After six years of working professionally in teams, I often question teamwork. Here are the few issues and questions I have in mind:
- Look any job description you want: You are required to be a good team player, but most of the time your performance is evaluated by the work you do on your own. Your contributions to team are mostly overlooked.
- Do we really always need to be a team player? There are many positions and jobs that do not require teamwork and there are many people who cannot be good team players by nature: impatient, introvert, inflexible, insistent. The list can get longer but I stop here.
- Teamwork is not appropriate for certain tasks and might cause a lot of waste of time and energy. It is not always the most effective way of getting things done.
- Think about how much time you should invest to form and build a team and make it function properly. Are you ready to take this challenge? Teams need a good facilitator/moderator or leader and working in a team without one might be very problematic.
- You are expected to work in teams at your professional life and generally you do not get to choose the team members you work with until you reach certain seniority.
- We live in a world where leaders take all the credit. We always discuss how to grow into a leader. We associate leadership with certain personal qualities and achievements. Our education and work experience push us to turn into self-centered individualistic people and then expect us to be good team players.
- You aim to achieve an objective through teamwork but in my experience once the objective is achieved teams and management tend to ignore what did not work very well and only concentrate on the success. There should be mechanisms for team members to give feedback to each other (including team leader) even the team achieves the goal. These feedbacks should be taken into consideration otherwise team members end up with demotivation and frustration.
All in all, I want to emphasis that I am not saying that I am against teamwork. I agree with Henry Ford who said ‘Coming together is a beginning, staying together is a process and working together is success’. Teamwork can create a magical synergy, creativity and effectiveness for certain (not all) tasks if well planned and coordinated. We should be aware that a good teamwork requires time and effort, a participatory approach, good facilitation and evaluation.
by Derya Kaya
You’ve very effectively articulated so many of my own concerns about the concept of teamwork. What a fantastic piece Derya!
Wow Derya really liked the way you illustrated concept.. I have similar confusion as well.. 🙂 great work
Wahida, Rhonda Thank you very much for lovely comments. It is amazing how challenges of teamwork is similar all around the world!
I understand your point in the article and I share most of your thoughts. I do have a point to highlight when you state that “There are many people who cannot be good team players by nature: impatient, introvert, inflexible, insistent”. With that phrase as is written and listing certain behaviors, you assume that all human beings fall in your category or your perception of the concept “nature”; when reality is that there are many different concepts of nature.
Besides, when we talk about individual achievements, are they really individual? What is individual achievement? Existentialism deals with individualism in a very specific way, for example.
You have listed some of the most common and yet least discussed problems one faces while working with team.
During eight years of my career I have come across few individual who would recognize my input in the team and would acknowledge it accordingly, most of the time, like you said, once an object is achieved nobody bothers about who did or didn’t perform. The most unpleasant part of such a situation is when nobody even bothers to take stock of the individuals who were creating troubles for other team members and ultimately creating hurdles for the entire team.
and by the way GOOD JOB! 🙂
Hina, Fernando thanks for your comments and views. Fernando, “nature” is a huge topic but let me say briefly that I believe that our “nature” or character is subject to change. It is the reason why building team and a good teamwork take so much time and effort, and moderation.
Yeah, working in a team can be very challenging,and it needs, indeed a facilitator, here’s the job of the leader. Good job Derya!
I totally agree with you Derya! Not all tasks need a team. You’re absolutely right, sometimes forcing a team to work on a task slows the process down.
Thanks for put some points in this discussion Derya. Teamwork involves so many issues and your post how complex and contradictory it is.