Importance of the teamwork - Essay Example

The guest speaker is known as Edward Paradise. He is the vice president of engineering at Cisco Inc. Intelligence. He is also an alumnus of the University of Hartford leaving as a member of the class of 1978. Edward Paradise is also the executive sponsor for Cisco North American Connective site and the executive manager for Search Triangular Partner site. He worked with IBM Research until April 1993 when he left to join Cisco. He is currently the vice president and general manager of mobile wireless networks at Cisco.

Edward Paradise also serves at the Board of directors at the chamber of commerce of Robotics of North Carolina and is also a member of the Board of management in engineering at the University of Duke. During the lecture, various things about team work were learned. Teamwork can basically be described as a group trying to achieve a certain goal. There are various characteristics associated with a successful team including: clarity of the unity of purpose, the group is self-conscious about its operations, the group has already set clear and demanding performance goals, the environment in which the group operates has the tendency to be informal, comfortable and relaxed, there is usually a lot of discussions in which almost everyone in the group participates, people are usually free to express their ideas, in teams there is usually lots of arguments and this is normally viewed as a good indicator of a performance in a team, most of the decisions made during the discussions are usually arrived at after massive deliberations and the decisions are unanimously adopted, each individual who is a member of the team carries his or her own weight, criticism in teamwork is normally frequent, frank and relatively comfortable and leadership of the team normally shifts from time to time.

For a person to be able to create himself a place in the team, it’s important for him to understand that solutions to the problems in the teams are not always obvious and need to be deliberated upon. Curiosity in a team is a positive trait and helps one to establish a place in the team. Many people shy away from asking dumb questions in a team but in order for one to have a proper place in the team, he can take it upon him to ask those questions that are considered dumb. The attitude of a person while working in a team is very crucial.

It is always advisable for a person to show up with a positive attitude ready to listen to other people’s ideas and participate as well. Teamwork is very important to engineers in their careers. The ability of a person to work with groups determines his relationship with other people within organizations as well as outside the organizations. As a professional engineer, teamwork helps one to associate with clients, other engineers and various stakeholders in the engineering industry. Teamwork is basically founded on trust.

However, the issue surrounding trust has greatly evolved with time and today it’s determined by a number of factors such as generational changes, culture, age and gender. Teamwork has led to creation of more open working environments where people work in open offices rather than closed offices. Through the dynamics of groups, environmental issues affecting various people can be comprehensively addressed by giving every affected person a chance to participate and contribute in decision making.

The ability of people to work in a team ensures that the health and safety of the workers in any given environment is properly taken care of. Since teamwork allows better communication among the members in an organization, the working environment is much safer hence the health of the workers becomes much more improved. The health and safety of the workers is also ensured through equality in decision making hence giving each member an equal chance and opportunity to give their views. Teamwork and group works encourage innovation in engineering.

Members of a team are able to brainstorm on any given engineering standard and may be able to improve it or come up with new standards. Through video conferencing, team work has been seen to improve the interaction and socialization among various members of a team. This has been seen to improve the social life of the participants since it gives an equal chance of all members to participate in discussions whether they are in one location or not. Through consultative teamwork incorporating the community members, various engineering designs can be improved hence improving the social aspect of engineering designs.

There are various arising issues related to engineering today including: technology, application of engineering into the social life and innovation. Through teamwork, these issues can be properly addressed and solutions found for the existing problems. This can be achieved through group discussions that allow group members to participate and give their views regarding various contemporary issues and come up with unanimously adopted solutions.