Effective teamwork for success

By Tharanga Thilakasiri

Today, the words “team” and “teamwork” have emerged in the business world and have been identified and are regarded as being very vital due to the prevailing highly competitive business and social environment.

Sri Lankan Cricket Captain Arjuna Ranatunga with the 1996 World Cup

However, “teamwork” is essential in such a complex and competitive environment in order to achieve fruitful results. In fact what really matters is “effective teamwork” rather than mere teamwork.

Nevertheless, don’t forget the fact that working as a team is not as easy as it may seem. It requires a lot of cooperation, understanding, commitment and so on to work together with different individuals.

Thus, the intention of this brief article is to discuss the importance of the “effective teamwork” with some real world Sri Lankan examples.

Common goals

Teamwork can be identified as tasks that are done by a team of individuals together for a common goal(s). Each member of the team must contribute towards achieving team’s common goal(s) and they should prepare to sacrifice his/her personal views and interests for the betterment of the team.

However, that does not mean that you should lose your identity as an individual but require paying more attention towards common interests rather than individual interests. Also, each individual act should complement the actions of the other members of the team and vice-versa.

Effective teamwork requires a great deal of hard work and compromise to achieve results. There are number of facts to be in place for successful teamwork and some of them can be discussed as follows.

Effective leadership

This is one of key elements required for good teamwork. The leader of the team should have sound leadership skills, such as:

nSolid self-confidence

nRisk taking abilities (willingness to take personal risks)

nStrong desire (genuine commitment)

nExcellent communication skills (especially oral)

nSensitivity to how people are feeling and an ability to influence others at one-on-one level through relational power.

Certainly, such leadership qualities will create and maintain a positive working environment. It also motivates and inspires the team members as well, hence they are ready or willing to adopt a positive approach to work and be highly committed. Therefore, effective team leadership is essential to produce positive results in an organisation.

Clear communication

Clear communication is another important factor which creates an atmosphere where employees will realise both their personal and company’s goals and targets. It also brings the benefits of a proper communication system into the organisation and hence eliminates doubts as well.

Set a good example

Here the team leader has a huge role to play as a leader. He/she must set a good example for other members of the team. Such positive and aggressive behaviour of the leader will keep team members positive and committed and motivated towards reaching the goals of the organisation.

Effective teamwork – Sri Lankan examples

Sri Lankans have proved their potential in teamwork to the rest of the world several times. Here, I would like to highlight two ideal examples of good teamwork shown by Sri Lankans, which led to the ultimate success in the cricket field and in the battle field.

1996 Cricket World Cup

While we are approaching another Cricket World Cup soon (2011) here in Asia, my memories go back to the Cricket World Cup (then known as the ‘Wills World Cup’) which was held in Asia (in India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan) in 1996, which we won comprehensively by beating the Aussies by seven wickets in the finals held at Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore in Pakistan under floodlights.

It is obvious that today our cricket team has all the potential to be number one team in one day format once again at the 2011 Cricket World Cup, which is to be staged in Asia (in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh). The present cricket team enjoys more facilities, resources, etc., when compared to the 1996 then Sri Lankan cricket team.

We should not forget that the 1996 team didn’t have the luxury of world class bowlers like those we have today. We had talented bowlers like Murali, Vass and so on, but they were then considered inexperienced bowlers. But the way Captain Arjuna Ranatunga made use of the talents of those bowlers made the difference.

Our batting order was well structured and thus the Captain could take decisions quite easily. Sri Lanka’s opening batting pair of Sanath and Kaluwitharana was entrusted to commence the innings with a devastating style and the Captain didn’t want to change their batting style in the midst of the tournament. Certainly, that would have motivated and boosted the morale of the other players to deliver their maximum potential towards the team’s success.

Thus, he as the leader of the team believed in and trusted his fellow men and vice-versa. Hence, in the finals he decided to field first after winning the toss despite the criticisms of various personnel of batting second under artificial lights.

But behind that decision there are number of management lessons that we can notice and learn from. Risk-taking ability, trusting your men and their abilities, motivating others, effective leadership, proper planning, proper organising, controlling and making use of limited resources in a fruitful manner, etc. Consequently, the 1996 World Cup victory teaches us about the importance of working as a “team” and how “effective teamwork” can deliver incredible results. So, as we are marching for another world cup soon here in Asia, we are compelled to learn from our own past experiences to bring the Cricket World Cup back home in early 2011.

Elimination of terrorism

This is another key achievement that we have accomplished as a nation in the recent past. This humanitarian effort has shown us how we can achieve expected results through effective teamwork.

It is generally accepted that defeating terrorism completely is a difficult task, but Sri Lanka managed to change the general perception the world had by eliminating terrorism from Sri Lanka in 2009 and proving that such perceptions are wrong.

What made the difference? We had the same Army, we had the same limited resources, etc., but the way we had approached made the difference. Strong political and military leadership helped to conquer this issue well, despite the several influences from various concerned parties.

Also, the sheer dedication, will power, commitment, courage, planning, controlling, and most importantly effective teamwork amongst the three main armed forces (Army, Navy and Air Force) along with other forces such as Police enabled the Sri Lankan Army to change its conventional approach to an innovative one, towards achieving success.

So, it is obvious that innovation is essential to achieve success. We can observe that from the above Sri Lankan examples. ‘Aggressive batting style’ was the key to Sri Lanka to upset other teams’ plans and strategies and finally that strategy of the Sri Lankan team enabled us to win the World Cup.

Similarly, the specially made small but powerful boats of the Special Boat Squadron (SBS) or in Sinhalese ‘Wishesha Yathra Balaghanaya’ of the Sri Lanka Navy’s elite Special Forces unit enabled the crushing of the sea terrorists successfully, which really helped the other forces to march forward towards victory.

Conclusion

Certainly, we as a nation can be proud of those two great achievements. But we need to progress more in order to achieve more positive and fruitful results in every sector, be it science, technology, sports, education, finance, defence, social, etc. Much more effective teamwork is still required.

However, from the above analysis, it can be concluded that “effective teamwork” is essential for achieving success. Sri Lanka has proved it several times to the rest of the world. Therefore, the management of any organisation should practice “effective teamwork” as much as possible rather than depending upon individual performance anymore, as its returns could be enormous.

(Tharanga Thilakasiri M.B.A (International), AIMM, AIM (SL), ACPM, can be reached via [email protected].)