It takes two to Tango ??

I might not know how to tango but I love following the concept. Kicking off the first session in the series with one of my favorite topics. First because I love different culture dances and second because it speaks about the power of teamwork.

I still remember the first championship, early morning we had a team chorography, individual figure assessment, one solo performance and one duet. Little did I know that the sum of all the performances determine our final ranking. It was the initial understanding for me that my individual contribution isn't enough to push the team to take the first place. I understood that for the first figure to be perfect and well done it requires the team. It can't be done by an individual, we have to share the effort, we have to help each others improve and this is the way to achieve what we aim for as individuals.

When I started working and during university at a lot of time I had a thought that many of us think of sometimes "I can finish this on my own". However you could always tell that there is something missing, you can sense that it is an individual perspective not multiple perspectives. Despite the challenges of working in teams but this has been one of the most important things in a corporate or a project or even in a something as simple as buying something from a supermarket; you need someone who can check you out [despite the new innovations of self checkout which at times you still need someone in case there was a problem].

During multiple times in my career or university I've met people who aren't very cooperative but we have to work together: a team mate or a mentor or a client or two people who are working on a common project. Sometime I used to feel that some people are very conservative in their thoughts and sometimes I feel this myself but during this time I've recognized 5 key things to practice when working in a team or that can take two to tango:

1. Setting Expectations

I believe the first things of being part of a team is setting the right expectations, how everyone would like to work, the desired outcome and definitely the "can accept & can't accept" list for each team member. This definitely allows the team to understand how to work together. It is always important to understand the fact that part of the expectations should be the fact that team members have to make it as a team and not as individuals.

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together” – African proverb.

2. Always make space for feedback

One of the best things to do is definitely allocate time for feedback post every meeting or project or maybe if it is a long term team then periodical feedback round. Feedback is very important, you can never know if something is going wrong without doing this small check-ins. One thing I learned from the academy is always mention the 3 things that went well and it could be even better if. I believe it truly allow people to understand what to work on and it helps eliminate clashes due to unspoken feedback.

3. Roleplay the situations with yourself or someone

An advice i got from my career coach and through our sessions we do a lot of roleplays where you are the counter party involved in the situation and the other person roleplaying is you. This is really magic, you get to think more clearly and definitely have different response towards situations. You can do it even on a personal level when you want to see the best action to be taken in a situation. It does wonders in teams because people get to put themselves in others shoes.

4. Rate the team output and take actions accordingly

One of the crucial parts is after a period of time is to rate the team and see if actually this team should work differently or maybe you need support from other teams or other individuals outside of the team. Maybe you need a new member or maybe you need to abort mission of this team and create or join a new one. Its even needed in some business relationships like mentor to mentee or customer to vendor. Rating is an important aspect that actually gives clarity to the way forward in anything. [constructive rating with logic for sure]

5. Accept the conflicts & work to solve it

We all fear getting into conflicts and sometimes we avoid them even if they are obvious but it is really healthy for the team to have conflicts. The missed parts is to leave them there and not work on solving. I encountered a situation were there was something wrong but no one wants to address the elephant in the room although it would've saved a lot of things that kept taking place. Conflict happens, we're different and teams are formed of different people but we have to address them early and work on solving them early as well to maintain the continuity of a healthy team.

I love working in teams and discovering parts of me that I'm strong at doing and parts that need me to work on and improve. Not to mention for sure the fact of getting to work and know new people, learn from them and discovering new ways of working with different personalities.

Till we meet in the next blog post for The Corporate Athlete series.

Stay Corporately Fit!

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