Teamwork - A key enabler

1.

We, during our life, undertake a lot of group activities starting from our childhood

well into our adulthood. Our childhood games, sports, school activities, family chores, our college life, adventure trips with friends, professional career and settling in family life; all are team events. One thing comes out obvious: life is not a solo flight. A great portion of what we achieve or fail to achieve in our life is therefore because of teamwork or lack of it respectively. All great feats therefore have one latent but colossal force at work: good teamwork. 2. We hear a lot about the pivotal place that teamwork occupies, but never know

the real reasons behind these assertions. It is therefore quite an instructive foray to decode the magic of teamwork. 3. Every activity is undertaken with a purpose to achieve certain goal(s),

achievement of which has to be paramount. In more complex settings, it may involve a huge array of independent entities working for different goals which in turn lead to a common goal. The said complexity makes the task of harnessing energies of huge groups, sub-groups and variety of people that constitute these entities a monumental task. A lot of organizations sink under the enormity of the said challenge. But teamwork brings goal into such focus that goal becomes much more important than the role. This relegates individual egos/idiosyncrasies to back seat and brings forth the collective good. 4. Each organization/group is formed of people with different levels of expertise in

different fields as one cannot master everything. In absence of goodness of teamwork, weaknesses will be ridden upon by co-workers to achieve prominence. In teamwork, however, weak areas of others are improved. So in the end collective strength serves to diminish the effects of inherent weaknesses. 5. One of the key aspects for hiring personnel in all organizations is interpersonal

skills of new entrants. Crudely defined, interpersonal skill is ones ability to get along

with others. A cursory view at the definition tells us that there is inherent desire in organizations to have workers who can go along others and be contributing members of a team. Important thing to note is that working in a team not only hones but also begets interpersonal skills. 6. All human beings are inherently selfish. Bringing oneself to work for others credit

needs a lot of courage and unswerving commitment with the ultimate goal. Teamwork does this catharsis to purge egoistic notions and inculcate a sense of selfless devotion. It also promotes tolerance as in a team one cannot contribute anything if opposing opinions of other team-mates are not entertained. It is interesting to note that it also produces a quality of being a good listener, which is extremely valuable for bringing something of value out of a discussion. 7. Teamwork also nurtures candor which means freedom from prejudice or malice,

unreserved, honest, or sincere expression: forthrightness. Candor occupies pivotal place in making good collective decisions because only an objective and threadbare analysis of all possible factors; albeit undesirable, can bring forth good decision. As Benjamin Franklin said No body is thinking if everyone is thinking alike, so only thinking heads can produce desired results in good teamwork. 8. Another key aspect of undertaking any team job is sense of ownership. Good

teams work together and everybody is part of the process in all phases of any project. This generates ownership amongst team members not only of the successes, which is easy to come by, but more importantly of the failures because as the clich goes; success has many fathers but failure is orphan. Owning failures not only promotes cohesiveness but also gives the team required strength to take stock and start again. It is also noteworthy that an organizations achievements in the long-run are not determined by its successes but how it manages its failures. 9. Finally, working in a team helps in developing great attitude which makes all the

difference when enormity of the task is staring right in the face and chips are badly down. Rotten attitude ruins teamwork as it attacks the very base of good teamwork i.e. cohesion. If one aspect stands out during the Staff Course at PNWC, it is Course

Members ability to work as a team. If we can take along the essentials of teamwork, we have done our job. Lt Cdr Mudassar Khurshid