The Benefit of Using Teams

I believe that the vast array of benefits that teams are capable of bringing to an organization outweigh the potential downsides of a poorly constructed team. Teams can provide outstanding results, greater than the combined inputs of the individuals; but only when the design of the team has been constructed while taking into account many important factors and considerations. The output of a poorly designed team is often miserable failure at accomplishing the intended goal. It is therefore a critical component when employing teamwork that close attention be paid to several criteria when designing the team in order to guarantee the highest chances of success.

Successful teams require group members with complimentary sets of skills. This minimizes the potential for social loafing among individuals because it becomes readily apparent where each member’s strengths and weaknesses lie during the forming and storming stages of group development, and allows each member to claim a share of the work that allows them to capitalize on their individual talents and avoid a share of the work that falls outside of their area of expertise. It is also important that groups are given a common goal or purpose at the beginning to work towards in order to prevent group members from splintering off onto separate tangents. Allowing members to choose responsibilities in areas where they excel and aligning each person behind a common goal early on is an effective way to provide individual accountability and reduce the chances of failure or social loafing.

Teams provide many benefits to the organization. Primarily, a diverse sample of team members will learn from one another and produce work that is of a higher quality due to the synergy of ideas that takes place in a group setting. Teamwork promotes the implementation of new ideas by placing individuals with varying backgrounds in a position to debate the merits of the idea and offer diverse suggestions on how to best integrate...