80% of employers and employees believe creating a sense of community at work is important.

As employees spend a huge chunk of their time at an organization and most activities are to be done as a team, the dynamics between employees at a workplace are of utmost significance. Team dynamics have a direct impact on the level of employee engagement and productivity as well.

So, how do you make sure that the team dynamics of your workforce are spot on?

An excellent way is to take a closer look at the 9 examples of effective team dynamics stated in this blog, and replicate them in your organization accordingly. 

So, what exactly is team dynamics?

In simple terms, team dynamics is the way in which team members interact and collaborate with each other to achieve a common goal or objective that is set by the organization. What makes team dynamics relevant is that it is more psychological in nature. It is the mental synergy between team members. 

Every team in a workplace consists of employees who are different from each other. They can differ in terms of:

• Working style
• Personality traits
• Attitude

Team dynamics vary heavily depending on these individual factors as well as broader aspects like the overall company culture. It is said that a team's productivity and quality increase by 50% when the team members cooperate well and the team dynamics are overall positive. 

Companies looking to build a long-term competitive advantage can start with team dynamics because it is a crucial area that is responsible for the major chunk of output a company generates. 

Here are 7 factors that affect team dynamics. Knowing these factors are crucial and can help you refine and improve your efforts towards building better team dynamics.

1. Leadership Style: The way a leader guides the team can make or break the team dynamics. Authoritative leaders may impose a rigid structure, while democratic leaders encourage more participation and collaboration, impacting the team's morale and productivity.
2. Communication: Clear and open communication forms the backbone of positive team dynamics. Poor communication can lead to misunderstandings and reduced efficiency, whereas effective communication helps in aligning goals and smoothing out conflicts.
3. Role Clarity: Each team member needs to understand their specific role and responsibilities. Lack of clarity can lead to confusion and overlap, hindering the team's performance.
4. Trust and Respect: Trust among team members is essential for a collaborative and supportive work environment. Teams that foster mutual respect and trust tend to have stronger cohesion and better conflict resolution.
5. Diversity and Inclusion: Diverse teams bring a range of perspectives and solutions to the table. An inclusive environment where all members feel valued boosts creativity and innovation.
6. Goal Alignment: When team members are aligned on goals, they can effectively coordinate their efforts. Misalignment can lead to conflicting priorities and reduced cooperation.
7. External Factors: Factors like market conditions, organizational changes, and cultural shifts can also influence team dynamics, requiring teams to adapt and evolve.

Great examples of team dynamics can be seen everywhere. It permeates all industries as the phenomenon of team dynamics is not limited to one industry alone. Let us look at 9 interesting examples of effective team dynamics:

#1 The Mars Exploration Team

NASA’s Mars exploration team serves as a great example of team dynamics. Designing missions to explore Mars is not something you can pull off easily.

NASA has different teams from different backgrounds working together to achieve this goal, and they have done it beautifully. Problems are solved meticulously through cooperation and mutual respect that the team members show each other. 

#2 Toptal

Toptal is a global website for freelance work and a talent network. It works with a spread team. They value freedom and flexibility, so team members can work from home or anywhere else in the world. Toptal uses various collaboration tools, such as Slack, Zoom, and project management software, to make it easier for people to talk to each other and work together. 

#3 Buffer

Buffer specializes in social media management which requires constant communication and contribution from team members. They manage social media like a distributed team. They prioritize asynchronous communication and transparency with ‘Twist’ for team messaging and ‘Discourse’ for conversations.

Buffer encourages their employees to take time off to recover and promotes work-life balance. Regular team trips and online get-togethers help make the team dynamics positive.

#4 Airbnb and their Crisis Management Team

The highlight of the crisis management team of Airbnb is that they are excellent at adapting to the changing business environment. As we know, Airbnb functions across various countries and crises can come up at any time. The crisis management team has excellent team dynamics to respond to such contingencies efficiently to reduce the damage to a minimum. 

#5 Basecamp

The whole Basecamp company has been operated from home since its founding. Employees of the company operate effectively together despite being in various countries and time zones. This is mainly because the firm emphasizes communicating to individuals. Project management, videoconferencing, and instant messaging applications keep everyone in sync. The company also makes sure that its employees have a healthy work-life balance.

