Employee engagement, in turn, is associated with a number of performance outcomes. For one, we know that workplace team relationships are associated both with employee well-being (unsurprising given that half of American employees spend more time at work than by themselves and with family) and with employee engagement. This is because a team that lacks cohesion and chemistry is likely to underperform - even if it has everything else going for it. While that’s an important caveat, a team’s cohesiveness and ability to get along remain critical to its performance. So, some types of personal relationships may actually not benefit the team’s performance. Lencioni writes that people with close personal relationships may hesitate to hold each other accountable because they’re afraid of damaging these relationships. If they don’t, you could end up with a group of people who think similarly and get along but don’t have much synergy.įurthermore, in his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, business consultant Patrick M. Picking members for a team may be an inexact science, but there’s a method to choosing teammates who occupy different, complementary roles. Team cohesiveness is vital, but ineffective leadership, a lack of direction or motivation, resource cuts, competing responsibilities, or any number of other hurdles can undermine this cohesion. Of course, just because teammates get along doesn’t mean the team will succeed in its objectives. A team without synergy isn’t really a team at all. (Synergy refers to an interaction producing a sum greater than the parts, and is what differentiates a team from a group of people simply working together mainly to meet individual goals.) Teams use specialization, complementation, and coordination of efforts to achieve a common goal. Consequently, they struggle to create synergy. These numbers make clear that many teams struggle with maintaining good relationships. In addition, about a third say they’ve seen teammates start rumors about each other. Forty percent say they’ve seen a verbal confrontation between teammates, and 15 percent say they’ve actually seen arguments escalate into physical confrontations. (See the aforementioned survey.) Moreover, dysfunctional doesn’t simply mean unproductive - it can mean downright ugly. However, it’s not surprising, given that seven in 10 workers who have taken part in teams have experienced a dysfunctional team at least once. Put simply, only one in four people who say teamwork is important actually prefers working on a team to working on their own. However, the reality is that we’re not very good at it, and we don’t like it very much.Īccording to a 2013 survey by the University of Phoenix, only about a quarter of American workers who have worked on teams say they prefer teamwork to working on their own - even though almost all of them say that teams serve an important function in the workplace. We hear a lot about how important teamwork is, and many organizations spend a great deal of time and resources seeking to foster it. How well does teamwork work? And, why is teamwork so much work? These sound like tongue twisters, but they are relevant questions in today’s workplace.
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