"Beyond Success: Achieving Synergy in Teamwork"
The Journal for Quality and Participation
Fall 2003, pp. 23-27
This article defines team synergy as when "team members function so well together that their output significantly exceeds what the same individuals would have achieved working on the task noncollaboratively."
To pursue synergy in teams, the author of this article recommends:
- Taking the time to ensure that all participants share the same explicit understanding of the vision, goals, plan, and core values underlying them.
- Using consensus building as the preferred approach to strategy development and decision-making.
- Encouraging all team members to share leadership and responsibility for other team facilitation functions from time to time.
- Demonstrating that all members of the team are important to its success.
- Avoiding assessing blame, and instead supporting all members in learning from mistakes or problems.
- Resisting the temptation to evaluate team members relative to each other or attach more importance to one team function (such as leader) over others.
- Assigning roles to team members to enable them to utilize their strengths and contribute to the team effort.
- Helping all members to understand the importance of their specific roles to the overall project.
- Developing an atmosphere of mutual trust through empathy, physical/emotional/psychological support for each other, open and honest communication, and opportunities to establish rapport.
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