How Can You Work Efficiently As A Team?
Every year, more and more companies encourage their employees to work as a team. Especially when it comes to tasks and projects that are difficult to make progress on if they are not carried out by several people. However, the truth is that working in a team can also be very difficult. Tensions or conflicts may arise, or the team may not be able to achieve the desired result. So how can we work efficiently as a team?
What does working efficiently as a team mean?
Companies use teamwork for a very specific reason: to achieve their goals. So it makes sense to assume that a team is efficient when it is able to achieve these goals, right? While this is a factor that contributes to efficiency, it is not the only factor.
It is also important to see if the members develop a group identity by working as a team. Why is that so important? Because it makes the team more sustainable in the long run. In other words, it ensures that the members want to continue to work together.
Finally, think about the individuals within the group. Valuing their expectations and trying to meet their specific needs also plays a role in whether a team can work efficiently or not. In other words, we want to encourage their well-being. But how do you do that?
What tasks do you have to perform as a team?
Above we asked whether achieving goals is a way to determine whether people work efficiently as a team. At the same time, however, we must also remember that there are some tasks that not everyone needs to contribute to. That is why it is important to think about what is best done individually and what is best done as a group.
If you want a team to get good results, you need to get the team to work together on the right tasks. In other words, tasks that are interdependent, discretionary, and/or uncertain. In addition, you should also remember to ensure that each member has the appropriate knowledge to perform these duties.
A team is also more efficient when its members have been working together for a while. What we really mean is that the working group is complete. Hence the importance of ensuring that people have time to adapt to one another. This will help to achieve the objectives more efficiently.
The psychosocial processes that come into play when we work efficiently as a team
Teams are organisms with their own specific psychosocial processes. These processes play a role in how people can work together. In addition, they also affect the efficiency that we are all looking for. That is why we emphasize cohesion and cooperation.
If you can work together as a team in a cohesive and cooperative way, there is no doubt that you will be efficient. That is why we must never forget one fundamental figure: the group leader. In a company, this is usually the head of the team. It is absolutely essential that this person is accessible and that he is able to communicate and clearly assign each person their specific tasks.
In this way, members are more likely to feel that working as a team brings them more than they have to give in. Like most things in life, being efficient at work means that many smaller parts have to work together to achieve a common goal…Let’s get started!
Images courtesy of Climate Kick, Stefan Stefancik and Rawpixel.
