Improving Organizational Effectiveness through Effective Teamwork

This report evaluates the importance of effective team building to improve organizational effectiveness. It discusses the foundation of effective teamwork, benefits of effective teamwork, and recommendations for improving team effectiveness.

Running Head: People Management in the 21st Century
CHRIST CHURCH BUSINESS SCHOOL
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Executive Summary
The assignment here conducts a critical evaluation of how the development of effective team can
help to improve the organizational effectiveness. The crux of the report is the underlying
understanding that great companies are built not overnight, but after a lot of perseverance and hard
work of the teams which are working in the strategic direction of the organization. Teams are built
on the pillars of communication, trust and mutual respect, the organization has to ensure that they
understand the importance of the team work by synergizing the individual efforts to increase the
effectiveness of the organization.

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Table of Content
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................4
Effective Teamwork-A guide to Success................................................................................................5
Foundation of Effective team work.......................................................................................................5
Openness...........................................................................................................................................5
Trust..................................................................................................................................................5
Respect..............................................................................................................................................6
Development of effective teamwork- Preamble to organization success..............................................6
Teamwork motivates unity in the workplace....................................................................................6
Teamwork offers varied perspectives and feedback.........................................................................6
Teamwork provides improved efficiency and productivity................................................................7
Teamwork provides great learning opportunities.............................................................................7
Teamwork promotes workplace synergy...........................................................................................8
Teamwork helps to contribute and collaborate................................................................................8
Teamwork eases the process of succession planning........................................................................8
Recommendation..................................................................................................................................9
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................9
References...........................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
Teams can be seen as backbone of the organization and effective teamwork is a key to the successful
operation of the organization and an extremely strong team will ensure that even during hard times
the results for the organization are phenomenal (Anderson, 2016). Drawing from the above premise
the topic for the report is “how the development of effective teams can improve organizational
effectiveness at the Junction hotel”. The report here will discuss the importance of effective team
building to fulfil the goals and objectives of Junction hotel and take the hotel on the path of business
sustainability.

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Effective Teamwork-A guide to Success
Effective teamwork is seen as the most important aspect behind any organization’s success. One of
the prime benefits of effective teamwork is the increase of motivation among the team members,
which lead to unimaginable results for the organization. It has been observed that employees who
are treated as partners, are empowered, feel motivated are ready to travel miles to reach the goals
of the organization. They align their goals and objectives with those of the organization and
continuously work in the direction of their fulfilment (Buvik & Rolfsen, 2015).
One of the most important ways to build a great team is effectiveness and openness in
communication. In the past many business leaders like Steve Jobs of Apple, Jack Welch of GE,
Howard Schultz at Starbucks and many more have been able to create a team which was standing
resolute behind them and thoroughly focussed towards the attainment of organizational objectives.
The present visionary and Leader Jeff Bezos highly resonates with the concept of effective team
work, in a recent interview with Forbes he mentioned “The ability of the teams at Amazon to solve
the toughest of problem with the smartest and simplest of ideas is the key to company’s success”.
Foundation of Effective team work
It is not entirely the responsibility of the organization to push the team to achieve marvellous results
for the organization; it is a joint responsibility of the employees and the employers to achieve great
results. Following skills have to be demonstrated by team members to bring cohesion in the team:
Openness-Team members have to be really open amongst them; this will lead to effective
brainstorming sessions and also help in overcoming any cultural bias due to diversity of their
background. The synergies of individual members can then be utilized towards the strategic
direction of the organization (Cascio, 2018).
Trust-Team members have to trust each other immensely, they ought to be extremely
comfortable with each other while sharing ideas and feelings. Eventually members learn to be
honest with each other and respectful in their approach. Trust building can be further harnessed by
the organization in pulling off tasks associated with great difficulties (Burke & Noumair, 2015).

