From the course: Teamwork Foundations

Deliver more than your share

From the course: Teamwork Foundations

Deliver more than your share

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- At what point, should you let the team down? Maybe the task has turned out to be harder than you thought, or maybe other things have come in as well, so it's hard to find the time. Maybe they've asked you to do an unfairly large share of the work. So how much should you put yourself out for the good of the team? How much time, effort, or risk should you put in in order to help the others in the team? Well logic would say, that if the team only benefits a little bit and at very large cost to you, then you shouldn't do it. Whereas if it's only a small cost to you, and it benefits the team a lot, then you should do it. And certainly in the second case, you'd be very selfish not to put yourself out a little bit if the team was to benefit substantially from your time or effort. But going back to that first case, where you have to put in a big effort in order for the team to only benefit a small amount, should you have to do this? Now it seems to me that the team would be a bit unreasonable to ask this of you. And you'd be within your rights to at least question it. You could say something like "guys, do you realize "how hard this is going to be for me to do?" Maybe they didn't realize the cost to you, or maybe the benefit to them is bigger than you realize. So the conversation is definitely worth having. But if neither is the case and the team is just being selfish and they don't really care about the cost to you, then maybe this isn't a team that you want to be in. But if it's marginal, or the cost to you is only a little bit larger than the gain to the team, then you should definitely do the work to show commitment, even though it may feel a bit unfair at the time. And no doubt, you'll reap some kind of reward for your efforts in the end. Perhaps with the team being more successful so everyone gains, including you. Or maybe just that other people appreciate you more, and are more likely to help you when you really need it in the future. So a couple of things to think about. Do you ever put yourself out for the good of the team? Do you go beyond just your share, and could you do that more? And are you sometimes too soft? Would it be a good idea to check that the team realizes how much work you're doing?

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