Causes of Teamwork Failure
In achieving common goals, employees often have difficulty communicating and understanding each other. This can be triggered by a lack of coordination and motivation, thus affecting team performance.
Collaboration will always occur in all areas of work, whether in teams or with just one or two people. Therefore, you must be ready to work in a team. To overcome these problems, it's a good idea to know the causes of teamwork failure.
It needs to be acknowledged that working in a team is not necessarily suitable for everyone. This usually becomes an obstacle for people who have difficulty socializing or mingling with other people easily. Being part of a team has many advantages, such as:
- Greater diversity: because teams have more resources.
- Flexibility opportunities: teams have the option to be more flexible in dividing resources and achieving goals at any given time.
- Collective learning: through collaboration and social interaction while working on a task or project together, teams have the opportunity to learn something new.
- Synergy potential: this is the moment when everything goes according to plan and leads to ultimate success.
However, members often disagree about the roles or responsibilities they carry out with the team. In fact, their performance is often worse than individual performance. That way, you need to remember that teamwork is not always easy.
Causes of Teamwork Failure
Patrick Lencioni, author of The Five Dysfunction of a Team, says that there are several main reasons for failure in teamwork in the workplace, namely:
1. Lack of trust
A lack of comfort and trust among the team will result in team members being unwilling to seek help, admit weaknesses, or ask for help from each other. That way, communication and team performance are impossible.
2. Fear of conflict
When the team lacks trust in each other, team members will not be able to follow the dynamics and disagreements that may arise within the team. This will prevent team members from being open to ideas and opinions.
3. Lack of commitment
When someone is not committed to their work, they will act indifferently. This behavior will have a big impact on team harmony and productivity. With members who are inactive and lack enthusiasm, the team will have difficulty determining direction and making joint decisions.
4. Avoid accountability
When team members no longer want to carry out their roles and responsibilities in the team, team dysfunction will occur. At that time, the team will hesitate to hold members accountable for their actions, so that counterproductive and inefficient results will occur.
5. Not paying attention to results
When individuals focus too much on personal goals, they tend to neglect the collective goals of the team. Compared to team performance, they will prioritize development and recognition for themselves. This causes them to lose sight of what needs to be done and leaves the team struggling.
Factors that Determine the Success of a Team
Michael Lombardo and Robert Eichiner created the most comprehensive assessment model of team performance. which is called the Korn/Ferry Model T7. The assessment was created with the aim of providing a better and clearer understanding of the factors that contribute to team effectiveness in the workplace.
In the T7 team effectiveness model, Lambardo and Eichinger highlight five internal factors that can influence team effectiveness in the workplace. These factors are known as T7, namely:
- Thrust: all team members must commit to achieving a common goal.
- Trust: each member believes that their teammates have good intentions and are committed to the same goal.
- Talent: to provide effective performance and good results, team members must have the skills the team needs.
- Teaming skills (cooperative skills): all team members must have good problem-solving and joint decision-making skills.
- Task skills (skills in carrying out tasks): team members have the ability to work consistently and submit tasks on time.
- Team leader fit (leadership): a leader must believe in the team. Rather than acting like a dictator, team leaders should practice a more collaborative approach.
- Team support from organization (support from the company): to achieve common goals, the company must provide resources that suit the team's needs.
No matter how good a team is in terms of drive, trust, talent, team skills, and task skills, a team must have the support of a leader and the company. That way, the team can achieve maximum productivity.
Strong teams occur when each member works together to build trust and respect for each other. To achieve success in a team, the Team Leadership program invites company leaders to align their members so that they are able to move according to their individual development stages so that they can encourage the success of solid teamwork.
