Which teamwork style will be the most effective?
We had a happy empowering insightful night to discover this topic thanks to all gymmers! The answer will be “it depends” but we believe “collaborative style is an effective way of developing the whole team capability”.
To test out the advantages and disadvantages of each teamwork style, you can try out the activity we did - building the strongest and tallest tower (yes, it is my favourite activity when it comes to teamwork). With that same mission, each team worked in different styles: individualistic, authoritarian, delegate then after that all team tried the collaborative style. We found different disadvantages of each style:
individualistic team - each person has their own way of creating the tower: the team couldn’t ultilise the resources including materials (distributed for each person) and the members.
authoritarian - one person decides each person does what: the team couldn’t ultilise the ideas of their members as the leader decided everything
delegate - one person lets the team do what they want: it took time for the team to get used to work together and discussed to find the way to work out to achieve the mission
collaborative - one person facilitates to let all the team involve in the process: it would take time to listen to all ideas of people that could lead to disagreement
We also acknowledged that in different situations, we will need to use different teamwork styles as they also have their own advantages. For example,
Individualistic: When the tasks of each person is clear, that person needs to be fully responsible for what they do so having ability to work individually is important
Autocratic: In a crisis situation, the leader needs to decide quickly (he or she needs to be competent)
Delegate: when the team is really strong then having the inputs of the team in the process can maximize the resources of the team
Collaborative: when the project has a certain time to finish and each person is good at a certain things and the team has a mission to grow the team
But we believe, after all “together we go further and two minds are better than one” so we believe COLLABORATION is the sustainable way to develop a team.
challenge for you:
Which teamwork style do you normally use? And what is your favourite one? What is your action to change the style to make the best out of teamwork?
We challenge everyone to incorporate at least one style in a suitable context to expand the flexibility of their leadership ability.
Join us for the challenge!
