How To Be A Team Player

Working on projects with co-workers isn’t always a walk in the park. There’s always the slacker, or the Negative Nancy, or maybe you just can’t seem to find your place within the group. This can cause a lot of stress and you may lose your motivation to be productive. To ensure strength in numbers here’s my list for ways to be a better team player.

1. Break the Ice: Working with new people for the first time can be a little awkward. Whether it’s your first day at a new job, or you’ve never worked with certain employees before, it’s always good to get to know one another. Before you dive into work, grab coffee or dinner with your team. This will reduce tensions, and reduce the small talk when it really is time to get down to business. Here’s a list to get the conversation flowing. 

2. Remember Your Strengths: Everyone within the group should bring something to the table. Just because you may not be the most outspoken doesn’t mean you don’t belong. Don’t forget why it is that you are a part of the team, and let your personal strengths shine through.  

3. Be Reliable: Don’t make promises that you can’t keep! This will make others loose faith in your abilities and your ideas won’t carry as much merit.  Also make sure you are always on time – time management is key. Here is how to make sure you are never late again.

4. Schedule Group Meetings: Things go so much smoother if meetings are planned out. Make a checklist of key points to hit, what everyone should accomplish, and what the next goal for the group is. Meetings can easily fall short if they aren’t organized. The same goes for conference calls – here’s how to make them more productive! 

5. Confront The Slacker: The best way to deal with a difficult person in the group is to confront the issue head on. Be honest about the problem, but don’t be insulting or negative. That will just cause tension and awkwardness.  Most of the time the person doesn’t even realize they are creating a problem in the first place and are happy to readjust the situation.

6. Stay Positive: No matter the situation is it always essential to keep your head up and stay positive! One bad day at work doesn’t mean that the project is turning into a disaster. Things happen, good and bad, and the group just needs to stay on the same page through it all.

How do you play nice on a team at work?

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My new book about lists, Listful Thinking: Using Lists to be More Productive, Highly Successful and Less Stressed recently hit the shelves!  The power of a simple list is pretty amazing.  It makes you feel more in control of every aspect of your life and makes you a better version of yourself.  I know, because it's worked for me! 

Oh and some really successful and organized authors like David Allen, Julie Morgenstern and Gretchen Rubin have endorsed the book too! 

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Paula Rizzo is an Emmy award winning television producer and founder of the productivity site ListProducer.com.  She's also the author of Listful Thinking: Using Lists to be More Productive, Highly Successful and Less Stressed.  Follow her on Twitter and Facebook and get a free chapter of her book by signing up here.