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Respect-The correct approach when something goes wrong in the organization is not to look for a
scapegoat, or enter into a blame game futile exercise, on the contrary teams should collectively find
a way to fix the problem without caring about the member associated with the fault. Mutual respect
helps in bringing accountability and responsibility in the team members who is further translated
into enhanced productivity (Bryson, 2018).
Development of effective teamwork- Preamble to organization
success
In the present context of the organization, majority of job roles involve active engagement with
other stakeholders of the organization, hence in such a scenario the development of effective team
work to improve the effectiveness of the organization increases manifold. Some of the major
benefits of effective team work ensuring the success of the organization are:
Teamwork motivates unity in the workplace
A team work environment promotes and creates an atmosphere which fosters healthy relationship
like friendship and loyalty. These strong and close knit relationships motivate the employees in
parallel and align them to work harder, cooperate and be supportive of each other. It is a known fact
that every individual is different from each other and has a different skill set, in the absence of team
work, it is a huge possibility that employees work on their own accord. They tend to focus on their
individual strength, this is a major threat to the organization, as the teams lose the direction and
work haphazardly. This obstacle also hampers the productivity of the teams thus resulting in failure
to accomplish the defined objectives. The beauty of team work lies in the fact that everyone works
together in harmony to achieve the defined objectives and contribute equally towards
organizational effectiveness. Hence, it can be clearly implied that Teamwork is one of the important
method which unites individual member and helps to push them to look towards the big picture
(Bolman & Deal, 2017).
Teamwork offers varied perspectives and feedback
As mentioned earlier in the report, every employee is significantly different from the other. This
difference in individual personalities results in having varied strength, weakness, skills, thoughts,
perspectives, creativity and innovation. A well nurtured teamwork environment allows individuals to
brainstorm collectively, collating individual skills towards one single direction, ensuing enhances
productivity of the team and the organization. Different perspectives and school of learning is crucial

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to look around the problem with different angles, thus helping is creating a strong strategy to solve
the problem at its roots. Team work is also helpful in creating an environment of innovation,
wherein people are talking about new things that can be done, innovative business practices to give
impetus to the organization, varied strategy to move forward for the organization and many more.
Feedback is another critical element of effective team work, a constructive feedback settles well with
the employee and they tend to learn from their mistake in a bid to do well for the organization. All
this is ably supported by the employees, whose relations are built on the foundation of openness in
communication, trust and respect for each other. Thus, teamwork is elementary in providing
different perspectives and feedback leading to the effectiveness of the organization (Woodcock,
2017).
Teamwork provides improved efficiency and productivity
It is a common phenomenon that team work helps in improving the productivity and efficiency of
the organization as well as the team members. Team work ensures that the responsibilities are
shared, tasks are divided, every person is allocated task based on his/her own competency which
results in increasing the productivity of the organization. It also allows the goals to be more
attainable, increases the motivation of the team, optimization of the performance, increased job
satisfaction all contributing towards increased efficiency and productivity. The same can also be
proven scientifically, division of work and labour not only reduces the time of completion of the job
but also aides in improving the quality of the work. Many minds working on a single task helps in
accomplishment of the task quickly with enhanced effectiveness (Lussier & Achua, 2015).
Teamwork provides great learning opportunities
A major advantage of working in small, medium or large teams is the learning effect, members
working together in a team learn from each other’s mistakes. More mistakes ensure more learning
which in turn increases the overall learning of the employees associated with the organization. It is
easy to pick a skill set from a team member, with whom the other member shares a great rapport
based on trust and mutual respect, this thus allows the organization to flourish and move rapidly
towards the attainment of the defined objectives. Besides the learning parameter, continuous
engagement helps the team members to quickly adopt a good skill, working and thinking style from
a colleague, which he can further use towards his job responsibility. Thus, there is no denying that
team work helps in facilitating the environment of continuous and advance learning which is
beneficial both for the organization and its employees. Team members easily learn and grow in an

