Title: Teamwork effectiveness: benefits and challenges
Headings: Teamwork effectiveness: benefits and challenges
Teamwork effectiveness: benefits and challenges
In this article, Dr Andrea North-Samardzic discusses a model for team effectiveness, including some of the benefits and challenges of teamwork.
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Inputs
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Outputs
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Career Credentials: Evidence Your Expertise in Teamwork
Benefits
Challenges
Social loafing
Groupthink
Risky-shift (choice-shift) phenomenon
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Content: Social loafing refers to the tendency of group members to exert less individual effort on an additive task as the size of the group increases. It is caused by several factors, including low motivation, disinterest, apathy, and even dominant team members taking over, which can often make others in the team lazy. The extent of loafing rests heavily on the extent to which individual performance can be identified. The more you can isolate individual performance through discrete tasks and responsibilities, the less likely this challenge will occur in your team. Other ways to combat social loafing include: trying to keep teams as small as possible to give team members fewer places to hide
taking the time to establish team norms where everyone agrees to give maximum effort and participation
having team members engage in peer review to keep each other accountable
rotating team leadership and other roles to keep responsibility alive
pointing out social loafing when it occurs – some people may not even know they are doing it! Groupthink
Another challenge of teamwork to be aware of is groupthink. Groupthink occurs when a team starts to think and behave in the same way or when individual members feel reluctant to go against the rest of the team. In both cases, groupthink diminishes the diversity and creative conflict required to make teams successful. Groupthink is an unfortunate side-effect of overly cohesive teams, which goes to show that some level of healthy conflict is required for effective decision-making.