Together we can

Mona

A player who makes the team great, is better than a great player... is a universally acknowledged truth. Alas, we Indians excel individually but fare bad as a team member! A recent research pegs Indians’ team playing abilities at a dismal low, and as one can figure our social, economic and cultural system plays the guilty.

There is no area of work or play where one can do without team playing. No wonder the corporates spend insane amounts on training workshops, wherein team building is one of the major aspects. Rahul Bendre, training manager with pharmaceutical giant Lupin, points guns at our education system, “Competition affects the teamwork negatively. Our educational system promotes competitiveness in students and provides lesser opportunities for team work. We never received a ‘team’s’ report card. Seeds of individual excellence are rooted in minds right from the childhood.”

If our system is one, individualistic preferences are another thing that stops people working as a good team and a large part of it is reflective of the person leading the pack, “Whether people will work as individuals or a team depends upon the efforts of the leadership that gives them opportunities to bond, ideate and work together. The leadership plays an important role in bringing high performing individuals together as a high a performing team,” opines, Priya Kumar, a motivational speaker and a prolific writer.

Now that we accept that the social structure fails to develop our team playing traits; it’s not the end of the road. If you fall in the category, here are ways and means to get over this minor obstacle on the way to success.

Team spirit

Simar Onkar who practices as an independent applied psychologist in Chandigarh is of the view that the first step towards resolution is accepting the problem. “Today there is way too much thrust on individuality, on being ‘independent’. But let’s admit, it’s a complete myth. No one or nothing can exist in isolation.” Taking the idea to the extreme, he insists on imagining living without say sun or wind. Step two, he suggests is to interact. “The more you know the person, the more you realise that it is possible to relate to or learn and eventually work together. He also debunks the myth that excelling individually paves the road to success.

“Half of the time, people try to be secretive or obliterate other’s plans or reputation fearing that the competitor will get the promotion or get benefits. But being easy to get along is also a quality that matters when higher ups decide on distributing perks. Invariably it’s the team player who gets promoted.”

United we stand

To be a good team player one has to know the people in the team and like them to some degree, this is another basic. If you don’t like the people you work with, there goes team work. “Making conscious decisions to involve other people in the vision and the decision making process helps in getting the people to work better as a team,” says Priya Kumar. If the senior leadership is too busy to make that initiative, then one needs to take it upon himself to be a part of the bigger picture, and find communication lines within the team to share his ideas and goals with. “If one can make the effort and learn to be a good team player, he has risen to the ranks of the leader.”

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