A Team Is More Powerful Than the Sum of the Individuals - Coursework Example

A team is more powerful than the sum of the individuals

Introduction

Instead of individual work, team work is encouraged in majority of the modern organizations. According to Harris (2011), an effective group is that which delivers an output that meets or exceeds the average of the group’s stakeholders. 1+1 = 2, in Mathematics, whereas in the case of teamwork 1+1 > 2. In other words, the productivity of a team is greater than the sum total of the productivity of its individual members. That is why modern organizations prefer team work more than individual work. At the same time, the success and the failure of a work team depend on many factors. Since majority of the organizations are currently operating internationally or cross culturally, a diverse workforce is a reality in most of the workplaces. In other words, it is difficult form a single cultural team in an international organization at present. This paper critically analyses the statement that a team is more powerful than the sum of the individuals.

According to Payne (1999) the ability to communicate effectively, to relate to others and to co-operate with others, and the knowledge and self-confidence to cope with the practical business of day today living are the major elements that make team work more productive than individual work. While working individually, a worker will not get any assistance from others. All other workers will be too much busy with their duties and responsibilities and they will not bother too much to assist another worker. On the other hand, while working as part of a team, each worker gets support from other team members. In fact providing support to the team members is a must for the successful completion of a project work or teamwork. It is possible that the underperformances of a team member may destroy the entire project. Team works are usually interconnected. In other words, different team members have some specific duties related to a particular project. If one team member fails to execute his work in time, others cannot proceed further because of the interconnection of the works. Therefore, all team members will be keen on improving the performances of all members of the team while improving their own performances. Collaborative culture is a part of team performances. It helps team members to work and interact together meaningfully and identify and solve different problems facing by the team. “The main characteristic feature of the team is synergy through which team members act together and achieve better results than if they perform alone or in other organizational forms”(Petrov, 2010, p.91).

The self-confidence of the employees will be more while working as part of a team compared to working individually. Team members always have the feeling that they are not alone. Man is a social animal. He always likes to work in teams. Teamwork helps him to communicate each other and reduce job stress as much as possible. While working, an employee may think about many things such as personal matters, family matters, social matters and professional matters. If he works as part of a team, he can share his grievances with fellow employees or ask advices for the problems they are facing. Psychological theories say that an individual will develop a feeling of relaxation once he is able to speak his grievances to others. The accumulation of grievances or job stress in the mind will prevent an employee from concentrating more on his duties. Teamwork helps him to attain peace of mind and thereby concentrate more on his professional work.

Team work helps employees to achieve work life balancing. Flexibility in working hours is a much needed requirement for many of the employees. Flexibility in work may not be obtainable if an employee works individually whereas in team work, an employee can have lot of flexibility in his assignments. It is possible for an employee working as part of a team to take some breaks and spend some time with family members. Others in the team will undertake the responsibilities of the team member in such occasions. It should be noted that getting an off day is extremely difficult for an employee who is working individually. Instead of team leader, the HR manager is responsible for allocating leave to employees who are working individually. It will be difficult for an employee to convince the HR manager and get a leave sanctioned for spending some time with his family. On the other hand it will be possible or easy for him to convince the team leader for getting one or two days off from the work.

For a group to be relevant there must be some inter-reliance between the group members (Richards, 2012). Relationship among the team members is more compared to the relationship among the employees working individually in an organization. It should be noted that relationship building is the core of every business function in the modern world. The above principle is true in the case of employees also. It is necessary for employees to maintain better relationships with other employees in the organization. While working individually, employees get fewer opportunities to communicate with other and to strengthen their relations with other employees. On the other hand, it is easy for employees working as part of teams to communicate on a regular basis, strengthen their relationships and thereby improve their productivity and efficiency.

Cognitive trust, self-awareness and emotional control will be more among employees who work as part of a team. Emotional intelligence of the team members plays a vital role in enhancing cognitive and affective trust. Cognitive trust may build up between the team members based on the reliability and competence of his/her peers. Professional behavior increases the cognitive trust between the team members. Affective trust is based on emotional bonds resulting from interpersonal care and concern for each other. Self-awareness about own emotions may help the team members to behave properly and improve their performances (Barczak et al, 2010, p.332-345).

