Team strengths: brainstorming, stress reduction, and shared responsibility

Teams are needed for completion of various projects which otherwise cannot be undertaken by an individual alone. However the question that arises in this connection is what are the strengths of teams that would make them better than an individual. Some advantages have been identified that make a team more desirable and they are as follows:

TWO HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE

When more brains get together, they can come up with variety of ideas and solutions that can help solve problems in a much better way than an individual alone. Brainstorming sessions can generate many useful ideas which can enhance the performance of a team working on any project. (Wysocki, 2011)

BLAME-SHARING

If the project doesn't turn out as planned, the blame is not placed on one person alone. This means that a team can perform better because they know that if something goes wrong, blame will be shared by all members of the team and no one person will be treated as a scapegoat.

BETTER PEFORMANCE THROUGH SHARED KNOWLEDGE

A good team is the one where every member of the team knows that they are part of a team and no one is looking for taking all the credit. When the team is willing to share the blame, it is also willing to share the credit (Balridge, 1997). The strength of the team lies not in star performance of each member but the star performance of the entire team.

In short there are four Cs that must be understood in order to extract the best out of a team. These four Cs are as follows:

Context of the team, composition, competencies, and change management (Dyer, 2005)

Context of team refers to environment and organizational culture in which a team needs to work. Composition refers to the members of the team. Competencies refer to each member's skills and credentials that can add to the performance of the team. Change management refers to the skills required to handle change. These three Cs are identified as the factors that can make a team stronger and more capable if understood correctly because they can help in identifying the skills that each member possesses and helps in assigning duties accordingly.