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Learn the benefits of teamwork and some tips to boost your team's productivity and overall communication.
Without good old-fashioned teamwork, most of today’s top-selling businesses wouldn’t be here to ride the waves of success. Many studies show the power of collaboration and how it can produce a healthy work environment, happy workers and positive results for businesses. And while the fundamentals of teamwork are universal, what it takes to foster effective teamwork may look slightly different for each person and company. Learn about the benefits of teamwork and how you can encourage it within your organization.
>> Read Next: Collaboration Improves Workplace Performance. Here’s How to Encourage It
There are many benefits to having a well-performing staff that prioritizes solid teamwork. Here are five of the biggest reasons you need teamwork in the workplace.
Teamwork involves the active sharing and discussion of information and ideas and includes many points of view. Team members all learn from each other and discover new ways of thinking through projects. An environment with clear and open communication can quickly lead to successful results, no matter the industry.
Here are some tips for achieving better group communication.
A natural organizational benefit of teamwork is the lean structure it produces, cutting down on middle management and leading to greater freedom, innovation and progress. This is not to say middle managers are useless, but flat organizations have their advantages. A team that is given the freedom to create and operate is likely to succeed, and a team with relatively equal voices is a crucial element of successful business practices.
Here are some benefits your team can reap from lean methods.
A workplace centered around teamwork is ripe to provide emotional support, as the dynamic involves many colleagues working together. This could be physically alongside one another or online, with constant communication. Providing emotional support can mean avoiding overly harsh critiques when discussing one’s work or checking in to see how a fellow team member is coping.
Emotional and psychological support can even go beyond the workplace, which may have a reciprocal effect. For example, sending a card is a simple and office-appropriate way to provide quick support to a fellow employee. Team-related emotional support leads to much deeper workplace happiness and success.
Though you might assume employee competition leads to infighting, credit-hogging and blaming, the opposite is true when a workplace encourages healthy competition. Teamwork can rapidly increase a positive form of competitiveness in the following ways.
Here are some tips for setting up friendly workplace competitions.
Synergy is the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their parts. Synergy can look like many things in the workplace, but it typically involves the benefits of teams sharing their competencies and capacities.
When colleagues don’t work together, it’s easy to see the devastating effect a lack of synergy can have on an organization. But when synergy is present, productivity will be high. Responses from workers are more clear-cut, business goals are better understood, collaboration increases and problems are solved because everyone feels motivated as they put their heads together to tackle shared objectives and challenges.
Your business can benefit from synergy when your team members have diverse skills and backgrounds as well. When developing a product, you don’t just need marketers — you need additional professionals like copywriters, analysts, and specialty research and development workers. When everyone brings their own special skills and perspectives to the table, the result is improved workflow, an increase of transformative ideas and a more refined product thanks to the minds and hands of numerous critical thinkers.
It’s fair to say enthusiasm for working from home has probably never been higher. Not only is the flexibility of remote work a plus, but home workers are also seeing they’re able to get more work done than they previously thought possible. In fact, Airtasker found that remote workers only lose 27 minutes of work each day due to distractions, compared to office workers’ 37 minutes lost.
A remote company may not lend itself to teamwork at first glance, but there are plenty of ways to still reap the benefits of collaboration if you have a distributed workforce. Here’s how to encourage teamwork among your remote employees.
Some workers strictly adhere to a routine, while others are more laid back. Instead of treating all your remote employees the same way as your in-office workers, personalize work structures, objectives and outcomes to fit each person. Then, encourage colleagues to find commonalities and ways they can work together instead of in silos.
Set windows for meetings and general hours to talk, email and submit work for deadlines. Be careful not to blur the lines between productively working at home and overworking past a normal workday schedule. Be just as fair to remote workers as you are to in-office workers. [Read more about flextime and flexible work schedules.]
If you want your remote team to never skip a beat, supply them with all the communication apps they’ll need to be successful. Technology can facilitate progress by connecting them with customers, retailers and colleagues despite their remote location. Teach your team video conferencing etiquette and set up online chat programs for those who prefer a less intimidating way to connect.
By checking in every day with your remote team through video calls and meetings, you’ll maintain a virtual environment built on collaboration and support. This time can forge a sense of togetherness and enhance team camaraderie, especially if you allow time for people to catch up with one another personally. As team members continually get to know one another better, they’ll be more apt to work together despite a physical divide.
Some workers prefer independent work, and that’s OK. There are strategies you can use to encourage teamwork while still respecting employee preferences.
When you clearly designate roles and responsibilities to each of your team members, you can avoid confusion and the risk of one person trying to take full control. When dealing with new projects, give both seasoned and new professionals a chance to work on something fresh and demonstrate their strengths.
When assigning special projects or work to be completed, make sure the goals of these assignments aren’t ambiguous. Ambiguity can cause some team members to doubt themselves and question their work. Instead, set short- and long-term goals to motivate the whole team to work together toward a shared victory.
Give everyone on the team a chance to involve themselves in projects that demand thinking outside the box and collaboration. Let everyone pitch their ideas, let them know you’re taking them into consideration and integrate the concepts into your final plans. This will lead team members to feel more invested and motivated as they come together to create solutions.
Never hesitate to reward your employees for a job well done. When workers complete a project to high standards or go above and beyond expectations, bring that to the attention of the company as a whole. Congratulate your team members formally by letting everyone in the office know the results their exceptional teamwork produced.
You should also cheer your team on informally through messaging channels where you can use emojis in your tribute, especially if you’re recognizing remote workers who can’t be celebrated in person. This will encourage and reinforce the importance of teamwork in the workplace. It may even convince independent workers to switch their approach to work more closely with others to achieve better results.
Skye Schooley and Shlomo Wiesen contributed to this article.