Success, self-development and teamwork: how are they connected?

By nature, a human being is a strong creature capable of great achievements. But how much can one person really accomplish alone?

The answer is easy to find if you look closely at successful people. They do have leadership qualities, yet they reached their results thanks to working in a team.

Contents

• What is teamwork?
• The opportunities teamwork offers
• Challenges in teamwork
• Self-development through teamwork

What is teamwork?

To understand what teamwork means, we first need to define what a team is.

A team is a group of people united by a common goal.

Following from that, teamwork is people working together to reach a single goal.

Active interaction between members and a shared goal are the key features that set teamwork apart from other forms of interaction, such as cooperation or simply working for the same company.

This way of working has its strengths, and that is what we will talk about next.

The opportunities teamwork offers

We have established what teamwork is, but what advantages does it have over working alone or in any other way? As we said, teamwork is about the interaction between people, which means the strength lies in the people themselves.

The most important effect you can only get in a team is synergy. Because people's qualities complement one another, the results a team achieves are far better than what anyone could achieve alone.

A team brings together people with different interests, which makes it possible to find unexpected solutions and to discuss a question from several points of view. This approach refreshes the way you look at problems that once seemed far too complicated.

Team members usually build stronger relationships too. Teamwork makes you go through difficulties together and understand each other better. And beyond the difficulties, the time spent together matters just as much.

A team also makes it possible to do things that are beyond one person's reach. Imagine a project split into 30 tasks. On your own, you have to complete all 30; in a team, the work is shared between the members.

Challenges in teamwork

Unfortunately, all the qualities described above do not always come to life in a team. What is the greatest advantage of teamwork often becomes its greatest difficulty: dealing with people. Since working in a team means working alongside others, problems in communication have a huge impact on the outcome.

The biggest obstacle is selfishness, the urge to stick to your own point of view and refuse to acknowledge anyone else's. That attitude destroys teamwork entirely, because interaction and synergy simply become impossible. A lack of empathy, a habit of complaining, and aggression all damage relationships.

An equally serious problem is irresponsibility. An unwillingness to answer for your actions or your inaction destroys the foundation of any relationship, which is trust. You cannot entrust important work to unreliable people, because at the most critical moment someone else on the team will have to do it.

Failing to understand personal and team goals is another obstacle on a team's path. When someone does not understand the goals, it holds back not only that person but everyone who has to work with them. In that situation there is nothing shared to hold you together, productivity and motivation drop, and work you once enjoyed starts to feel like a burden.

Self-development through teamwork

Working towards a common goal helps you see your own limits, both in the work itself and in dealing with the people you meet every day. It gives you a chance to examine your character traits and your attitude to all kinds of things. Every shortcoming becomes visible.

A team teaches you not only to listen to others, but also to hear yourself. Every interaction is a chance to understand your weak and strong sides, and to see where you can grow.

In teamwork it helps enormously that people see problems differently. Your teammates let you look at your own problems from another angle. You get to feel that you are not alone with your difficulties, and to hear how the people next to you have already solved the very same ones.

To sum up, teamwork is a chance not only to reach a shared goal, but also to develop your own potential as a person. Coming together is a very demanding process, yet the results of that work simply cannot be compared with what one person can do alone.

Author of the article: Nadiia Sh., first-year student of Software Engineering at the National Technical University "Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute" (NTU "KhPI").