Teamwork

The importance of teamwork cannot be undermined. Team work is essential because it maintains an enjoyable work, living, and learning environment for Families, Businesses, and Organizations and in Educational arenas. Basically, it’s the ability to work together toward a common vision.

Teamwork among a diverse group of people would equally reveal new ideas. And those ideas are priceless in today’s competitive business environment. Teamwork by households, organizations, employees, students, and educators enables them to split tasks into smaller parts and then work together to complete them faster.

However, teamwork is an important way of accomplishing our responsibilities and goals. Honestly, nothing would ever get done faster without teamwork. When we work together, we can get things done faster and more accurately. That’s why parents in most families share house chores among their children according to their different ages, their interest and their abilities. More importantly, when a financial problem arises in a family they could also solve it by sharing it through the financial capabilities of every member of the family starting from the father, mother and their children (that’s when the children already have a good source of income). Teamwork is an important life skill that parents can teach their children from their early lives to help them succeed.

Teamwork In The Family

Every member of the family has something unique for the team. Teaching them early on how important it is to build teamwork will not only benefit your family; it will teach your children or wards the value of working with others to accomplish a goal. The truth is that being able to effectively function as a team member is a valued skill. Every child has different strengths and skills, and allowing children to practice teamwork gives them a chance to develop and appreciate their special talents.

Henry Ford, an American industrialist and founder of the Ford Motor Company wrote a quote saying, “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” Truth about it is a known fact that individually you are one drop, but together you are an ocean. That explains the magic of teamwork.

Raising children as a team is good and will be of great benefits to the society at large. Parents who work as a team have a positive impact on their children's emotions and relationships. Kids who work as a team can increase their sibling bond, tend to watch out for each other, and want to help and take care of one another. Additionally, parenting teamwork involves problem-solving, managing conflict, communicating, listening, backing each other up and accepting each other. One amazing aspect of family teamwork is thinking about each others' problems. “There’s no ‘I’ in teamwork.” And I can’t think of a better way to build good relationships with my family members than thinking about what we all need, things that will contribute to our wellbeing and growth. I have seen my siblings, parents, uncles and some other relatives care and look out for one another and I know it is as a result of family teamwork.

Moreover, another benefit of family teamwork is celebrating victories together. It helps eliminate competition among siblings, between parents, cousins, tribes and society as a whole. It’s important to let your family members know that what’s good news for one, is good news for all the members of the family. Competing to see who is the best will only cause harm to everyone as it brings hate and envy, and in turn, causes disunity in a family.

Teamwork In The Workplace

Teamwork builds strong employee relationships because the more employees work together, the more they get to know themselves and develop likeness for each other. Also, the more they work together, the more they gain experiences from one another and learn to live and accommodate one another by accepting their likes, dislikes, strengths, and weaknesses. When a team works together for a long time, they naturally become more collaborative, and this leads to a more enjoyable work environment for everyone. A pleasant work environment leads to higher productivity, and this helps organizations realize their goals quickly.

Consequently, hiring a diverse team could be of great benefit for Organizations and Businesses. Take For instance, as an employer of labor, who needs the services of a Teacher, Nurse, Doctor, Cook and Cleaner to fill in the gap in your workforce. The best thing to do is to hire people of different ages, different cultural background and religious beliefs in order to bring innovation and growth faster in your establishment.

The mix of cultures, viewpoints, and personalities will create a stronger sense of team and would enable you have an edge over your competitors too.

Hiring a diverse team is essential for the unity of the group and the success of your businesses and organization's growth. Such a team fosters creative innovation and gives your organization more skill, more talents, and more experienced personnel that leads to higher productivity, increased motivation, and improved employee performance.

The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) could be used to back up the facts about the above assertion on the benefits of hiring a diverse team. The NYSC is a Scheme established by the Nigerian Government to Unit their Nation and equally to promote love and peace across the country. It equally helps to integrate the three ethnic groups in Nigeria (Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba). However, it gives every Nigerian graduate and diplomat equal opportunity to work together and serve the country with selflessness, in unity, and love. These certificate holders are mostly youths within the ages of 20-30 years of age and are from a diverse cultural group, different religion beliefs, and speaks different Languages which could be (Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba, and other language in Nigeria). The Nigerian youths are given the opportunity to serve in different establishments, institutions and organizations for a period of one year before entering into the workforce to face life and reality. They are deployed to different States across the country, a place with a diverse cultural background, far away from their various homes to serve. During the course of this service, they would be given the opportunity to work as a team both in their place of “primary assignment [PPA] and their various CDs groups.” [Community Development Service].

The CDs which holds weekly gives them the freedom to contribute and brainstorm ideas, and know themselves, their likes and dislikes, their different skill sets and experiences. All these are important for their growth as a team. During the CDs, Corp Members deliberate on different developmental issues and then agree as a team to achieve these goals before meeting stakeholders in their different states, local governments and communities of deployment.

