There are also some that if we take it upon ourselves to solve alone it will take us ages before we can ever complete it, as we may not have the knowledge, skill, or strength required to complete that task. This is why group work cannot be over emphasized, as it makes up for all these inadequacies.
Whenever we work as a group, what happens is that resources are brought together. You may be good in an area but lacking in another. When you working in a group, if you have someone in that group that has the ability to solve that problem that you are finding it difficult to tackle, then the problem goes away. It is this principle that resulted to the formation of several organizations and companies that we know today.
Unlike when working alone; for group work to be effective, it is required that there is unity and togetherness amongst the members of the group. These two things are the attributes of teamwork. When the members of a group or a team bring their resources together to achieve a common goal or complete a task, we say they are carrying out teamwork.
There are lots of advantages that comes with teamwork, not only in life experiences, we even find the importance of teamwork in our common tools and appliances. Take for instance a broom, a stick of a broom cannot be able to sweep a house alone, but when broom sticks are brought together to form a bunch, they can be used to sweep a house very well. This is the power of team work; what you can't do alone, with the help of a team, it becomes much easier and faster.
Another example is a computer. It consist of a monitor, a keyboard, mouse, ram, etc. None of these components can work alone. If you own all the parts of a computer but you are lacking a monitor, there is no way to receive a feedback from the computer. Without a monitor, you can't call the setup a computer to begin with. Same goes if any of the parts is not working efficiently or missing.
The first thing teamwork does is to recognize the insufficiencies of each member of the team, and then find a way to bring them all together so that the insufficiency of one can be cover up by the competence of another. When a team has been able to achieve this goal, we say that they have achieved teamwork.
From this explanation, you can see that teamwork constitutes of a group of people, but not all group of people working together are carrying out teamwork. The core value of teamwork is one goal, when the team is not chasing the same goal or purpose, they are just a team, and not a group.
For instance, let's look at Manchester United at the moment. They have some of the best players in the world in their team, including Cristano Ronaldo, Greenwood, Fernandes, Sancho, Pogba, Cavani, De Gea and so forth, all of which are world class players. It is expected that they should be as Real Madrid, Liverpool or Man City at the moment, if we consider the class of player that they have in their team. But each time they have a match, they underperform. Manchester United struggle to beat teams like Bromwich, and it's not suppose to be so.
This underperformance can be traced back to the fact that, although they are a group of players, they are not playing as a team. Each player has its own interest. The media has not even made it easier for them, as they always single out Ronaldo to talk about at the end of every match. Things like that creates disunity and believe me, we will continue to see this underperformance till Manchester United gets a manager who can perfectly unify the team, and get them to play with teamwork.
For a group of people to work together with teamwork, they must first realize that every single member of the group is of great value, we can't say that any is more important than others. Although they are to play different roles which are categorized in different levels, each of these roles needs the other to be achieved, thus the need to accord everyone the respect that deserve.
Let the manager realise that without the janitorial officer doing his/her job of cleaning the office efficiently, he/she (the manager) will not find the office conducive enough to work. Same goes with the janitorial officer realising that the growth of the company is dependent on the manager making better decisions. If we can understand this, we will achieve more than we already do in our work places, as well as every area of our life.
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