Teamwork

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**Historical Evolution of Teamwork:**
– The concept of teamwork dates back to 1800, with a significant shift towards collaborative work during World War I and World War II.
– The Hawthorne studies in the 1920s and 1930s highlighted the positive aspects of teamwork.
– The High Performance Organizational Model replaced traditional assembly line work structures.

**Key Characteristics of Effective Teamwork:**
– Strong group cohesion, communication, common goals, commitment, and accountability are essential for successful teamwork.
– Open communication, effective coordination, efficient cooperation, and high interdependence are fundamental team dynamics.
– Effective teamwork is measured by output quality, process efficiency, and member satisfaction.

**Processes for Enhancing Teamwork:**
– Transition, action, and interpersonal processes play crucial roles in improving coordination, communication, and teamwork.
– Passing through these processes enhances teamwork and collaborative work.

**Training and Development for Teamwork:**
– Bruce Tuckman’s team developmental model, including forming, storming, and norming stages, is essential for team success.
– Effective teamwork in each stage determines the team’s overall success.

**Benefits and Challenges of Teamwork:**
– Benefits of teamwork include problem-solving, better decision-making, healthy competition, relationship development, and individual growth.
– Drawbacks of teamwork such as social loafing, conflicts, and groupthink can hinder team performance.
– Additional benefits of teamwork include shared workload, leadership opportunities, a sense of belonging, increased productivity, and motivation.

Teamwork (Wikipedia)

Teamwork is the collaborative effort of a group to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in an effective and efficient way. Teamwork is seen within the framework of a team, which is a group of interdependent individuals who work together towards a common goal.

6 people pushing a van
U.S. Navy sailors hauling in a mooring line
A U.S. Navy rowing team
A group of people forming a strategy
A group of people collaborating

The four[clarification needed] key characteristics of a team include a shared goal, interdependence, boundedness, stability, the ability to manage their own work and internal process, and operate in a bigger social system.

Teams need to be able to leverage resources to be productive (i.e. playing fields or meeting spaces, scheduled times for planning, guidance from coaches or supervisors, support from the organization, etc.), and clearly defined roles within the team in order for everyone to have a clear purpose. Teamwork is present in contexts including an industrial organization (formal work teams), athletics (sports teams), a school (classmates working on a project), and the healthcare system (operating room teams). In each of these settings, the level of teamwork and interdependence can vary from low (e.g. golf, track and field), to intermediate (e.g. baseball, football), to high (e.g. basketball, soccer), depending on the amount of communication, interaction, and collaboration present between team members.

Among the requirements for effective teamwork are an adequate team size. The context is important, and team sizes can vary depending upon the objective. A team must include at least two members, and most teams range in size from two to 100. Sports teams generally have fixed sizes based upon set rules, and work teams may change in size depending upon the phase and complexity of the objective.

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