Unit 510

Unit 510 Lead and Manage a Team within a Health and Social Care Setting

Teamwork
What is teamwork?   The answer, work done by several associates with each doing a part but all suborning personal prominence to the efficiency of the whole.   But what does that actually mean?
Just think of a car, a car would not work properly without its engine, brakes, seats, even airbags.   Alone they are merely parts, but put them together and you’ve got a machine that works, better, faster and more efficient than one individual walking.
If you think of the of the care team individuals as the parts of a car and the overall goal as a destination you are trying to reach, then you can see the benefits of teamwork.   You will reach your destination faster and more efficiently if all the parts work together.
Teamwork is exactly the same principle.   Each member of the team is assigned a particular role depending on their skills.   Working together then benefits the whole organisation.
In management terms, team working is used as a way to empower individuals and facilitate development in order to enhance organisational performance, although it is not just about performance.   Teamwork is also a more humanistic way of working because it helps to enrich the individual.
Being part of a team ad having shared goals creates a feeling of comradeship and sameness, with no one person being seen as better than another.   This in turn, fosters shared accountability and shared leadership.
By facilitating teamwork, promoting team identity and fostering individual skill acquisition to benefit TEAM then the INDIVIDUAL, managers can foster trust and accountability.
Teamwork has been shown to improve ownership for tasks undertaken as it encourages an element of collaboration within the team whereas promoting individuality is dangerous because it fosters competition and that is not helpful for the organisation as a whole.

Leading and Managing a Team
It is recognised by most academics that there are...