subject: Teamwork In The Workplace [print this page] When you have a group of people planning, working and thinking as one, and making a coordinated effort toward a common goal, you can say teamwork is really at work. Although many companies and organizations are trying hard on fostering a "teamwork" culture, many are having a hard time in sustaining this kind of work attitude in the workplace.
This problem occurs due to long years of inherent belief that surpassing everyone is the only measure of success. Since our childhood, we were raised to be great. We were encouraged in the family to be the best, to win competitions and to excel in academics.
However, we should remember that a team is composed of people with different thoughts and practices that are also trying to incorporate their ideas and actions into one. These people working together may dress alike or have the same educational backgrounds, but the way they think and execute decisions can be worlds apart.
Clay and Tom used to work together in an advertising company. Both graduated from the same school and both have families that live in the suburbs. Clay is a Human Resources manager. He is a hard worker and has a reputation for being amiable to the employees and genuinely enjoys helping others. People say he is fun to work with and occasionally jokes with people as well. Meanwhile, Tom works as a Computer Analyst manager. Known to be friendly and quiet, he graduated with high honors and excels in his line of work. Tom mostly spends long hours in front of the computer and not as much time with his co-employees. Due to this, he is not sidetracked from work and usually finishes his job ahead of time. Now, both of them were requested by the company to team-up to work on special project, which meant they had to get along.
So, we can see there that despite being two very different persons, their skills were still crucial to the success of the project. Even though Clay is worlds apart from Tom, there is no way to say which is better because both them did well. And this goes to show how teamwork should work, balancing all the "negative" aspects and keying in on the positives.
This just goes to show how teamwork can be best used in the workplace.
