Teamwork

The key to effective teamwork is informed collaboration. It is characterized by a fundamental understanding that information is essential for success and that team goals supercede individual goals. Informed collaboration requires a lot more than a willingness or intention to cooperate. It requires learning enough about the other team members, and their specific functions, to know how to offer help effectively. It requires that team members be proactive in looking for ways to support one another, and not wait for help. It sometimes means, setting aside individual performance to make another team member and/or the entire team more effective. It always means evaluating individual performance in the light of contributions to team goals. Information becomes crucial for cooperation. Knowing what the team is charged with doing, how it will do it, and who is responsible for what, is the starting point for informed collaboration. Knowing how goals and roles will fit in the larger picture enables team members to behave effectively. Having everything spelled out in detail may restrict and confine role descriptions. Believing that each members’ functions are important, knowing how they relate to the whole, and having a symmetry between personal goals and the organizational goals, energizes and motivates team members to cooperate. In the final analysis it is essential for excellent cooperation that, team members have a genuine interest in each others individual success. They need to know one another at a deeper level than their role in the project.

Complete communications is essential for a team to maintain the clarity needed for informed collaboration and effective cooperation. Effective listening is a vital part of complete communication that is often understated. When people strive for honest complete communication, it is inevitable that there will be different perceptions regarding decisions and courses of actions. These differences, or conflicts should be welcomed as a normal part of living and working together. When viewed and dealt with productively, conflict need not cause problems in team relationships. On the contrary, they present opportunities to build relationships by attacking issues, instead of each other. Good conflict resolution skills are an essential part of effective teamwork, and can be learned by everyone. Learning to disagree without attacking the other person, and without assuming there must be a winner and a loser in the dispute, are essential to achieving a central benefit of conflict resolution. Lively and productive conflict is energizing and can be a rich source of ideas, opinions and options when we don’t fear personal attack or losing.

Thinking strategically means thinking towards outcomes and goals. Planning strategically means, anticipating the needs of customers, suppliers and stakeholders to accomplish your goals. Acting strategically means stepping up to a problem and implementing actions towards outcomes and goals, even though it might not be in your best personal interest.

By Vincent A. D'Elia, Regional Director, Bergen SBDC