October 6th, 2011
The Advantages and Disadvantages of Teams
We all know that there are no I’s in team. A team is not an individual that brings effort to
a team because one individual puts in all the work to get the effort but does not work with a
team. A team is a group or more than one person who helps each other to get the job done or in a
way work at things faster. According to the text book of business communication today a team is
“A unit of two or more people who share a mission and the responsibility for working to achieve
a common goal.” We all can agree that to be a team player it takes more than one individual to
succeed in the work force. However, there is always a good and a bad about teams in other words
there is an advantage and a disadvantage of teams. When teams are successful, they can improve
productivity, creativity, employee involvement, and even job security.
Here are some advantages of just what a team is in a business sense. Work teams bring
another advantages as markets place a premium on cycle time, adaptability, and give a unique
response to the customer. Supervisor and management positions will survive as long as they
provide value to the core work teams who are now their customers. A facilitator role is a
transitional one because over time, even this role will either go away or their organization will
become correspondingly larger to justify their position. One advantage of team is team members
have the opportunity to learn from each other. Also, potential exists for greater work force
flexibility with cross training. Teams provided opportunity for synergistic combinations of ideas
and abilities. New approaches to tasks may be discovered, teams membership can provide social
facilitation and support for difficult tasks and situations. Also, communication and information
exchange may be facilitated and increased. Another advantage is that teams can foster greater
cooperation among team members. Interdependent work flow can be enhanced, also potential
exist for greater acceptance and understanding of team made decisions. Greater autonomy,
variety, identity, significance, and feedback for workers can occur. A few advantages that I want
to point out is that team commitment may stimulate performance and attendance, teams also
increased information and knowledge. They also increased diversity of views , increased
acceptance of solution and higher performance levels. Lastly, teams are often at the core of
participative management the effort to involve employees in the company’s decision making.
Teamwork also has a number of potential disadvantages. Working in teams can be
frustrating waste of time. One of the disadvantages is that business teams can generate
tremendous pressure to conform with accepted norms of behavior. Hidden agendas is another
one because private counterproductive motives, such as a desire to take control of the group, to
undermined someone else on the team, or to pursue a business goal that runs counter to the
team’s mission. Cost is another one too because arranging meetings, and coordinating individual
parts of project can eat up a lot of time and money. Some individuals are not compatible with
team work as well as workers they must be selected to fit the team as well as requisite job skills.
Some members may experience less motivating jobs as part of a team. Another disadvantage is
that organization may resist change. The worse is having a conflict because conflict may develop
between team members or other teams. Another problem with teams is that teams may be time-
consuming due to need for coordination and consensus. When there is work to be done work
needs to be done. Where am I going with this? When you’re on a team and you’re on a team of 4
which is including yourself, there will be a situation when yourself and another person is doing
the work but the other 2 are not. However, the ones that are not doing the work want the credit
which leads to Free-riding and this may occur. Teams can have creativity and inhibit good
decision-making if group think becomes prevalent. Less flexibility may be experienced in
personnel replacement or transfer. According to the disadvantages of teamwork in a workplace
“Employees may be so focused on working for the overall good of the team and fitting in to the
team concept that they put their own ideas on the back burner. This lack of innovative thinking
may keep your company from moving forward, resulting in stagnation.” You can find this article
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