Effective collaboration is a balanced system, which can be compared to a body that functions correctly and independently to some extent. As a human organism, the external processes of any company reflect its internal well-being and a group is what represents it (Daft and Marcic). It is important to remember that a positive environment and a strong structure of a team define the productiveness of any company. However, forming such cooperation implies hard work and patience based on several management concepts and has both advantages and disadvantages.
As a student, I have broad experience in working with a team, although not every attempt was positive. My worst involvement in teamwork was participation in a scientific project. Our professor formed groups of five and gave us an assignment without distributing duties. Our team consisted of people who did not have any will to work and show concern for the project. I took the initiative to become the leader and tried to distribute the roles to each student. However, cooperation resulted in a conflict between me and another student doing all the work. This is a clear example of how a team should not be formed, as people with different interests and lack of responsibility cannot run one assignment.
My experience is an example of the general drawbacks that follow group work: first, the team members’ willingness to work may be negatively affected by the anonymity of the results of their activities. An inefficient employee can “cover-up” as an effective one if their performance is low, which happened in my case. Second, teamwork requires additional time costs, as the process of getting used to other team members can take a long time.
Nevertheless, there was an admirable teamwork experience I had when my friends and I gathered to organize a charity race. The work was done in accordance with all crucial concepts, such as time management, self-awareness, trust, and job satisfaction. A project can be successful only within a friendly, committed, and hard-working team. One of the advantages of working within a team is that a group can be much more efficient than one person. Second, teamwork empowers people with willingness, determination, and the ability to cooperate, even when individuals of different statuses come together. Third, all team members have the opportunity to maximize their creative potential and implement it in practice.
Work Cited
Daft, Richard, and Dorothy Marcic. Understanding Management. 11th ed., Cengage Learning, 2019.