These developmental initiative could be in form of mobilizing or sensitizing the people about a Health program that would improve their lives, Agricultural development program, Sanitation program, Election, Child’s Right, Female genital Mutilation, Infant mortality rate, Benefits of food hygiene, Important of anti-natal care to pregnant women and their babies, and a lot more.

The Corp members will have the confidence and freedom to carry out multiple tasks. They would be able to carry out all these task because of their different field of specialty, experiences, different skill set, backgrounds and their different religious belief. These differences would enable them to brainstorm ideas and achieve their goals faster.

The importance of meeting stakeholders in a community or Local Government like; the King, village heads, youth leaders, Local Government Chairman and counselors before embarking on any developmental initiative in their locality is that, they understand their people more and so would equally know what they want (that’s their felt needs). The stakeholders serves as an intermediate between the corp members and the masses or the people of the community where they would want to bring development to.

Teamwork In Schools

The ability to work collaboratively as part of a team is one of the most vital skills with which we can equip our students. Being able to work with others is likely to be a major predictor of success in both the academic and professional worlds.

The importance of teamwork for students can be felt in every phase of life, be it school, the business world or any organization they find themselves.

Importance of Teamwork in Schools

Teamwork may inspire students to become friends and loyal to their teammates. Also when students work together as a team, they are more likely to be united and support one another rather than engaging in unhealthy competition.

Teamwork helps to mix different personalities and allow them to mingle. Most times, students perform their best when they are surrounded with friends and peers.

Listening skills improve teamwork. In a team, listening to your members is inevitable. Without listening to others in the team the whole process of partnership breaks down and the team fails. So, for you to be a good teammate, you must master the act of listening which is one of the core part of communication.

Teamwork may give students the opportunity for personal growth. By working together, individuals can learn quickly from one another, broaden their knowledge and improve their skill set.

Teamwork in education is crucial. Whether you are an intelligent student or not you must be able to learn one thing from your teammates. Underestimating teamwork can negatively affect your career.

Cooperation among team members can enhance the performance of students.

Teamwork can improve communication and increase the efficiency of the individual, bringing benefits to everyone.

Collaborative skills are crucial in the educational arena. Being an intelligent loner might be beneficial for some students in terms of their academic performances, but cooperating with their mates can bring better results in the long run because they would be able to improve their interpersonal and social skills which will be of great benefits to them in their career.

The Results In The Real World

Team building is crucial for success in today’s multidisciplinary world, as a student who wants to attain your career goals by all means; you need to make sure that you engage in teamwork. As long as you’re innovative and creative, working with a team would help you towards attaining growth and success, keeping in mind the importance of effective teamwork can help you succeed in many of your endeavors. For instance when a student who’s not a computer literate is in a team made up of computer scientists, He/she will automatically become conversant with the use of computer because of a healthy competition that would exist in a team of such professionals.

Teamwork skills will be of great advantage to individuals who engage in it during their future career, though it is also extremely beneficial during ones time in school as a student regardless of the field of specialization.

Teachers, instructors, lecturers and other educators should encourage teamwork among their students in order to boost productivity in our educational sector.

I had the privilege to experience that during my undergraduate program in the university. Permit me to acknowledge my university lecturers who helped to imbibe in me the magic of working with teammates here. They are, Prof Sunny .E Udeze, Prof Ike .S Ndolo, Prof. L.I Chibueze, Dr. Chidi Ezinwa, Dr. Nnamdi Okenwa, Dr. Obiageli Okafor, Prof Chris Ngwu, Dr. Didiugwu and Late Dr. Anthony Okofu. These great achievers helped to groom me to learn, practice and experience what teamwork entails through the use of different communication medium and I am grateful for that. Teachers are wonderful people in our society and they should always be celebrated and remembered. If teamwork is being included in the school curriculum, it would go a long way to enlighten our younger generation early enough before they start entering the labor world.

“Collaboration also known as teamwork” has become the other of the day in this modern business world. It involves different people and different groups across businesses (that’s producers or competitors who are producing or rendering the same services to the members of the public) working together to maximize their efficiency and reach their set goals.

Technological advancement now makes it possible for businesses to collaborate to function not only across organizational boundaries but also across time and space. Technologies such as videoconferencing allow people to interact simultaneously in real-time, with lots of benefits. For instance members can participate from any location or at any time of the day, and teams can meet if they wish to.

Collaboration has become more complex over the years as teams have grown more diverse, digital and changes with time and situations. The team of today is different from the team of the 80’s due to technological advancement in today’s world.

Teamwork among a diverse group of people reveals new, fresh ideas which are useful in today’s competitive business world. The ideas could be because of their different ages, backgrounds, skill sets, and experience levels. Meaning they have different perspectives waiting to be heard if given the opportunity. That’s why every team needs to give its members equally opportunity to be heard. The secret of improving the efficiency of a business is collaborating, when you collaborate with your competitors as a business person, it will lead to healthy competition and greater wins for you and them.

The quality of businesses may not be encouraging when only one person handles it. But when it’s a team, you get more result on a more consistent basis because you are not relying on one person but many individuals with different experiences and skill sets.

Let’s start encouraging teamwork for the benefit of our younger generation .