From the course: Teamwork Foundations

Nobody's perfect

From the course: Teamwork Foundations

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Nobody's perfect

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- Maybe the biggest reason why we need teams is that nobody's perfect. You can't do everything yourself because there's bound to be something that you're bad at. Maybe it's creativity, or finishing things off, or confronting scary people, or planning a long way ahead, for example. But whatever it is, it seems that the way we're made is that we're all good at some things, and we're all bad at other things, which I think is rather great. It makes life interesting, and it means that whatever the job is there will be someone who's good at it and likes doing it. But it does mean that in a team we need to be tolerant of the failings of others. Just because you find making decisions easy doesn't mean that everyone else will. And it's unfair to give them a hard time about it. In fact, be glad that they find it hard because then it gives you a chance to shine. Maybe they aren't very good at the detail and you are, and that's great. Don't waste effort criticizing them or making them feel bad. It's not going to be easy to change them. Just embrace the fact that in a team everyone's different and you have your role that the other's can't do. Nobody's perfect, but a team can be. But remember, although teams can be perfect, they usually aren't, and as we'll see, it's quite hard to design a perfect team, even if you have the power to. Often we just inherit a bunch of people, and it's random chance. Or we pick people we like because they're similar to us, and that's not going to end well. But at least with a team we have a chance of making it work well, and the starting point is to make allowances for the fact that other people are sometimes bad at things that we find obvious or easy. Who do you know that has faults that annoy you? And is it possible to turn this around and think about the things that they're good at instead? And can you also turn that irritation with their faults into feeling good about the fact that you can easily do the things that they find difficult?

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