From the course: Teamwork Foundations

Is it natural to work in a team?

From the course: Teamwork Foundations

Is it natural to work in a team?

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- To be honest, I don't think of myself as a natural team player. I'm certainly not very good at following instructions and I'm not very good at sharing tasks, but I am good at pointing out snags in the plan or taking unpopular decisions or challenging others who aren't contributing to the team, and these are all things that are needed in a team, and the person who just blends in and does whatever their colleagues want is also not really a perfect team player either because although they're great at supporting and sharing, they probably won't do the things like taking unpopular decisions. So, a team player has to do lots of things, almost self-contradictory things like supporting each other but also challenging each other, and we can't possibly all be naturals at doing all of them. If fact, nobody can do everything, but a team can cover every skill that's needed. Difficult tasks need a whole variety of skills and a team is really the only way to get something difficult done. Partly this is about specialists. You might need a quarterback, some receivers, maybe a kicker who only comes on for a couple of minutes in the whole match but does something that nobody else can do, etc., but teams are also about helping each other with our weaknesses, so we all cover each other's weak points and then the team as a whole doesn't suffer. We all get a better result if we're in a team. The other reason we need teamwork is quite simply because it makes us happy. We're pack animals who don't like to be alone for too long. We need friends and the emotional support of others, and we like to feel that we are within a group of like-minded people all moving forward together. We like to belong, to be in a tribe. Even supporting a football team is part of this pack instinct that we all have and we all need to satisfy. So, we're loyal to our family, our town, our football team, our employer maybe, and our country because we're basically team animals, but the trouble is that teams are also a bit of a nightmare. Everyone has their own personality and the people who we need because they're different to us are often the people that we find difficult or even dislike because we don't really understand them, so we want to be in a team. We need to be in a team, and yet we don't always like being in a team, and that's what this course is about. Teams are unavoidable, often difficult, but also important and potentially enjoyable, so how can we make the best of this contradictory situation?

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