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environment which is based on openness in communication, trust and mutual respect, thus helping
the organization to increase its effectiveness (Wheelan, 2014).
Teamwork promotes workplace synergy
Synergy in simple words is the working of two or more members together to yield a result which is
greater than the individual work of the members. Organizations these days have mastered this art;
they have realized the importance of creating synergies at the workplace. Shared goals which are
supported mutually, enhanced cooperation and continuous encouragement helps in creating
synergies in the workplace. Employees feel a better sense of achievement due to the synergy and
the feeling of collectively accomplishing is a task is beyond comparison, which further serves as a
motivating factor for them. For instance, in the situation when team members know that their
output is dependent on the performance of other members, they take initiative and efforts to share
their goals, thinking, mission, vision and values with rest of the team members, this sharing of views
helps in increasing the effectiveness of the organization immensely. Synergy helps in creating a
workplace environment based on fellowship, trust, respect and co-operation. Thus, the organization
and employees have to understand the importance of synergy and the concept that working alone
might bring glory, but not sustainability in the performance can only be achieved by the art of
practising synergy in the organization (Baldwin, 2016).
Teamwork helps to contribute and collaborate
Effective team work ensures that the individual team members co-operate to the attainment of the
objectives, they are aware that if they do not contribute the entire team will suffer. This innate
feeling helps them to contribute to the task, not related to their own purview, but also help other
members in accomplishing their task. This feeling of contributing and collaborate for the
accomplishment of the team objectives further aides in the effectiveness of the organization.
Teamwork eases the process of succession planning
Effective teams helps the management to identify the members who are doing exceedingly well in
their job roles, which aides in the process of succession planning. In the recent times, organizations
have started focussing on internal job recruitment, than to look for employees outside the company.
This strategy is effective as it helps the company to get the best person for the job, who is already
aware of the goals, mission, vision and values of the organization. Thus, saving the organization

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precious time and money to look for a suitable candidate outside the organization. This is possible,
only and only when the teams are working together towards a common goal in absolute harmony.
All the above mentioned points are important while evaluating the role of effectiveness of team
work in the effectiveness of the organization. It is the team work which is pivotal in creating multi-
billion dollar organization contributing to the benefits and development of not only the organization,
but also co-creating shared valued for the society and the country as a whole(Katzenbach &
Smith,2015)
Recommendation
Openness in Communication- Junction hotel has to ensure that it focuses on openness in
communication in their dealing with the employees. This will help the employees to develop a
feeling of trust towards the employers which eventually will help them in understanding the
rationale behind the team work.
Team building activities- Human resource department and team leaders have to ensure that they
engage the members of the team in various team building activities. The activities can be some
simulation exercises, fun activities, road trip and many more. Team building will ensure a better
cohesion among the team leading to reduced conflict and eventually effectiveness in productivity for
the organization.
Employee empowerment-Employee empowerment is the understanding of giving the employees
freedom to take their own decision, making them a part of big decision making and involving them in
the process of change management. Such a practice will help to motivate them and work with higher
energy and focus towards the attainment of organizational goals and objectives.
Conclusion
Development of effective teams is extremely crucial to improve the effectiveness of the
organization, the statement hold true in every aspect. An effective team leads to synergy in the
workplace, unity and motivation in the team, better cohesion and support, all of which are critical
elements for the success of the organization. Employees feel higher level of accomplishment while
working in teams, they contribute and collaborate, care strongly for the goals of the team and the
organization, eventually resulting in improving the effectiveness of the organization in general.

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Organization has to ensure that they maintain openness in communication, Focus on team building
activities and empower the employees to lay the foundation of organizational effectiveness.
References
Anderson, D.L., 2016. Organization development: The process of leading organizational change. Sage
Publications.
Baldwin, M., 2016. Critical reflection: Opportunities and threats to professional learning and service
development in social work organizations. In Social work, critical reflection and the learning
organization (pp. 51-66). Routledge.
Bolman, L.G. and Deal, T.E., 2017. Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership. John
Wiley & Sons.
Bryson, J.M., 2018. Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations: A guide to
strengthening and sustaining organizational achievement. John Wiley & Sons.
Burke, W.W. and Noumair, D.A., 2015. Organization development: A process of learning and
changing. Pearson Education.
Buvik, M.P. and Rolfsen, M., 2015. Prior ties and trust development in project teams–A case study
from the construction industry. International Journal of Project Management, 33(7), pp.1484-1494.
Cascio, W., 2018. Managing human resources. McGraw-Hill Education.
Katzenbach, J.R. and Smith, D.K., 2015. The wisdom of teams: Creating the high-performance
organization. Harvard Business Review Press.
Lussier, R.N. and Achua, C.F., 2015. Leadership: Theory, application, & skill development. Nelson
Education.
Wheelan, S.A., 2014. Creating effective teams: A guide for members and leaders. Sage Publications.
Woodcock, M., 2017. Team development manual. Routledge.

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