Beyond the ordinary discourse of understanding organizations as outcroppings, modern organizational analysts emphasize the effective and efficient utilization of human resources.
For doing so, both management and the development of human resources are crucial. The first one keeps the organization active by performing business as usual whereas capacity development programs prepare the organization for the present and future.
Training on various aspects pertaining to the organizational vision, mission and objectives is the precondition of developing human potential.
However, this might not be enough to motivate people to actively engage in achieving organizational goals. Here comes the necessity of changing work culture to value human potential.
Since an organization is a conglomeration of human resources with diverse backgrounds, ethnicity, and different ideology but they all need to work together to fruitfully transform the inputs into quality outputs. In other words, they need to work in a team by performing their role.
Teambuilding is a concept that forms a group for achieving the desired goal based on combined effort with a contribution of everybody whatever the role is. Usually, a team consisting of 6-8 members with more or less similar understanding and capacity serves better.
A team is a group of individuals, all working together for a common goal and purpose. The individuals comprising a team ideally should have a common goal(s), common objectives, and more or less think on the same lines.
Individuals who are not compatible with each other can never form a team. They should have similar if not the same interests, thought processes, attitudes, perceptions and likings.
For doing better and making teamwork effective, each member of the team should always speak with facts and arguments scientifically and logically convince to influence the decision.
The main difference between a team and a group is the active involvement of every team member is a must and mandatory whereas a group may produce a better output of best performers only.
A perfect example of a team is a football or cricket team where even extra players are assigned for doing particular tasks.
How does teamwork work?
Usually, a team is built following a five-stage continuous process that produces the results. The five stages include storming, forming, norming, performing, and adjourning.
The first stage starts with the formation of a team that characterizes the preliminary stage where team members feel shy, guarded, and hesitant to actively engage. Once it is formed, dealing with team members begins.
At this stage characteristics and personality traits influence to take the role and some team members try to confront that creates the conflict.
As a result, the team sometimes loses some mates. In the third stage of team building, team members start getting organized and developing their skills, and contribute to the function.
This is the norming stage of teambuilding where knowledge creation begins formally. The fourth stage is the performance that produces the result based on friendship, flexibility, support, tolerance and mutual understanding.
Performance speaks about the success of the combined efforts. The final stage is about the feeling of losing and gaining as a result of team efforts that may bring either positive or negative results.
Although a positive one influences strongly keeping progress, a negative one also encourages us to learn from mistakes and do better in the future.
The first three stages are the integral parts of the group that gradually moves further from an immature group to sharing group and finally build the team.
However, based on the desired and unexpected result, the team further starts dysfunction and gets back to the group that needs again stimulus for teambuilding with new goals.
And this way, teambuilding contributes to better performance of the organization and helps achieve organizational goals.
Who are the team members?
There are some types of team members who are actively involved in the teamwork process and play a pivotal role based on their capacity.
Thinking-oriented people have the creative and difficult problem-solving capacity (plant); strategic and judgemental capacity (monitor evaluator) and specialist knowledge & dedication quality (specialist).
Action-oriented team workers are dynamic & challenge takers (sharper); efficient and disciplined (implementer) and painstaking and on-time deliverers (complete finisher).
People-oriented team members are good at accommodative and social interaction (team worker); confident and promoter of decision making (coordinator) and enthusiastic & explorer of opportunities (resource investigator).
Since team members have multiple capacities as social and economic human beings, any member can possess more than one team role and can contribute more to making an effective team.
Various types of team roles are also relevant and contradictory to different personality types (extroversion and introversion) for which synchronization with the team roles and personality traits is a must to get better outputs from individuals.
Types of organizations likewise are suitable for some team roles such as sharper for creative and challenging organizations; implementer and complete finisher for production-based companies, team worker and coordinator for public organizations, and so on.
Creating effectiveness of teambuilding
Teamwork is not only a culture of doing the right things but also a mechanism of contributing to organizational goal achievement by bringing its effectiveness.
