Moving Forward Together
In order to deliver any large project, groups of people must work together in teams of varying sizes, hence harmonious teamworking is a very important topic at any organisation. Due to the differences in personality types found within, teams follow a path of forming (coming together), storming (a period where pockets of limited conflict occur), norming (understanding what the "norms" of the team are and will be), and performing. Organisations need to find ways of supporting their team members through these steps so that the team reaches a harmonious and productive balance.
Improving the Speed of Decision Making
Highly performing groups of cross-functional team members allow organisations to reach the correct decisions more quickly than silo'd away individuals. Ensuring you have the right balance of skills and knowledge within your teams ensures that there is sufficient expertise to solve problems internally, rather than having to depend on other teams. This therefore reduces "decision lag" (delays whilst waiting for decisions to be made elsewher) and improving the team's sense of ownership over their area.
Harmonious Teams = Better Outcomes
Highly functioning and harmonious teams produce better outcomes for the oraganisation. The best teams support and energise each other, and research shows that those who are happy at work are the most productive. Individual team members have the chance to learn and grow from their fellow team mates and the more senior members have the opportunity to improve their leadership, coaching and training skills, whilst supporting the more junior members of the team. All this means that the teams become "highly performing" and able to provide high quality, resilient solutions in a faster time than a group of disparate individuals would.
Diversity Brings Better Solutions
Working in diverse teams allows a greater diversity of thought to be applied to the organisational agenda. Team members of different genders, ages, races, seniority levels and socio-economic backgrounds all bring a unique perspective to the table and the best teams find a way of including all of these opinions without sidelining typically marginalised minorities, or only listening to the loudest voice in the room.
Communication is Key
As teamworking necessitates people from all backgrounds and experience levels working together, good communication is of utmost importance. Employees, however, are often hired for their "hard skills", i.e. what their technical or industry specialisms are. This means that they may not naturally be the best communicators and therefore expert facilitators who help negotiate difficult discussions amongst the team, or coaches who help people improve the way team members communicate, can really add a lot of value.
Trust on your Team
Steve Jobs said "...we hire smart people and let them tell us what to do." and the Agile manifesto states "The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams." Gone are the days of top-down hierarchical corporate structures where the workers carry out the wishes of the more senior people in the organisation, rather there is now an expectation from employees that they will have a high level of autonomy and the ability to influence the direction of their project. Organisations should trust their teams and allow them to deliver solutions against high level problems, rather than pre-supplying them with solutions.