What is Teamwork?

There are many ways to answer the question what is teamwork? In our article define teamwork we have discussed how you might work with your organisation/team to better define teamwork in your organisation. There is however a secondary and just as important understanding of the word teamwork that is: the type of work that is suitable for teams.

In this sense teamwork is about the kind of work most suitable for a team to do and what isn't. Teams are not the answer to all an organizations issues. Some tasks are better carried out by a group of individuals (or just an individual), each with responsibility for their own area, with no or little overlap.

How do you decide when it is best to form a team, or not?



What kind of work might be most suited to a team?



Here are some things to think about when deciding if a team is required or not:

Is the task best carried out by an individual: is the task straight forward or too complex for just one person?

Is there too much for one person to cope with?

Do several different activities need to happen at the same time?

Are there a number of inter-dependent and overlapping tasks?

Does the work require a variety of high level strengths and skills to be used by individuals?

Is it essential that the strengths of several individuals need to be combined to achieve success?

Is the activity a meaningful whole that makes sense as a complete entity?

Teamwork is not an easy approach to apply, there is much that is needed to be done to create the right conditions for teams to flourish and it's worth making sure you can answer the question: why is teamwork important?

What is Teamwork? Creating the Conditions

You might also like to think about some of the conditions that make teams work well that we have discussed elsewhere in our article, teamwork in the workplace: creating the conditions. Here are three crucial distinctions of a team that help to answer the question "What is teamwork?"

To help determine if the work to be done is suitable for a team ask whether you need to:

Align and blend strengths of individuals so that they complement each other

Align people's sense of togetherness with a vision of where you are going

Align strengths with good teamwork in a common direction towards meaningful goals

What is teamwork? It is the kind of work that teams are best configured to do. It is work that blends individual strengths so that they complement each other, and in doing so brings people together with a sense of camardarie and shared vision so that their strengths are applied in a common direction towards meaningful goals.

If you do have the time to read more on this topic, you might want to see our range of Teamwork Articles.

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