What Are Teamwork Skills?

Working Well In A Team

Working well in a team means:

• Working with a group of people to achieve a shared goal or outcome in an effective way
• Actively listening to other members of the team
• Supporting struggling friends and team mates
• Approaching teamwork with a positive attitude
• Working for the good of the group as a whole
• Having a say and sharing responsibility

Successful Teamwork

A successful team is one where everyone’s unique skills and strengths help the team achieve a shared goal in the most effective way. Understand which type of team player you are, so you can maximise your strengths.

If you have good people skills you’ll make a good team player, and skills like communication and having a positive attitude make a team great.

Teamwork is vital if you want to work well with colleagues and teammates. You will probably have to work as part of a team in many areas of life; from class projects to planning a birthday party.

Even if you work well on your own due to great self management, being a team player is a valued skill for most jobs.

The better you work with others, the more successful your team will be in achieving their goals. Employees often need to collaborate or work with others to complete tasks and projects. Having teamwork skills and experience will make it a much better experience for you and everyone on your team.

Teamwork Skills For Students

The obvious way to enhance your teamwork skills is to be part of a team! There are lots of opportunities to do this in school and education. You could work on a class project in pairs or as a group. You could join a school sports team, orchestra or drama production. You could participate in a school-wide charity event and encourage friends and family to contribute and take part too.

Building teamwork skills in school will help you:

• Boost your confidence in contributing ideas to a project
• Listen to others and take their ideas on board
• Play an active part in creating a positive energy and atmosphere during the project
• Support any fellow students who need extra support, and take instruction well from team leaders
• Take responsibility for your tasks in a project

Teamwork Skills At Work

Most types of work involve you working as a team. Good teamwork means everyone working well together.

Your teamwork skills can help you at work in all sorts of ways. Perhaps you’re working in construction and thinking about the health and safety of yourself and your team mates. Maybe your team has work together to create a report for a client to a tight deadline. Teamwork also helps gets things done when you’re planning a birthday party for someone you work with!

Having teamwork skills will make it a much better experience for everyone, whether you are working long hours or trying to choose which cake to buy.

Building teamwork skills at work will help you:

• Achieve a team goal in a quick and positive way
• Improve your communication skills, e.g. listening, taking instruction and offering support and ideas

Good teamwork skills will give you more chances to move forward in your career, too. People can see you as someone with a positive attitude who thinks the company’s goals are important. This can help you get more opportunities, responsibility, training and promotions over time.

Ideas for building teamwork skills

A great way to build your teamwork skills is to volunteer for any team projects and say to yourself “we can do this together.”

Say YES to working in groups

Find opportunities to work in a group. Then make sure you contribute to the group and help others to get involved.

Try local volunteering

Lots of groups run in local areas for all kinds of interests including conservation, politics, special interests and team sports. Getting involved in a group is a great way to build your teamwork skills.

Understand how to work in a team

Communication, planning, problem solving and negotiating are some of the skills you will need to develop. Work on these skills and your teamwork skills will improve too!

Can YOU think as a team?

Ask yourself:

• Do you show a positive attitude with team projects?
• Do you support struggling team members?
• Can you stay calm during group conflict and arguments?
• Do you use problem solving skills to find ways to solve a group’s problem?
• During group meetings do you listen to other people’s ideas and try to avoid talking over them?
• Do you ask team members for helpwhen you don’t know how to do something, so you can learn new things and get your team tasks done quickly?

Creating a good CV and cover letter

Your CV is the first place where you can show a future employer your teamwork skills. Record the teams you are involved in from work or personal situations. Summarise how you have contributed to these teams and helped them meet their goals.

If you are writing a cover letter, think about how you can show team spirit when talking about your achievements and experiences in working as a team. For example, you can use phrases like “working as part of a team” or “I helped a team to” if you helped to contribute to a successful project but didn’t do all the work yourself.

Here is an example achievement that shows you have team spirit:

“Working as part of a team, I help to re-organise the food section of a retail store to create a more comfortable shopping experience for customers.”

Job interviews

Demonstrating your teamwork skills in a job interview can be tricky. You’re often on your own in an interview, and have to rely on giving examples of your experience to show an employer you’re good at working with others.

If you have an assessment centre or group interview, that’s a great chance to let your teamwork skills shine. These tips for team exercises at assessment centres will help your teamwork and problem solving skills shine.

As always, remember the STARRS method – it’s an expansion on the popular STARR method by one of our own Youth Ambassadors. It helps you think about what went well in a past situation and what you would do better next time.

Next Steps

Think about the last time you worked as a team. Which teamwork skills do you think you used well? Which do you think you could work on next time a group project comes up?

Pick a time you worked as a team to achieve something. How would you talk about it to an employer? Write a sentence or two about the experience and describe how you showed your skills as a team player. This will help you be prepared in job interviews – and will remind you what you’ve already achieved in life.

Try asking a friend, teacher, or family member how well they think you have worked as part of a team project they know about and if they have any pointers to help you improve.

Exercise: Test Your Teamwork

Think about the questions below. See if you can come up with real examples from your own life.

• Why are teamwork skills important to an employer?
• How could you develop your teamwork skills? Name an example.
• How could you demonstrate good teamwork skills? Name an example.

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