#6 Automattic 

Automattic runs as a distributed workforce, which means that employees work from home in different places around the world. Trust and freedom are important to them, so they let employees set their own hours and work from anywhere.

Automattic encourages people to work together by giving them tools like Slack for real-time chat and P2, a private writing platform. Regular get-togethers and events that build teamwork help team members get along better with each other.

#7 Pixar and their Creative Team 

The creative team of Pixar comprises members from diverse backgrounds, which makes their team dynamics complex yet effective. Because of such diverse perspectives, they have been able to create masterpieces back to back. 

#8 Spotify

Another example of efficient problem-solving collaboration is the Shopify fraud detection team. The biggest goal of this team is to find and stop e-commerce fraud. To succeed, the team must collaborate with IT, data science, and customer service departments. They discover new fraud patterns, develop fraud-detecting programs, and enhance customer service to avoid fraud.

#9 Amazon

The way Amazon's teams work is defined by a constant focus on growth and customer satisfaction. They promote a mindset of ownership and responsibility, where everyone on the team is free to make decisions and help the business succeed.

Amazon focuses on making decisions based on data, using measurements and comments to help teams keep getting better. They also stress how important variety and equality are, knowing that customers benefit from hearing different points of view. This encourages employees to work together and is what drives them to come up with new ideas and get things done.

If there is one element that has the single most impact on team dynamics, it is leadership. The way the leader manages the group and sets a pace for the activities is basically what lays the foundation for a team to work. Depending on the type of leadership and the path followed by the leader, the team dynamics also alter. 

Generally, leadership plays a major role in shaping team dynamics by influencing the following areas:

• Providing a vision and showing the right direction to follow
• Resolving conflicts among team members
• Delegating the duties by assigning tasks to specific team members
• Making crucial decisions for the team

All these activities impact the team's dynamics either directly or indirectly. But if you want to take a better look at how exactly leadership affects team dynamics, let us classify them into different leadership styles:

1. Autocratic Leadership

Here, the leaders are focused on results more than anything else. They run a tight ship and set a high pace for the projects. Such leaders have clear expectations from each team member and communicate them through meetings and emails.

On one hand, the team enjoys such direct leadership where they are told exactly what to do. However, the other side of the issue is that there is no personal freedom for the team members to express their own creativity or thoughts to the team, stifling the organic development of team dynamics. 

2. Affiliative Leadership

The affiliative leadership style is known to create one of the best environments for team dynamics to naturally unfurl. This is because leaders who follow the affiliative leadership style make sure that there is enough space for the employees to develop their emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills.

Relevance is given to building trust and a sense of unity as well. All of these elements make it the perfect breeding ground for healthy and positive team dynamics among employees.

However, the problem is that as the group is so tightly knit, there is no room for criticism, even if it is constructive in nature. Also, if any problem arises in such a group, the resolution of the same can take time. 

3. Democratic Leadership

Democratic leadership falls somewhat in the middle of the affiliate and the autocratic leadership style.

Here, leaders respect the decisions of team members and give them the right to participate in the process of decision-making. Multiple perspectives are considered before making a decision. However, in order to do all this, the leader has to invest a significant amount of time and energy.

4. Transformational Leadership

These leaders are futuristic and support innovation of all shapes and sizes. Transformational leadership style is all about tackling challenges that arise in a project in the most innovative way and bringing about positive changes in the team as a whole. But when so much emphasis is placed on productivity, team dynamics suffers as there is often no proper structure or clarity here. 

5. Transactional Leadership

Transactional type leaders focus on assigning tasks to members and then spend their energy on monitoring the activity of the team. It is actually a great way to see how the team unfolds itself and how the team dynamics develops. 

Team Dynamics For The Win!

Any organization that takes workplace synergy seriously must pay more attention to their team dynamics.

Before forming workplace teams, organizations can conduct in-depth surveys with the help of ThriveSparrow to understand how to approach the phenomenon and choose teams that could lead to generation of positive team dynamics.