Knowing how to work as part of a team is an essential component of most jobs and tasks. But, very often, this important skill is taken for granted.
Effective teamwork rarely just ‘happens’; it is honed and developed using a combination of skills, attitudes and careful leadership for it to make a very real and measured impact in the workplace.
But just how do you master the art of teamwork?
We’ve put together 20 tips to help you improve your teamwork skills and shine at work!
1. Understand your role in the team
Understanding your role in a team starts with understanding who you are as a worker.
Take some time to review your own strengths and development areas, either by reviewing a recent appraisal or feedback or by self-assessing your own skills. This will help you consider what you can offer. It’s also helpful to analyse what other people bring to a team, as well as what you’re all working on. This way, you’ll know how and where you fit in.
Remember to always prioritise your own role over helping other people. Doing this will ensure people know what you’re capable of.
2. Develop a team mentality
Developing a team mentality begins with understanding your role, but this is only the start. Develop and focus on the goals of your team and ensure there’s always a focus on the ‘bigger picture’ and what you can do to contribute to this as a team player.
Socialise with your team, get to know them, and become comfortable with giving and receiving feedback. Think about how you can help teammates learn and develop, and embody the behaviours expected of you to inspire others to do the same.
3. Be flexible
Very rarely will working in a team go completely according to plan. As a team member, learn to cope with change and conflict, as these will often alter the team dynamic and the tasks you’re working on.
View being flexible as a way to increase your skillset, build relationships and help others. Keep yourself organised and plan ahead wherever you can in order to make the need to change course a little less disruptive.
4. Focus on the team’s goals
Write down your team’s goals to always keep them in your mind. Work with each other and your leaders to work out the best way you can contribute to them, and what you can personally offer.
Start to think about how a long-term team goal can be broken down into manageable steps. One powerful tool to use which simplifies this task is the development of Gantt charts, which can track the separate elements of projects, how long each step might take you, and what’s needed for them to be brought to fruition.
5. Be a good communicator
Whether you’re introverted or extroverted, speaking up in a team and being able to communicate effectively is important in order to discuss challenges and create team cohesion.
Be participative when discussing team goals and tasks, and respect other’s contributions and ideas, even if they’re not aligned with your own. Clearly communicate, trying to avoid ambiguities which might cause confusion or miscommunication.
Openly and clearly sharing information creates a form of ‘knowledge organisation’ where everyone learns from collective input.
6. Show responsibility
Fostering reliability in the team is a sure-fire way to drive responsibility. If leaders establish team norms, then it is the role of the team member to follow them and encourage others to do the same.
Understanding of the team goals and appreciation of flexibility can drive empowerment. Focus on your tasks and do as much as you can to get on with the job at hand, figuring out the best way to get there as long as tasks are completed correctly. This, in turn, will drive trust and collaboration.
7. Be willing to help
Any team is only as strong as its weakest link. Understanding your role in the team and communicating with other team members to familiarise yourself with what they’re doing and what support they need is essential.
Knowing your team will also make it easier for you to ask for help when you need it. If anyone on a team is not willing to help, then you should address these issues head on and in a timely manner — or at least flag them to a team leader — to stop the situation deteriorating.
8. Let others help you
Team members must overcome any reluctance to ask for help. You can achieve this through open communication and understanding each other’s strengths and development areas. The ideal that each team member has a unique placement will increase confidence that others can help you.
Those in need of help must recognise those who assist them. Saying ‘thank you’ goes a long way and will inspire others to offer help, which, in turn, will make others in need a little more confident in reaching out.
9. Avoid office politics
Office politics are sadly a fact of life in the workplace, but to succeed as a team means to avoid it or minimise the consequences of it whenever possible.
A key part in managing office politics is to learn how to manage conflict. This will sometimes be as simple as knowing when to walk away.
Spend time cultivating your personal brand, ensuring that your behaviours at work are consistent and positive. Finally, know how and when to be assertive, digging your heels in at appropriate times, when you need to stand up to people playing power politics.
10. Don’t play the blame game
Team members that spend time blaming each other whenever anything goes wrong will inevitably tear themselves apart. The bigger and better thing to do if you make a mistake or see someone else do so is to accept it, learn from it and carry on.
One way to move on from the blame game is for you to contribute to a culture of learning. Both as a team and as an individual, deconstruct what happened and put development plans in place to ensure the same thing doesn’t happen again.
11. Respect your colleagues
A well-built team will be a collective of very different people, with a variety of different personalities and skills. Inevitably, this will spawn differences and disagreements.
