No matter what industry you’re in or what your job title is, being a good team player is among the essential skills you’ll need in order to succeed.
Whether you’re trying to get hired or improve your performance at your current job, there are very few things that will get you there faster than learning how to work in a team. Even if most of your work is individual in nature, you’ll still be working in a larger context and, therefore, need to have the appropriate teamwork skills. Keep reading to learn some key skills to work in a team.
Team Is Not Just a Group
It is important to keep in mind how a team operates. This isn’t necessarily a skill, but it will help place your skills in a larger framework.
You can accomplish a lot with a group of people, but not nearly as much as with a proper team. An example of a group could be farmworkers collecting fruits. Each individual’s input is important, but the group can function even if some members are missing.
A team, on the other hand, is like a band or an engine. Every member has skills that are a) complementary to those of other members and b) pertaining to their specific tasks. A band can’t play without a drummer and an engine can’t work without a power source. Teams work much more efficiently than groups, but the members are more reliant on each other. Here are our top tips to work well in a team:
Communication is Key
The one main skill that every team member needs to hone is communication. A team’s success relies heavily on clear communication.
Whether you’re communicating by phone, email, or otherwise, you’ll need to work on the right way to convey information. Every team will be slightly different, but it’s up to you to find the right tone and approach to communication.
If you ever want to develop the skills to manage a team, you have to start by becoming an impeccable communicator.
Practice Honesty and Integrity
All teams rely on their members to conduct themselves in a straightforward and honest way.
Being able to trust your team mates is essential, as is being a trustworthy team mate yourself. When team members don’t know whether they can trust one another, the communication suffers greatly and the entire workflow slows down.
Every member of the team wants and needs to know that there is a margin for error within which they can trust the other team members to help them solve the issue. That helps everyone acquire the skills to improve at work.
Exercise Conflict Resolution
This is especially important for your skills to improve at leadership. Every team will inevitably see some problems between members.
Whether you’re the team leader or not, you should be able to step in and mediate problems as they arise. This can start with helping the parties involved understand each other’s point of view. Then you can facilitate the conversation to achieve resolution, whether to achieve a compromise, a win-win solution, or to postpone the decision making to involve more opinions.
Be Reliable
As part of a team, you’re also part of a pipeline. Every team member needs to do their part of the job for the team to function.
If you’re consistently missing deadlines or failing to perform at a required level, you’re setting back your whole team. Teams tend to be self-regulating systems and underperforming members are quickly excluded. If you want to be a good team member, keeping track of deadlines and communicating delays are essential skills to sharpen to improve job performance
Be Respectful
This is a key skill and it is closely tied to being a good communicator. If you don’t start from a place of respect for your team members, it will be difficult to establish any kind of fruitful relationship.
Respect is about making the other person feel appreciated and heard. Listen actively when you’re being spoken to, use people’s names when addressing them, and make eye contact when communicating. Make it a point to commend your team members’ effort and contribution if you’re the leader.
Some team members will require more time to comfortably speak up than others and that’s important to understand. It doesn’t mean that they’re less valuable to the team. It only means that their contribution needs a little more effort to extract.
Practice Self-awareness
Self-awareness is one of important skills you’ll need to develop in a team-based situation. Knowing what your role is, your strength, and how it fits into the big picture is essential to good cooperation. Self-awareness goes beyond just understanding your duty in the pipeline. It means understanding where you need help from other people in the team as a social unit.
Teamwork Makes the Dream Work
The right environment makes working with other people much easier. Every member of the team should try to contribute to that in their own way.
It takes a lot of work to function as a team. Getting team members to contribute equally, making sure everyone is content, and delivering on tasks doesn’t happen by accident. You should be willing to put some real dedication into making yourself a better team player.