As per the views of Judeh (2011), human resources managers and other practitioners must enhance the teamwork atmosphere in their organizations in order to improve the productivity and efficiency of the workers. In his opinion, positive work group experiences and effectiveness can enhance employees’ satisfaction and minimize turnover intentions. Work dissatisfaction satisfaction and thoughts about leaving the organization usually prevent employees from performing well. These things are happening more while employees work individually. On the other hand they will avoid such thoughts while working as part of teams.

The creativity and innovation abilities of the employees will be improved drastically once they get opportunity to work as part of a team. It should be noted that all modern organizations are giving ample importance to creativity and innovation. While working individually, employees may not get enough opportunities to think creatively. On other hand they get many opportunities to think creatively and develop new things while working as part of teams. “Team members share roles and responsibilities and are constantly developing new skills to improve the team's performance. Teams identify and reach consensus on their common goal and approach, rather than looking to a leader to define the goal and approach” (Mackin and Harrington-Mackin, 2007, p.42).

“Critical thinking is one skill that seldom given much prominence in individual functioning” (Thomas, 2002, p.5). While performing individual works, an employee may not get enough opportunities to critically assess various tasks performed by him. On the other hand, while working as part of teams, an employee gets ample opportunities to clear his doubts from his fellow teammates. While working individually, there will not be anybody to answer his doubts. As a result of that, he may not bother too much to think deeply about a particular topic. On the other hand while working in teams, he will get opportunity to discuss various things about a particular problem with his team members. It should be noted that intelligence of more than one employee is operational in teams whereas in individual work, the intelligence of only one employee is operational. All the team members may have different types of skills. For example, in order to prepare the estimates correctly, an estimator requires the support of the production manager, purchase manager and the sales staff. Sales staff will provide enough data about the market situations whereas the production manager provides data about the difficulties involved in the production work of a particular task and the manpower required for the completion of that work. Purchase manager on the other hand will provide the raw material costs to the estimator. All these data collected from different departments will be discussed in team meetings and all team members will get different types of knowledge from such discussions.

At the same time, teamwork causes some additional pressure also on team members. According to Mullins (2009, p.6), “group pressure can have major influence over the behavior and performance of the individual members”. The team members put forward their personal problems and other difficulties in undertaking different tasks. Hot and aggressive debates about the functioning of the team and the roles of the team members can take place within the team. All these incidents may increase the stress or pressure of the team members. However, all such things will take place only at the beginning of a team formation. Bruce Wayne Tuckman was the first one who researched the characteristics of group formation or team work. After a comprehensive research, he had identified five stages of group formation. They are; forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning (CIPD, 2009). Forming, storming and norming are the initial three steps in group formation. Conflicts and problems can arise in these stages of team development. Performing is the fourth stage of team formation. All conflicts and problems will be sidelined once the team started to perform. In other words, once a team is formed and started to function properly, the group pressure will be out of question. All team members will work for the success of the project once the team starts functioning properly. Individual differences and personal problems will not interfere in the team performances once a team settled and concentrate on the project.

According to Sheng & Tiang (2010), the trust among the team members is instrumental in the success of teamwork. It is necessary to have ample trust in between the team members. If the team members do not have proper trust in between them, they may not function properly. Instead of thinking about their actual mission, team members may think about the traps made by the other team members. Thus the actual mission would end up in failure. On the other hand, if the team members have faith in the abilities of other members, they will give more attention to their own job rather than thinking about the jobs of others.

Conclusions

Teamwork is superior to individual work because of the ability of the former in helping employees in reducing their job stress and improving their work satisfaction. While working individually, employees may not get any support from others. On the other hand they get ample support while working as part of teams. Job stress will be much lesser while working as part of teams. As a result of that employees are able to concentrate more on their work while working in teams. Communication, cooperation and trust among employees will be more while they get opportunities to work collectively. All these things are necessary for the improvement of productivity and efficiency of an organization. It is possible for employees to critically discuss about various problems facing by them while working on certain team projects. Such discussions will help them to know various dimensions of the problem properly and to propose creative and innovative solutions for that problem. Work life balancing abilities will be more for employees while working as part of teams. Work life balancing helps employees to reduce job stress and give more attention to their works. In short, a team is more powerful than the sum of the individuals.