of your team members.
New and better thoughts: Two heads are better than one head. If team members all come up with different thoughts, the team manager can select a better thought. Otherwise, they may get a new thought after listening to all the thoughts. Or else, they can take some of the features of one thought and some more features of another thought and can finally come up with a final thought, which can be termed a mixed or hybrid thought that may be better than all the earlier thoughts.
Let us take an example, plan designed by John may act like a horse that can run the organization like a horse but, can not carry the entire burden of the organization. Plan designed by Robert may act like a donkey that can carry the entire weight of the organization but, can not run the organization like a horse. After listening to two thoughts, the team leader may design a plan by taking the positive aspects and eliminating the negative aspects of both the plans. The mixed or hybrid plan may serve the purpose as a mule which can run the organization as fast as horse and can carry the entire burden of organization like a donkey.

Written by: S. Chandrashekara Reddy.
chandrashekarareddys@gmail.com