Critical to team success is the notion of you respecting these differences and understanding why they’re beneficial. Take time to get to know your teammates on both a personal and professional level, empathising with them and offering support when they’re having a difficult time and collectively celebrating when things go well. This will, in turn, create a very powerful thing: trust.
12. Appreciate different work styles
Respecting different work styles leads to the appreciation of these differences and what they can bring to the team. When you get to know the different ways individuals in a team are working, you can focus on your own job and know who could support you, depending on what you might need.
Whereas a team should not seek to emulate each other’s approach to work, you as an individual can perhaps learn from these various approaches, strengthening your own knowledge and understanding.
13. Celebrate your peers’ successes
Celebration doesn’t have to be grand gestures from leaders; there are plenty of little things you and your teammates can do together to celebrate team wins.
Sending congratulatory notes through messaging systems like WhatsApp can make a big impact, as can writing handwritten notes to colleagues. Perhaps most simple of all is to use daily meetings and informal one-on-one chats to mentally ‘log’ accomplishments, following up with a simple ‘well done’. This approach will inspire others to do the same.
14. Be committed
Always keep a close eye on your own tasks as well as the team goals, tracking your own progress and helping others where needed. Keeping focused on your own tasks will enable you to minimise the ‘noise’ such as distractions, unnecessary conflict and bad news, keeping you working towards what is important.
Demonstrating to others that you have this targeted approach (whilst being aware of the need to be flexible) will showcase your commitment to the wider team.
15. Prove you’re reliable
The strongest teams have a powerful culture of trust, and one of the best ways to sustain this is through being a reliable team player. Reliability begins with keeping yourself organised at work. This can include decluttering, breaking down tasks into steps, establishing priorities and even taking breaks to improve focus.
As an individual, committing to deadlines and following through on promises you have made to your team will demonstrate your dependability, increasing your team’s confidence in what you do.
16. Be optimistic
Optimistic team members will roll with the punches, painting a positive light on any challenges that come their way, communicating these feelings and engaging others to feel the same. These traits will rub off on others, contributing to team cohesiveness.
Optimism is difficult to ‘train’, but keeping yourself organised, prepared and well-informed on what is happening in your team can enable you to manage your own emotions and approach each day with a positive mindset. Ensure you keep celebrating successes as well.
17. Keep the competition friendly
A healthy bit of competition between teams or team members can bring many benefits, such as an increased sense of purpose, improved motivation and the accomplishment of objectives. Nevertheless, competition can be taken too seriously, leading to conflict, stress and demotivation.
If you have an overly competitive streak, ensure your energies are channelled into things you can influence, like you own tasks and outputs. Daily progress meetings and dispassionate evaluation of competitors can help keep these competitive tendencies in check.
18. Meet your deadlines
Meeting targets and deadlines is a critical part of being perceived as a reliable member of the team. Deadline-focused team members have an acute understanding of their responsibilities and objectives, and will break them down into manageable, organised chunks which can be accomplished over a certain time.
Always keep a close eye on how your teammates are doing, as there might be shared responsibilities or moments when what they’re producing is impacted by — or will impact upon — someone else’s tasks.
19. Ask for feedback from colleagues
A high-performing team will be in the habit of honestly and regularly sharing feedback. Whereas constructive feedback is best kept private, colleagues should be empowered to share any challenges with their teammates in a direct and timely manner. This increases trust, encourages the diffusing of conflict and boosts performance.
Ways to ask for feedback can be formally, such as through a meeting, or just in casual conversation when going about a task.
20. Keep each other motivated
It isn’t just the role of the team leader to keep everyone motivated.
Teams which follow many of the above tips will keep themselves motivated and engaged, but the keys which bring many of these elements together is the notion of team members offering continuous and sincere support, trusting each other, and being honest and communicative. These cornerstones will ensure that whatever comes your way, you and your team will remain motivated, engaged and focused on the task at hand.
Final thoughts
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to improving your teamwork skills. Focusing on your own teamworking skills relies on an element of self-evaluation, understanding what you might need to focus on and asking others for feedback.
You should also observe your team members and their own behaviours, strengths and development areas, understanding what you can do differently to plug gaps and contribute to making the team better as a whole.
Always keep in mind that how to work as part of a team relies on aiming for harmony. You’re a collective of individuals, remaining focused on the team goal, morale and productivity, being able to work positively together when things are good and when things are tough.
Got any more tips you’d like to share about being a better team player? Let us know in the comments section below!
This article is an update of an earlier version published on 8 January 2017.