Effective Teamwork

Working together – Idea Generation – Goal Setting – Priority Planning.

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People are the fundamental building block of any organisation. The only point at which true responsibility for effectiveness can lie is with the person or team actually doing the job or carrying out the task. The complexity of most of these tasks in an organisation places them beyond the control of any one individual. Therefore the only efficient way to achieve business goals is through the use of effective teamwork.

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Effective teamwork has many advantages:

• A greater variety of complex issues can be tackled by pooling expertise and resources.
• Problems are exposed to a greater diversity of knowledge, skill and experience.
• The approach boosts morale and ownership through participative decision making.
• Improvement opportunities that cross departmental or functional boundaries can be more easily addressed.
• Recommendations are more likely to be implemented than if they come from an individual.

Teamwork must be driven by a strategy, have a structure and be implemented thoughtfully and effectively.

When properly managed and developed, teamwork improves both business efficiency and financial results; it produces these quickly and economically through the free exchange of ideas, information, knowledge and data.

Teamwork is an essential component of any highly effective business, building trust, improving communication and developing a culture of interdependence, rather than one of independence.

However, despite having well defined roles within a team, the interaction between the different personalities of individuals can be a frequent source of friction. Such issues can largely be avoided by understanding and valuing people’s differences, then maximising their contribution to the overall team effort. Spark uses both the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the Margerison-McCann Team Management Profile to assist in building high performing teams.

Such High Performing Teams have many advantages to your business:

• A greater variety of complex issues can be tackled by pooling expertise and resources.
• Problems are exposed to a greater diversity of knowledge, skill and experience.
• The approach boosts morale and ownership through participative decision making.
• Improvement opportunities that cross departmental or functional boundaries can be more easily addressed.
• The recommendations are more likely to be implemented than if they come from an individual.

So, are truly effective teams operating within your business, focussed upon the achievement of business goals to maximise performance, or are your people simply groups of individuals working together in a loose collegiate? Whichever it is, the acid test is ‘are these Teams or Groups just doing things right, or are they doing the right things?

Spark specialises in:

• Team selection and leadership
  
• Managing team growth through its many stages
  
• Helping you set effective and appropriate team objectives
  
• Team meetings
  
• Team dynamics
  
• Team results and reviews.
  
• Assessing, monitoring and improving engagement levels
  

“There are plenty of teams in every sport that have great players and never win titles. Most of the time, those players aren’t willing to sacrifice for the greater good of the team. The funny thing is, in the end, their unwillingness to sacrifice only makes individual goals more difficult to achieve.
One thing I believe to the fullest is that if you think and achieve as a team, the individual accolades will take care of themselves. Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.”

Michael Jordan, Former NBA Player