Team Building Skills

   For any company to flourish, efficient and qualified persons who are dedicated, focused and have good team playing skills are a prerequisite. Many of the Indian companies lack due to good team work and efficient team building.
  As per an international survey conducted by YSC - a leading psychology consulting company which was conducted to check the efficiency of executives working in different companies across the globe. According to the survey only 13% of the executives consider team work as their strength, whereas in China it is 30% and 24& in the USA. 24% of the executives in India lacked in the skill of team work, in contrast to China & USA which show only 3% and 6% respectively. The heads/ executives of Indian companies are not that efficient in team work. Many of the executives are placed in the top positions, but these executives are not efficient in team building nor good at team work. As per this survey the ambition, enthusiasm and achievements of Indians are praiseworthy. The percentage of ambition, enthusiasm and achievement of Indians is 46%, whereas in China and USA it is 40% and 35% respectively. Indians have great analytical abilities compared to Americans. Their sense and self awareness is also high compared to the executives of China and USA. It has been observed that the Indian executives are more authoritarian compared to China and USA. However the talent of India is still in demand due to their strength in achievement drive and dedication towards it. In China it is 40% and in USA only 35%. The Indian executives are at par with the USA (24%) whereas China lags behind (15%).
  The Indian executives lag in team building and team work due to the hierarchy system that is embedded in our Indian society. Due to this the executives are unable to voice their opinions/ share their views and  are hesitant before their higher authorities. They feel that if they do any of these the higher authorities will be offended/ consider it as an insult. In short successful teamwork is not built on differences of rank but on the societal norms of hierarchy in India. Another reason is that in India we stress a lot on individual performance. Individual performance is rewarded and team performance is neglected. This is obstacle in team building. On major characteristic of team building is to put aside your ego and focus on the well being and success of the team rather than individual well being and success. Individual goals are of no relevance before the goals of the team. But in doing this the ego of the executives is hurt because a common Indian is very narcissist in nature and always on the move to shield his/her own ego - be it of the country, language, caste or religion. We need to collaborate rather than competing with one another to achieve greater success.
   Another major finding as the YSC survey is that most of the American and UK companies have hired Indian executives because they are proficient in English. They are even enthusiastic about learning other languages too. The Indian society follows a culture of 'hero worship'. Due to this we are unable to come out and break the shackles of this tradition of Guru/hero worship because everyone is in awe of the Guru/hero.
   It becomes highly essential for the executives of India to focus more on their team building skills rather than competing for the individual goals. An organisation can perform well if it works in teams because these teams create a synergy - where the combined effort of the team is greater than the sum of individual efforts.