Defining a clear purpose and assigning roles among the team member based on their capacity and competence enhances the effectiveness of teamwork.
Team members must understand their capacity and assess the extent of capacity so that everybody can contribute their roles.
Teamwork performs well in stipulated time with a specific number of employees. Since the organization is vast and consists of more employees, delineation of work within the specificity is not possible.
For doing so, the team leader must inculcate a shared leadership notion, which is giving credit to all, and in turn, everybody in the team should have a good relationship and active listening skills.
Active listening is the reciprocal concept of understanding the issue, realizing the instructions, and demonstrating accurately through their performance.
How can team leaders and team members bring effectiveness?
Although it entirely depends on everybody’s active participation to produce better results in the team, the leader either selected or emerged has the key role in the successfulness and failure of teamwork.
S/he needs to encourage everyone to participate in setting objectives and fixing targets and assigning roles according to skills and aptitude.
Rotation of team members creates everyone capable of and active in keeping the progress. This process is likely to get replace individuals to complete the work successfully.
Team leaders must follow the informal meetings to understand everyone and their issues of concern and even issues of conflict so that they can resolve those well.
The team leader should shoulder responsibility; give credit to all involved while need not blame anybody for unexpected consequences.
Moreover, the leader must work to explore the hidden potentials of every member of the team in the organization.
Sharing among the employees helps identify strengths and weaknesses that can be utilized properly and addressed meticulously. This sharing and feedback process widens the known area and minimizes hidden obstacles.
The team effort ultimately is the interaction of team leader and team workers where team members’ role is crucial.
As an active and important part of the team, everybody must understand the ultimate purpose of the task and understand oneself.
This knowing about oneself, particularly about the skills and knowledge, can help get the appropriate task.
For example, the plant-like team member is a week in communicating with and managing ordinary people which s/he should not be given that task which can easily be performed by either team worker or coordinator or resource investigator.
Finally, making an organization effective through team building is a utilization of the potential of different team roles based on the capacity of team members and the team leader’s influence with a rich cultural orientation in an appropriately designed organization.
Each team member has inherently some limitations because of the personal traits and traits that fit in an organization that must be analyzed. An appropriate person should take the exact role.
For doing better and making teamwork effective, each member of the team should always speak with facts and arguments scientifically and logically convince to influence the decision.
While planning, everybody should know when and how to intervene and where to stop speaking or intervening. Literature depicts that appreciation at all levels enhances the performance of individuals.
In the team process, it is a must to encourage everybody and continue to contribute so that team members never become discouraged and self-withdrawn.
Teamwork in Bangladeshi Work Culture
Although the team concept is widely used in the private sector of the developed world, it has been extensively used in the public sector too.
Business management learners learn and practice this process much while it is limited to the public sector. Culturally Bangladeshi people are fond of living together and have the tendency to help each other, which is an inherent virtue of survival in rural Bangladesh. However, it contradicts the structured job.
People in an organization are likely to work individually or want to get things done by others following the traditional managerial approach.
Teamwork performs well in stipulated time with a specific number of employees. Since the organization is vast and consists of more employees, delineation of work within the specificity is not possible.
The culture of an organization, particularly in public office, is long-practiced value-driven which cannot be changed in a day or in a short time.
Moreover, public organizations in Bangladesh are tightened with strong hierarchical bindings and strict administrative values that inhibit flexible approaches and everyone’s involvement.
Developing employees with the same skills and knowledge is impossible that also restricts the rotation of individuals.
It is found that public offices in Bangladesh are always led by a single organizational leader who is also a credit seeker. This discourages others from fully utilizing their potential.
Finally, making an organization effective through team building is a utilization of the potential of different team roles based on the capacity of team members and the team leader’s influence with a rich cultural orientation in an appropriately designed organization.
(The author is working as a trainer at the Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre for more than 22 years)
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