Want a more efficient team? We have some tips for you!

What is teamwork and why is it important?

Teamwork is defined as a group of people working together to achieve a common goal. It is important because it allows individuals to pool their resources and talents in order to achieve something greater than they could have on their own. For businesses, teams that thrive typically make the company run better and provide stronger results than teams that struggle to produce efficiently.

Especially, when tackling a large and complex task, having  a diverse team provides different viewpoints and skills to come together… Additionally, teamwork can help to build morale and foster a sense of camaraderie within an organization.

When everyone is working together towards a common goal, it can help to create a sense of community and belonging.

What are some benefits of teamwork?

When it comes to achieving success, there is no substitute for teamwork. Working together towards a common goal can help people to pool their resources, share their knowledge, and support one another through thick and thin. As the saying goes, there is strength in numbers. By working together, people can accomplish far more than they ever could working alone.

Of course, teamwork is not without challenges, such as coordination and providing strong leadership and tools. However, these challenges pale in comparison to the benefits of teamwork. People can achieve amazing things when they come together and work towards a common goal.

Here are a few results and benefits of developing strong teams:

Increased efficiency

Working as a team allows individuals to specialize in different tasks and then come together to share their knowledge and skills in order to complete a goal. This can lead to more efficient use of time and resources.

Greater creativity

When individuals come together to brainstorm, they can generate more ideas than they could on their own. This can lead to more innovative solutions to problems.

Improved morale

Working as a team can help build trust and care, leading to improved morale and motivation.

A feeling of purpose

Working as a team towards a common goal can give individuals a sense of purpose and meaning. This can lead to increased work satisfaction and less company turnover.

What are some tips for efficient problem-solving as a team?

Once you've developed a company culture that inspires a strong teamwork mentality, overall problem-solving becomes more efficient. And by encouraging efficiency, you can maximize your resources and produce even better results for your company or projects.

1. Develop a sense of community

When people have a sense of community at work, they are 58% more likely to thrive at work, 55% more engaged, and 66% more likely to stay within the organization (HBR.org). Developing a community isn't as simple as putting a bunch of people in a room together.

Instead, developing a community is about “building psychological safety.”

With remote work becoming increasingly popular and teams becoming more dispersed across several locations–sometimes across countries and even continents,syncing up your team can alleviate any added anxiety or stress about projects, and let people ask questions they may not otherwise feel comfortable asking.

Getting your team together outside client work or projects is a great way to introduce them to each other, and learn more about everyone's interests and strengths. Soon enough, you may notice your problem-solving become more efficient as team members discover who the right person is to tackle each specific job or project.

2. Set clear goals

Efficiency happens best when expectations are made clear right from the start. Make sure everyone on the team knows the goals and their role in achieving them. This will help to avoid confusion and wasted effort.

Clear goals also help manage projects better and organize resources more efficiently. Fortunately, many tools are available to help with goal-setting, project management, and cross-disciplinary teams.

3. Keep lines of communication open

Just this morning, a team member reached out to ask once again what their next steps were for a specific email project we're working on together. With proper communication channels in place, there should be less wasted time wandering and wondering and more time spent on delivering the final product.

4. Use surveys for feedback and improvement

If you aren't aware of an issue or a bottleneck in production, it's very challenging to fix. Digital surveys or feedback tools can help you gauge how your team is feeling or where there might be some areas for improvement. These can even be set up anonymously so that everyone feels comfortable being honest and not having to worry about potentially hurting anyone's feelings.

Getting feedback from members of your organization is vital for developing strong team management skills.

5. Improve collaboration through better brainstorming

While some people love to brainstorm and collaborate with team members, others loathe it. But, in our experience, we've found that it's less about the actual collaboration and more about the process that people use for brainstorming. Unfortunately, there are a lot of unefficient brainstorming sessions out there.

But brainstorms don't have to be painful. Tools like Board from Klaxoon can make ideation easy and keep your team active and engaged throughout the meeting.

6. Participation from everyone is key

The worst ideas are those that never get spoken. Who knows how many great ideas have never come to life simply because someone didn't feel confident enough to share them? Encourage participation from every member of your team and commit to staying open to all ideas.

Getting as many great ideas out in the open to solve a problem or start a new project is a fantastic way to improve efficiency. Instead of wasting time going down a path that eventually doesn't work out, you can explore a variety of paths and create a direct line to a solution.

7. Don't solve problems in a bubble

Even when a solution seems plain and obvious, it may be more beneficial to include your team in developing the answer instead of doing it yourself or solving it quickly. Not only will it help you determine if there's an even better option that you hadn't considered, but it will also give your team a sense of accomplishment that they solved the problem with you instead of just solving it on your own.

Of course, this is becoming increasingly difficult in today's remote-work environment and may take some effort or outside-of-the-box thinking to overcome the silos many of us work in now.

The differences between solving issues with a team VS without one include:

• Diversity in thought: developing multiple solutions at once from disparate viewpoints may take more time upfront, but should eliminate time wasted on the back end of a project.
• Issues become more digestible: instead of looking at one big problem, a team can break a bigger challenge down into more digestible pieces, and tackle each simultaneously.
• Ideas compound: when a new idea is introduced, a team of diverse creative mindsets can build on it, turning it into a bigger and better idea.
• Support and encouragement: struggling through a challenge by yourself can be daunting. A team supports one another and offers encouragement that eventually a solution will come to light.
• Peer development: iron sharpens iron. The more you can expose your team to working together, building on each other through struggles, the more development you’re giving them to become better problem-solvers and leaders in the future.
• Confluence: confluence is when two things come together. This happens quite naturally within a supportive team as each person brings their own experiences together to create something new. Someone who is more practical can benefit from someone who thinks a bit more creatively and vice versa.

8. Celebrate when problems are solved

It doesn't matter if you're in marketing or a professional football squad; having fun and celebrating victories is important for every team. When problems are solved, recognize those that put in the work and celebrate your big or small wins together. Recognition is a fantastic way to encourage more participation and efficiency and help build everyone's confidence the next time a big problem arises.

Conclusion

Any team, whether it's a group of co-workers, classmates, or athletes, functions best when its members are working together efficiently. That means communicating effectively, dividing tasks evenly, and providing support for one another. One way to ensure everyone is on the same page is to create a team charter outlining the team's goals and roles. Each member should also be clear about what they are responsible for and be held accountable for their contributions and communicate about it. In addition, it's important to make sure that everyone feels comfortable voicing their opinion and giving feedback and address issues when they come. Lastly, it is essential to celebrate successes as a team and learn from failures together.

With the right tools and attitude, your team can become a well-oiled machine that crushes every challenge that comes its way. Brainstorming, communication, and participation are key to making teamwork more efficient.