The Requirements to a Successful Team

“Teamwork” originally derived from the group activities that people worked together to hunt wild animals and grow plants in order to enhance the probability of survival. As Pat Wellington and Niall Foster wrote in “21st Century Teamwork”, teamwork is that fewer than 20 members share their knowledge and skills, depend on each other within the group, follow the agreed approach and make effort towards a common goal. In reality, although organizations are increasingly disposed for adopting teamwork on account of higher efficiency and compensation for individual weakness, there are still many unsuccessful cases of teamwork operation. Therefore, this essay mainly identifies the requirements in creating a successful team. There are three elements to improve successful probability: leadership, environment and process.

First of all, the leadership concerns the overall direction, personnel selection and cohesion of team members. As the wrong decision can lead the whole team far away from the final target, it is very important that the leader can decide the right direction and ensure all members strive towards it. Talents are foundation of success, for that reason, how to discover, understand and make use of talented people are the leader’s responsibilities. Most time, people do not work only for earning money; they do mind whether they work for a smart leader and whether they belong to this team. As Leckrone (2008) notes, people want to feel unique and useful, need union and need to understand the big picture. What the leader required to do is to achieve these 4 Us to agglomerate his members to concentrate on the agreed objective. In addition, the leader should avoid showing favoritism to any particular member. The cohesion, confidence and trust of members may be destroyed when one person is favored over others (Savage, 2009).

Except the outstanding leadership, the environment which members are involved in is another determinant. The environment can be divided into three parts: external environment, organizational environment and communication environment. The external environment concerns something outside the organization, such as political issues, legislation, policies, marketing and financial variation, and social custom and so