Working as a team: How teamwork leads to success

When people with different skills and per­son­al­it­ies work together on a project, share tasks, and take joint re­spons­ib­il­ity for the bigger picture, they are often said to be working well in a team. But what exactly char­ac­ter­ises ‘work as a team’ and what factors determine its success and failure?

Tra­di­tion­ally, teamwork refers to the process of several people working together on a single project or toward a unified goal. Everyone takes on their in­di­vidu­al tasks and regularly exchanges in­form­a­tion with team col­leagues to update on status and progress. However, there’s much more to good teamwork, because in the best-case scenario the team shares re­spons­ib­il­ity for the success (of a project or a company), trusts other members, and enjoys working together.

Before we look at the pre­requis­ites and the char­ac­ter­ist­ics that make up good teamwork, let’s look at the ad­vant­ages of working as a team (for companies and employees). The emphasis here is on ‘good’ teamwork because un­suc­cess­ful teamwork can have numerous dis­ad­vant­ages.

Teamwork has the following ad­vant­ages:

• Knowledge transfer and power of in­nov­a­tion: Once tasks have been assigned to team members according to their skillset, other members can benefit from this knowledge transfer. Regular exchanges also foster new insights and ways of finding solutions. As a result, chal­lenges can be solved that an in­di­vidu­al employee may not have been able to handle alone.
• Increased pro­ductiv­ity: Problems are elim­in­ated more quickly and everyone can focus on what they do best.
• Increased mo­tiv­a­tion: On the one hand, ‘friendly’ com­pet­it­ive pressure spurs on employees to give it their all or improve their per­form­ance. On the other hand, teamwork can foster a sense of community.
• Greater personal re­spons­ib­il­ity: If inter-team com­mu­nic­a­tion runs smoothly, in­di­vidu­al employees tend to work more in­de­pend­ently.
• Joy and well-being: Working in a good team is more fun than everyone fighting for them­selves. This also leads to a higher staff com­mit­ment and a decrease in staff turnover and fluc­tu­ation.

In addition to the Lencioni Pyramid, there are other studies and ob­ser­va­tions dis­cuss­ing the con­di­tions for suc­cess­ful working in a team. The most important ones are:

Regular meetings to discuss work in progress are in­dis­pens­able. Ul­ti­mately, each team member should be aware of what another one is doing at all times. When it comes to workplace com­mu­nic­a­tion or com­mu­nic­a­tion within a team, it is important that every voice is heard equally and that even un­pleas­ant topics can be addressed openly – be it issues with solving tasks or issues among team members.

On the one hand, there should be agreement on what exactly should be achieved by when, but above all: how is it achieved? How do in­di­vidu­al team members want to col­lab­or­ate? How often do they want to exchange ideas? How do they deal with issues? In order to be able to answer these questions, it is important to work out common values and norms on how to discuss, debate, and com­mu­nic­ate with others.

People tend to work more pro­duct­ively when they are doing what they’re good at and enjoy doing. That's why tasks should be dis­trib­uted in such a way that position and function fit together. It should be possible for team members to be promoted to new positions if they so wish. As new areas of re­spons­ib­il­ity arise within a team, all staff should be involved and heard when these areas are dis­trib­uted.

Even if a team is dealing with a specific task, it is important that team members with similar ex­per­i­ence and skills do not work together ex­clus­ively. The broader the skillset of the team, the better. This does not only refer to technical expertise. Different per­son­al­it­ies and ways of thinking, diversity and inclusion are good found­a­tions for teamwork.

Good teamwork only works if no single member pushes them­selves to the fore. Comradery is quickly destroyed if one person starts to act as a leader. Progress must be cel­eb­rated as joint success.

If teamwork isn’t working out, it may not be the fault of its members. Sometimes, the en­vir­on­ment isn’t working in their favour. This could be due to a coun­ter­pro­duct­ive lead­er­ship style of the man­age­ment or because a company un­der­mines suc­cess­ful col­lab­or­a­tion through outdated working models or not enough meeting rooms and tools.

Aside from using the right software, the right way of working is important: Agile working, for example, is a method that relies on a dynamic working at­mo­sphere for teams: autonom­ous, col­lab­or­at­ive and making optimal use of the technical pos­sib­il­it­ies.

Cloud solutions such as Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, support digital col­lab­or­a­tion. Cloud-based offerings, such as HiDrive storage including backup function, are also re­com­men­ded for storing and editing files col­lab­or­at­ively. For team com­mu­nic­a­tion, Slack, Zoom and al­tern­at­ives have become es­tab­lished players in the field. For or­gan­ising tasks and projects, there are extremely powerful solutions such as Jira or free offerings like Asana or Trello.

All these tool ideas are easy to implement and help teams work together suc­cess­fully.

Though the ad­vant­ages of working in a team generally far outweigh the dis­ad­vant­ages, there are some potential stumbling blocks that managers should be aware of and aim to coun­ter­act in good time. These include:

• Increase in effort to co­ordin­ate projects and com­mu­nic­ate with others.
• In­di­vidu­al team members’ successes depend on the work, mo­tiv­a­tion, and quality standards of others.
• Antipathy between two or more members inhibits teamwork.
• Employees may withhold their true opinions to avoid being singled out (Group Think).
• In­di­vidu­al employees rest on the ambition and success of others (social loafing).

Team leaders and su­per­visors coun­ter­act many of these dangers through regular exchange with in­di­vidu­al team members. A good basis of trust and an open team culture are central here.