The art of working in a team

In today’s competitive student world, the ability to work harmoniously with other people is a good way of marking yourself out from everybody else. While teamwork may offer the chance to blame others for your mistakes, you can never blame them for your failings as a teammate.

In any case, working out where to apportion blame is not a good way to approach membership of any new team. Instead, get to know one another, so you can build up a shared identity and combine your strengths. Find out each other’s priorities, values, weaknesses, past achievements, names.

Don’t shy away from conflicts but work out how to deal with them, preferably without resorting to anything physical. Humor can be good glue, so have a laugh together – but not at a team member’s sticking-out ears.

Before setting down to business, it’s important to establish ground rules. First, make sure you all share the same concept of time. Will 9.30am meetings actually take place at midday? Then, work out how you are going to make and communicate decisions.

These are probably best made at a formal meeting and communicated by email, rather than in a rumble of agreement at a post-meeting pub session. You must also agree on who will be responsible for making decisions. Will they need to be made unanimously or by the vocal young man who has already mentioned the project on his CV under “leadership skills”?

Even if you have decided that decisions don’t have to be unanimous, it is important that every team member is kept involved, including those who always disagree with the majority view, rarely say a word, or have a weird haircut.

Once you’ve got your rules of engagement, define what you want to achieve, and the deadline. Work out what you have to do before the time is up to do it.

Now here comes brainstorming. The important thing here is a fully open mind. Write everyone’s ideas down without sniggering. If you tell someone their idea is stupid, you may stop them coming up with something fantastic later. Once the brainstorming is over, you can strike out the suggestions that won’t work. Remember that ideas can sometimes be good even if they’re not yours. And don’t take it personally if yours are ditched – you will still have lots to contribute.

The team must assign roles according to everyone’s individual skills. Are you a charismatic leader or a details person? Remember that every task is equally important, even if one involves making a presentation and acknowledging the applause of your peers while the other involves hours of photocopying.

Whatever your role, it is important to keep a record of what has been decided at each stage and what each member of the team has contributed. Then, when the task is over, you can review how well it went. It is popularly known as covering your back.