"There's no I in team, but there is in win." -- Michael Jordan, American basketball player.
Whistling Up an Orchestra: The Value of Teamwork in the Workplace |
Those of us who gravitate toward leadership in business organizations---or create our own businesses as entrepreneurs---tend to be the independent sort. It seems ironic, then, that we achieve our highest levels of productivity only when we come together as teams.
The fact remains that human beings are social creatures. We couldn't have been otherwise and risen to become this planet's dominant species. Nearly everything worthwhile we've achieved has come about as a result of team effort. Even those we often perceive as lone-wolf geniuses---people like Einstein, Mozart, and Da Vinci---worked in a collaborative milieu (e.g., science and music) or surrounded themselves with talented people they could trust.
H.E. Luccock may have said it best when he pointed out, "No one can whistle a symphony. It takes an orchestra to play it." Few people remember Luccock today, but in the mid-twentieth century, he was an influential theologian and a shining light of the Methodist faith. He spent years at the Yale School of Divinity as a Professor of Homiletics, the art of preaching and writing sermons. He also wrote quite a few books about religion, surely one of the grandest team adventures in human history. Why We Bother
By cooperating, teams achieve what individuals cannot. Indeed, this may represent the greatest advantage of teamwork. Making our own goals secondary to our group goals may seem difficult, but it pays off for everyone in the end. Need other reasons to instill effective teamwork as one of your team's core values? I have ten more good ones:
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1. It's More Efficient.
While individuals can do separate pieces of a project in isolation and then wiggle those pieces together at the end, the process can prove to be more efficient (and effective) when the team works together closely throughout the process. Many tasks have no clear-cut edges, so when people work separately, significant overlap and duplication may occur. On a team where the members inform each other of their progress, you can more easily avoid this.
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This credit line MUST be reprinted in its entirety to use any articles from Laura Stack: (C) 2013 Laura Stack. Laura Stack is America's premier expert in personal productivity. For over 20 years, her speeches and seminars have helped professionals, leaders, teams, and organizations improve output, execute efficiently, and save time at work. She's the author or coauthor of 10 books, most recently, What to Do When There's Too Much to Do. To invite Laura to speak at your next meet or register for her free monthly newsletter, visit www.TheProductivityPro.com. |
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