A general dictionary defines teamwork as a "Cooperative or coordinated effort on the part of a group of persons acting together as a team or in the interests of a common cause, unison for a higher cause, people working together for a selfless purpose, and so on."
In order for teamwork to succeed one must be a teamplayer. A Teamplayer is one who subordinates personal aspirations and works in a coordinated effort with other members of a group, or team, in striving for a common goal. Businesses and other organizations often go to the effort of coordinating team building events in an attempt to get people to work as a team rather than as individuals.
A 2003 national representative survey, HOW-FAIR [1], revealed that Americans think that 'being a team player' was the most important factor in getting ahead in the workplace. This was ranked higher than several factors, including 'merit and performance', 'leadership skills', 'intelligence', 'making money for the organization' and 'long hours'.
“The old structures are being reformed. As organizations seek to become more flexible in the face of rapid environmental change and more responsive to the needs of customers, they are experimenting with new, team-based structures” (Jackson & Ruderman, 1996).
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Aside from any required technical proficiency, a wide variety of social skills are desirable for successful teamwork, including:
The forming-storming-norming-performing model takes the team through four stages of team development and maps quite well on to many project management life cycle models, such as initiation - definition - planning - realisation.
As teams grow larger, the skills and methods that people require grow as more ideas are expressed freely. Managers must use these to create or maintain a spirit of teamwork change. The intimacy of a small group is lost, and the opportunity for misinformation and disruptive rumors grows. Managers find that communication methods that once worked well are impractical with so many people to lead. Specifically, leaders might encounter difficulties based on Daglow's Law of Team Dynamics: "Small teams are informed. Big teams infer."
Team Building, or Team Development, is a coverall term given to methods of developing an effective team.
The methods of doing this vary widely, and include
Team building generally seats within the theory and practice of organizational development.
There is a range of debates concerned with the negative features of teamworking. The move to teamwork in industry and services has led to a greater amount of peer pressure, performance management, and stress. Management control is seen by critics to be reinvigorated by transferring the disciplinary dimension of management to employees and team members themselves. There are studies showing how team members pressure each other into working harder. The literature goes into questions of bullying and of surveillance. (See Phil Garrahan and Paul Stewart The Nissan Enigma Chapter 4 published by Mansell in London - 1992). This had led to a debate on the regulation of teamworking and the need to establish rules and procedures regarding its development and boundaries.