How to Work Efficiently as a Team

What exactly does it mean to work efficiently as a team?

Businesses use teamwork for a very specific reason: to achieve their goals. So it would make sense to assume that a team is efficient when it reaches them, right? While this is one factor in efficiency, it’s not the only thing.

You also have to look at whether the members develop a group identity by working as a team. Why is that so important? Because it will make the team more sustainable over a longer period of time. In other words, the members will want to keep working together.

Lastly, think about the individuals within the group. Valuing their expectations and trying to meet their specific needs also plays a part in whether a team can work efficiently or not. To put it another way: we want to encourage their well-being. But how do you do that?

Which tasks to do as a team

We talked about meeting objectives as a way of determining if you work efficiently as a team. Along those lines, you also need to remember that there are some are tasks not everyone needs to take part in. That’s why it’s important to think about what can be done best individually, and what can be done best as a group.

If you want the group to have good results, you have to assign the right tasks for the team to work on together. In other words, tasks that are interdependent, discretionary, and/or uncertain. Along with that, you also have to remember that you need to make sure every member has the right knowledge for it.

A team is also more efficient when its members have already been working together for a while. Basically what we mean is that the work group has rounded out. Hence the importance of making sure people have time to adapt, because it will help you efficiently reach your objectives.

The psychosocial processes at play if you work efficiently as a team

Teams are organisms with their own particular psychosocial processes. These processes play a part in people being able to work together, along with the efficiency we’re all looking for. This is why we emphasize cohesion and cooperation.

If you can work cohesively and cooperatively as a team, there’s no doubt you’ll be efficient. That’s why you can never forget about one fundamental figure: the group leader. In a business this is usually the head of the team. It’s absolutely essential for them to be accessible and capable of communicating and clearly assigning each person specific tasks.

This way it’s more likely that  the members feel like they get more out of working as a team than they lose. Just like most things in life, being efficient in the working world means that a lot of smaller parts have to work together to reach a common goal… Let’s get to it!

Images courtesy of Climate Kick, Stefan Stefancik, and Rawpixel.