1. "The important thing to recognize is that it takes a team, and the team ought to get credit
for the wins and the losses. Successes have many fathers, failures have none."
—Philip Caldwell
Teamwork is all about caring for each other and achieving a proposed common outcome.
Teams have an important place in our professional and personal lives. Working in teams is
probably an inevitable life experience, even for people who prefer to work alone. Teams are
everywhere. There are always student teams, task forces, and neighbourhood associations in addition
to all of the workplace demands for working in a team. A team generates positive synergy through
coordinated effort. The individual efforts result in a level of performance that is greater than the sum
of those individual inputs. This is also evident in the movie “Remember the titans” where a college
team of American Football became an example for the others while there was a political instability
going on due to the racism of Blacks and Whites. The team even forced the others to join hands and
diminish the differences of colour among them. In most cases, teams lead organizations to engage in
higher productivity. However, the effectiveness of a team is influenced by both internal and external
factors. Internal factors include clear purpose, informality, participation, listening, open
communication, shared leadership, consensus decisions, and clear roles & tasks assignment.
This is an example of how defeats can be tuned into successes. It’s the bottom of the ninth
inning, the score it three to two and the home team is down. The team decides to buckle down and
play baseball. With a series of hits and smart base running, the home team pulls off an upset. But what
really made this upset happen? It Is Called Teamwork.
Teamwork happens when members of a group or team, work together to achieve a common
goal, as a part of a cooperative effort. It’s is everywhere; it is a basic necessity of our lives. Without
teamwork you would not be able to complete things that require the help of others such as building a
house, running a factory, or even picking food products (The Family Itself). Teamwork can be
described in many ways: it is the sense of trust and accomplishment that you gain after you succeed,
relationships and friendships are formed, work gets done, and teamwork teaches you responsibility. It
requires you work together in form of trust. Trust is the faith that one person bestows upon another.
There is a second school of thought on teambuilding which has a different point of view
presented by Ian Cunningham, i.e. Teambuilding exercises can get a bad name because they do not

2. go far enough. In fact, the whole concept of 'building' a team has been challenged by Ian Cunningham
in his article 'Against Teambuilding' in 'Organisations and People’ [Vol.1, No.1, (1993) Pages
13-15]. He prefers the concepts of 'team working' and 'team development', warning that 'teambuilding'
can have negative consequences such as:
• A team becoming closed and precious - and out of touch with the rest of the organisation -
through thinking itself special and different.
• Over-use of instruments and tests (e.g. Belbin, Myers-Briggs) so that the team's language
and thinking is distorted.
• Emphasis tends to be on quick fix events - the assumption is that once the team is 'built' it's
OK to leave them to it.
• Issues in the team are explored at a shallow level only. People's articulations of problems are
taken at face value without exploring hidden agendas, power plays, status seeking etc.
• Trainers and consultants often use exercises that are quite disconnected from work practice.
Many fun exercises and simulations have a poor record of creating sustainable change inside
organisations.
These were the two extents of views on leadership. Relating to the above concepts of a few
examples which I had encountered in my life and by people from different walks of life, it comes to
my attention; the leaders should adopt an approach of being friendly towards the players, with a
gradual process of realization of the importance of each other for the success of the team. He was an
autocratic leader and tries to bring change in the team, which was indeed successful in this nature that
influenced the behaviour of the team players, to play as one team uniting the Blacks and the Whites.
Leaders are meant to adapt to the approach of revolutions rather than evolutions. They have to
come out of the box to solve problems faced by the employees as well the customers. This was the
element in ZA Bhutto, who had numerous achievements in different industries including agriculture,
cement, etc. who was known to be a charismatic leader. His charisma could be seen in the annual
death anniversary held annually, where his followers conduct Qur’an Khawanis for his soul to rest in
peace. He changed the authoritarian rulers’ concept to a more democracy oriented leadership where
followers are more important than the leader. This is the evidence that Z.A. Bhutto’s Charisma is still
remembered.

3. In my opinion the essentiality of a successful team is that, there should be a driving force
which should be motivating and forcing the whole group to complete the required task. This person
could be other than the leader itself, which is again personally observed by me while doing a group
assignment. On the other hand a charismatic leader is the one who makes his fellow members realize
the essentiality of being one to achieve the specific out cohesively, because this person is someone
with moral authority, rather than a formal authority. This person should have strong self principles
which should strictly followed by himself, and these should for the interest of other people.
The Team Should Follow the Principle Of
“ALL FOR ONE RATHER THEN ONE FOR ALL”
Salman Ahmed
Training & Development Coordinator
STEP Institute of Professional Development
4C, New Muslim Town, Lahore
UAN: 111-020-020
www.step.edu.pk
Providing global competencies locally since 2003
Proud to be the only and 1st ever “A Rated Centre” in Pakistan to offer internationally recognised British
Vocational Qualifications! (Quality monitored and assessed by Edexcel, UK)