Teamwork Importance

Teamwork is a corporate buzzword that you have no doubt heard several times over the course of your professional life. The complexity of today's business environment necessitates the formation of strong teams that can achieve what individuals alone cannot.
However, the concept of teamwork is not limited to the professional space. You have probably been part of various teams since early school days, starting with the small sports teams your physical education teacher assigned you to and the class-wise quiz or debating teams that you were a part of. Being part of a team comes almost naturally as a result of this early training. When you become a contributor to a team of people aiming toward a common goal, you automatically start aligning towards

Take the sport of rowing, for instance. As a competitive sport, rowing is considered the ultimate team experience. Though the team functions as a single unit, individual team members have different roles, strengths, and capabilities. In a typical eight member team, the stern pair is responsible for setting the stroke rate and rhythm for the rest of the crew members to follow. This can be correlated to the leadership role in the team. The stroke pair must have a great sense of rhythm and consistency and must be able to get a sense of how the team is performing - who is slowing down and who is the strongest in the team. The middle four crew members on the boat are usually less technical, but more powerful members of the team. The bow pair is the most technical and is responsible for setting the balance in the boat and influencing the line on which the boat steers.
Dan Lyons, who rowed for USA in the 1988 Seoul Olympics and has won 11 national rowing championships, sums up teamwork in rowing thus: "It's astonishing because it feels like you have at your command the power of everybody else in the boat. You are exponentially magnified. What was a strain before becomes easier. It is absolutely the ultimate team

At every step in the corporate world today, individuals alone cannot accomplish the type of goals and challenges they're set up with. The creation of Tata Nano started with the vision statement of one man. It came to fruition through the efforts of a large and diverse team consisting of engineers, designers, supply chain specialists, manufacturing experts, marketing and salespeople, and even Tata Motors' multiple vendors.
We may not all be involved in something as dramatic as creating the world's cheapest car, which is obviously, the result of great teamwork. But what about something you might realistically find yourself doing soon, such as meeting your sales targets? This is also a team effort which involves the salesperson who identifies the opportunity and interacts with the client, the finance person who helps with pricing, a legal person who helps with contracting, perhaps an intermediary such as a distributor, and often even a senior salesperson who may pitch in with his relationship with a senior client stakeholder.
Given the role of teamwork in today's complex business environment, companies highly value the ability of people to work in a team. Firms always prefer team players rather than individual achievers. So, a highly talented individual who cannot function well in a team would be less desirable than someone with reasonable talent but great teamwork