IX Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2017

Businesses of today are largely concerned about their profits. They take every possible step to increase their turnover. The most important aspect that has a very substantial and positive impact on any business is teamwork. Effective teamwork is very significant for a company to use employee’s potential to the fullest extent.

If a team works towards a goal collectively, no one can stop it from achieving its goal. Due to the importance of teamwork in business, employers prefer to hire employees who are good team players.

The aim of the present work is to investigate the most significant characteristics of a good team and to develop the basic principles of effective teamwork. There are many definitions of teamwork. It is defined as "a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they are mutually accountable"¹, as "the process of working collaboratively with a group of people in order to achieve a goal"². The investigation of the definitions has indicated the following signs of a team:

1) interdependence. Each team member makes individual contributions to the overall work. Other team members depend on each. Everyone in the team share the working information with each other. Team members are also perceived as equal participants of the process activities and have the opportunity to influence each other.

2) share of the responsibility. A good environment is possible when all the team members are aware of their responsibilities and do everything required on time.

3) result. All team members are responsible for the result.

Teamwork will be effective if some principles are carried out. One of the first principles of an effective teamwork is that while a team is formed, there should be a clarity as to what the team wants to achieve. It is important that you view the team as an entity and have clearly articulated goals in place. In the absence of an objective, the team members may not be able to understand their responsibilities, which can cause ambiguity.

The team members should be willing to learn from each other. There may be some members who may be excellent with the process, while some may require some time and guidance, so it is essential that there is a willingness to teach and learn new ideas. Team members should not be hesitant in seeking help from the senior members of the team and the senior members, should in turn step forward to help the new members.

There should be a two-way communication among team members about the roles that they are assigned, so that there is an understanding and appreciation of the effort put in by everyone. This is very essential as it has seen that a lot of times when things do not work as planned, members engage in a blame-game. If members are aware about the challenges involved in carrying out a task, they are more likely to appreciate each other for their efforts.

While some control over a team is necessary, it is important that the team is given a certain amount of flexibility in carrying out their tasks. Too much of interference can affect the efficiency of a team and dampen the morale of the members.

One of the most important principles of effective teamwork is effective communication³. Communicating effectively means that information is shared among all the members of the team so that rumor-mongers are kept at bay. Involving the entire team in a discussion on effective business strategy helps in making the team members feel a valuable part of the organization. Effective communication also calls for discussing matters of importance openly so that everybody is on the same page.

There should be an initiative to reward and recognize team and its members who have performed exemplary and helped the team in achieving its targets. This will encourage others to follow suit and act as a boost to people who genuinely believe in the values of teamwork and team-spirit.

The team leader is also very important. A team leader is someone who provides direction, instructions and guidance to a group of individuals, who can also be known as a team, for the purpose of achieving a certain goal. An effective leader will know her team members strengths, weaknesses and motivations.

Team leaders serve various roles in an organization. Their job is to get tasks done by using all of the resources available to them, including other employees or team members. Roles a team leader are :

•to develop a strategy the team will use to reach its goal;

•to provide any training that team members need;

•to communicate clear instructions to team members;

•to listen to team members' feedback;

•to monitor team members' participation to ensure the training they providing is being put into use, and also to see if any additional training is needed;

•to manage the flow of day-to-day operations;

•to create reports to update the company on the team's progress;

•to distribute reports to the appropriate personnel.

Last but not the least, there should be a healthy competition among team members to outperform each other. In the absence of a competition, the job may cease to become interesting and monotony can creep in, which again can be detrimental to a team. So, it is important that the team members are provided with enough opportunities to grow in their professional lives.

Teamwork improves the skills of coordination, communication, and in a way, forces to see the bigger picture, where personal dreams have to transcend into collective wants. Trust is vital for holding a team together, especially through failures. Failures are inevitable, but the way in which a team copes with them and paves a winning path is where the team's strength lies. This leads to better learning, work distribution, healthy competition, and immense job satisfaction.

These were some of the principles of effective teamwork. There are no hard-and-fast rules as far as the principles of effective teamwork are concerned, but the points mentioned above can definitely prove to be effective when practiced sincerely. As one of the legends of automobile industry Henry Ford said, "if everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself."

1^ Katzenbach, J. R., & Smith, D. K. (1993). The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-erformance Organization.New York: McKinsey & Company, Inc.

2^ http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/teamwork.html

3^ Smith, D. C., Harris, M., Myersclough, P., & Wood, A. (2000). Building Highly Effective Information Systems Project Teams: An Explanatory Study. Project Management Research at the Turn of the Millenium (pp. 419 - 429). Pennsylvania: Project Management Institute, Inc.

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