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Working Together

Many businesses these days place an importance on teamwork. Teamwork involves people working together and cooperating in order to get tasks done and to help a business grow and develop.

Its importance lies in the idea that if you do not involve all workers in decision making then there are going to be people who are not engaged in the task and who lack motivation. Teamwork recognises that each person, no matter what their role, has a part to play in the business.

Teamwork - getting people to work together is seen as increasingly important in improving efficiency, quality and ultimately profitability. Copyright: Valdas Zajanckauskas, from stock.xchng.

Being a team player is now an important requirement in many person specifications in job applications. To be a good team player requires individuals to have certain characteristics - some or all of these could be important:

• Being prepared to listen
• Being prepared to share ideas
• Being prepared to accept criticism and to act on it
• Being prepared to help others in the team - even if it is not your immediate role
• Being prepared to expect others, and yourself, to question, be questioned and to be persuaded by different views, opinions and ideas

Team Roles

Some people are better at doing certain types of tasks in teams than others. If we use a sporting example, not everyone can be the goalscorer! Someone has to take the role of defender or goalkeeper. In any team, therefore, it is considered important to have different types of people with different characteristics.

Dr Meredith Belbin, a researcher based at the Henley Management College, carried out some research to try and identify the main team roles that individuals can play. Belbin identified these as:

Action-orientated roles - those who do things:

• Shaper - people who like to get things going
• Implementer - people who like to be organised and methodical in getting things done
• Completer-finisher - people who meet deadlines and who like to get things done on time

Getting people to work together in teams is especially important in large scale projects where cooperation is essential to get a job done and where people with different temperaments and skills are brought together. Copyright: Jozeph Klinger, from stock.xchng.

People-orientated roles:

• Co-ordinator - people who like to pull things together and make sure that all team members get their say
• Teamworker - people who are sensitive to people's feelings in the team, they will work hard at making sure the team works without unnecessary conflict
• Resource investigator - people who have lots of contacts and are able to get hold of information from lots of different sources

Cerebral roles:

• Plant - people who like to come up with the original ideas, they are creative and original but sometimes are so creative that they can't get things seen through to the end
• Monitor/evaluator - people who are able to see different perspectives and options. They are good at judging situations
• Specialist - people who have expert knowledge about certain things; good at what they do but not necessarily good at seeing where everything fits together

The different roles above are not just related to any one individual of course, many people might be able to combine more than one of these roles at different times. Belbin suggested that having a team that comprised of each of these different types of roles was a good starting point to building an effective team.

Some businesses might pay to have their staff sit a test to see what their predominant type of role is. By creating a mix of these different roles, Belbin felt that teamwork can be enhanced and the business could become more effective. You can get more information about Belbin's work at the Belbin Web site.

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