In short, teamwork refers to employees who work in a group that often cooperate and carry out tasks hand in hand to achieve the team’s goals. A team consists of a combination of a number of individuals who have interdependent competencies in terms of ability, expertise, skills and knowledge and have accountability and commitment to the team’s performance and are ready to carry out tasks together. Among the characteristics of a team are:
CHARACTERISTICS | WORK TEAM |
Chief | The leader as a facilitator and team leader |
Making decisions | Consent of the whole team after the information is received and evaluated |
Goal | The goal is determined by the team |
Job determination | Teams plan work assignments together |
Communication | More open and transparent two-way communication |
Cooperation | Members share expertise in being complementary to each other |
Work result | The result of teamwork |
Assessment | Achievements are assessed collectively |
Table of Characteristics of a Team
Through teamwork, organizations can increase results without increasing resources because teamwork involves a combination of effort, knowledge, skills and abilities that can produce higher work performance than if done alone. Eight main values that are prerequisites for the implementation of teamwork, namely:
- Same goal
- Our responsibility
- Trust each other
- Share ideas
- Help each other
- Compromise
- discussion
- Cooperation
There is often confusion between teamwork and group work. It should be noted that these two terms are different. Working in a group does not necessarily mean teamwork. There are many types of work done by individuals in groups but it has not been an example of teamwork because:
“Group work focuses on each individual’s work, but collectively each person has been assigned work that must be completed. In fact, someone in the group only receives instructions from the leader and is not involved in determining any decision or action”
Furthermore, teamwork can accept team members from different backgrounds and consider different members as ” part of us ” but group work, usually members consist of those who have similarities in terms of way of thinking and background and consider others different as ” not from us “.
What is a high achievement troop?
A team is said to be high performing when it can give satisfaction to customers, employees, investors and other stakeholders in the organization. The team always emphasizes the aspect of continuous improvement in the planning and management of its activities and regularly produces a better quality of work. High-performing teams are more willing to develop potential, update expertise, and make cognitive and emotional strengths a driving force in ensuring team excellence.
Therefore, the factors that affect the performance of a team need to be identified first in order to stimulate the full involvement of team members. Team performance is determined by 3 factors namely:
- Worker ability
- Work environment
- Worker motivation
There are 6 elements that make up a high performance work team which consists of:
- Competence of troop members
- Skills, processes and ways of working
- Interpersonal skills, communication and personality strengths
- Value system
- The same vision, goals and direction
- Organizational values
In addition to that, clarity about the roles, powers and responsibilities of each team member also affects the performance of the work team. In this regard, each member of the work team needs to clearly understand the beliefs, values and norms that they hold. When they know each other’s duties well and the work ethic that guides them together can meet the goal of forming a high performance team that can benefit the organization.
Looking at the factors listed, it clearly shows that the effectiveness, performance and achievement of a team is influenced by the relationship between factors at the organizational, team and individual (member) levels. The lack and weakness of one of the factors will cause the work team to fail to function effectively and this situation may affect the team’s goals to be achieved.
Efforts towards realizing the goal of building a high-performance team also require close cooperation and effective communication between the management of the organization and the team as well as between fellow team members. The sharing of effort among team members is important to ensure that the team achieves its goals. Therefore, the emphasis on the concept of COQP Driven is important for the team to reach a successful level of maturity through 3 critical levels which are:
- Survive
- Development (growth)
- Success (excel)
This integrated approach requires the team to focus on the demands of external customers and internal customers (stakeholders and employers), fulfill the original objective of its establishment, comply with quality and achieve productivity in the production of products or services.