Teamwork
When working in a team, it’s important that everyone knows what they should be doing. Otherwise the team may not fulfil its overall aims and objectives.
Real-life example
During the 2016 UEFA European Championship, the Wales football team made it to the semi-final stage, which was an unexpected achievement. Wales’ striker Gareth Bale stressed the importance of team work in their success.
Gareth Bale talks about the importance of working as team
We know deep down that the team is the most important thing. I can’t score goals without someone passing me the ball. So if we don’t keep a clean sheet we don’t win. If we don’t score we don’t win. Everything revolves around the team not just one player.
Allocating team roles
There are at least three different ways of allocating job roles to each person in a team. These include:
- selecting the best qualified or most experienced person to take on a particular role - this could also be based on Belbin’s team role quiz or the Myers-Briggs type indicator assessment
- asking people which role that they would like to take on
- giving a role to someone who has no experience of a particular role - this gives people an opportunity to take on an unfamiliar role in order to gain experience of performing that role
Roles could be fixed for the lifetime of the team, so everyone stays in the same role.
Alternatively, the roles could be rotated from time to time, so that everyone gets a chance to try out a different role.
