Achieving organizational performance through teamwork: the perspective of a Local Government Practitioner

Achieving increased and improved organizational performance in order to meet the requirements and expectations of stakeholders has become the major concern of every manager and leader in the modern day organization. This cannot be achieved without harnessing the human talents within the organization to promote workforce collaboration and development. Inasmuch as managers and leaders of organizations are looking for ways to ensure optimal performance of their organizations, they are often eluded by the value of teamwork.

This article will focus on how managers and leaders can take advantage of the value of teamwork to derive the full benefit of their workforce and promote collaboration at the workplace. The word ‘teamwork’ is a combination of two words. Team means ‘group’ and work means ‘activity’. Hence, teamwork means a group of people working together on an activity to achieve

a common goal.

The importance of teamwork in achieving organizational efficiency and subsequently improving performance cannot be overemphasized. In recent times, there had been calls for managers and leaders to encourage team-work at their various workplaces. These calls are in the right direction

because the human beings (employees/ staff) in any organization are very critical assets to the organization and your ability to elicit their enthusiastic cooperation and support and rally them to achieve the goals and objectives of the organization is vital.

Usually, people are brought onto a team with varied professional skill sets, competencies, experiences, knowledge and educational background. These credentials are brought to bear on the team in order to make them work hand-in-hand to achieve a specific task.

Cooperation among team members encourages effective brainstorming to generate better ideas to deal with a specific task and also give a sense of bonding and togetherness among team members which eventually promote trust in the organization. It also serve as a unique platform for team members to enhance their professional skills and experiences and groom people to higher and

leadership positions. Thus, because of the team experience, it is believed that they better understand the various systems of the organization and are capable of managing and leading the organization to success when given the opportunity.

Managers and leaders must always promote and develop the culture of teamwork in their organization. The culture of teamwork within the organization ensures the efficiency and consistency in the achievement of the overall organizational goal. Teamwork is often a means to bringing everybody on board to achieving the overall organizational goals. There are often standing teams or ad-hoc team through which the organization achieve its goals. Managers and leaders should make good use of these teams and constantly promote and encourage the culture

of teamwork among employees. This will ensure that each and everyone’s talent and knowledge are being harness to promote the interest of the organization. The practice of teamwork also promote checks and balances in the organization and often cure the mischief of people pursing their parochial interest.

The presence of team culture in the workplace ensures that there is always a standardized way of doing things, coordination and cooperation among employees, togetherness and trust among staff, respect and appreciation of individual’s contribution to the organizational goal, employees display of confidence and high level of knowledge about the organization, professionalism in staff utterances to avoid badmouthing which will prevent the team from effectively functioning in the organization.

In work places where the culture of teamwork is not evident, the leader becomes jack of all trade and master of none. In fact, if you do not learn to work with your team of staff, you will be left to do the work on your own. He or she will have no regard for the rules and regulations governing the organization. He or she will take and implement decisions without the input from other employees. The leader will always look frustrated, stressed out and think everybody is the cause of his frustration and stressful situation. He or she will behave as all-knowing and the only reservoir of knowledge and as a result will not need the collaborative effort of other employees. The leader will achieve less result because he fails to capitalize on the principle of synergy. Thus, he or she will not collaborate with other talents within the organization to achieve higher

productivity.

The absence of teamwork in the workplace also affect the behavior of employees of the organization. More often than not, there is that general apathy among employees as they are unwilling to take up additional responsibilities and they often become reserve and non-active because their talents, knowledge and experiences are not being fully utilized. As a result, they often complain about

the leadership style of the leader, and are always absent from work or

spend less time at the workplace.

Teamwork is never a waste of time. If individual skills and talents are well coordinated in a team, it can be of great benefit to the overall organization and even to team members by building lasting professional relationship and enriching their Curriculum Vitae (CVs). The principle of “two is always better than one” provides a support system for each and every member of the team to leverage on the professional skills, knowledge and experiences of other members of the team in order to achieve the team’s overall goal. It also creates that bond of togetherness that promote trust and friendliness among employees within the organization.

The attitude of the leader can either promote teamwork or individualism at workplace. In order to ensure the spirit of teamwork, the leader needs to exhibit the attitude of objectivity, carefully selecting team members, believing in the capabilities of the team he has selected, promoting communicating an open dialogue among team members, delegating and empowering team members, building personal connection with team members, showing empathy and readiness to

assist team members with their problems, willing to listen to concerns and preferences of team members, committing to providing coaching and support to the team, and giving credit to team members for achievements made collectively.

It worth noting that human beings are social-beings and born to relate. Often it is some sort of experience that make people coil back or become reserve and would not want to relate or work with others in a team. However, it is actually not wrong to work by yourself depending on the kind of project you are working on. For instance, those working in the technological space such as development of technological applications may choose to work by themselves. But when the

demand for your project or services expands, then you have no choice than to bring other people on board to work as a team to meet those demands.

Oftentimes, it becomes difficult working with others in a team because of conflict situation among the team members, personality differences, power play or organizational politics, unhealthy competition and lack of emotional intelligence among team members.

Despite the difficulty working together in a team, managers and leaders should constantly strive to work on situations that hinder workplace collaboration and take advantage of the spirit of teamwork to improve and increase organizational performance. Employees should also take advantage of working together as a team and leverage on the skills, knowledge and experiences of colleague team members to improve and increase performance. Both the leader and employees should continuously work to improve their emotional intelligence since this will help them understand each other’s mood and empathize with each other at any given time.