Teamwork is underrated.
I am a football fan and so I am going to use that as a starting point to illustrate something I have learnt. For those of you who haven’t watched a game of football, it is a game where two teams consisting of eleven players who try to put the ball into a net having gotten past the opponent and at the same time, defending their own net. In a game of football, generally the team which executes the manager’s instruction well and functions well as a team wins rather than a team with eleven individuals who don’t work as a team. My favourite football team is Manchester United and it was a team that was one of the most fearsome teams in the last two decades. It of course had great players but the reason for their success was because they oiled well as a team and knew how to tackle even teams that were significantly stronger than them on paper. Every player knew each others weaknesses and strengths and as a team they made sure that these weaknesses were not exposed.

Teamwork is something that is not taught in school or in college. We have all worked in group projects at some point or another but most of us truly don’t realise how important teamwork is until we graduate and join a company. This is because most of us are brought up in a competitive environment where you have to push others out of the way to be successful. This is not true at all. In fact the educational system must encourage teamwork and must inculcate this from a very early age. Last weekend I had been assigned a work and I had been given 2 days to complete it. I spent the first day sitting alone pondering about the correct way to get the work done and having spent the entire day, I had done next to nothing. The next day I decided to seek for help and three of us started working on it and what I couldn’t do in an entire day I was able to complete in an hour or so. I would like to conclude by saying that all of us have to learn to work together, cover our team members’ weaknesses to bring out the best out of all of us.
