How to be a good team member?

Last week, I found a helpful book, “When Teams Work Best” written by Frank LaFasto and Carl Larson in 2001, in UB library to make a whole picture of teamwork. The book tells a lot about what is teamwork, how we can be a good member of a team, and the relationship of a team. By learning it, we will improve our skills of teamwork.

A Brief Perspective on Teamwork

In the book, LaFasto and Larson tell us that teamwork is to achieve a goal by solving a series of problems with people who have diverse ideas and perspectives. Also, they need to put aside their narrow self-interests and discuss issues openly and supportively (2001).

To Be A Good Team Member

Six factors that determine a good team member:

· Experience

· Problem-Solving Ability

· Openness

· Supportiveness

· Action Orientation

· Personal Style

These six factors can be divided into two categories: Working knowledge factors and Teamwork factors. Working knowledge factors are experience and problem-solving ability. Teamwork factors are openness, supportiveness, personal style, and action orientation.

Experience

Be experienced: When a team faces a problem, if a team member has the practical knowledge relevant to their goals, he will be more valuable. Factor of experience can avoid some unnecessary problems and easy to get the access to success.

Problem-Solving Ability

Improve ability to solve problems. When people face a problem, the ability of solving problem is also important. This ability has some different expressions. Some members are good at clarifying problems, dividing them, and making them easy understanding. Some members are good at finding methods to address problems and figuring out what’s likely to work and what isn’t. Their common goals are to focus on the project and get the solutions.

Working knowledge factors are easy for a team to move towards its goal and often as characteristics of team members who are unusually effective in helping a team achieve its goal.

Openness

Be open. Team members with openness are willing to address problems, surface issues that need to be discussed, help create an environment to let people are free to express their opinions, and improve an open exchange of ideas. These members are good communicators and help others to communicate well. This environment will help people solve problems and achieve their goals.

Supportiveness

Support others. The main idea of supportiveness is a desire and willingness to help others succeed. Sometimes, it plays roles in interpreting others’ difficulties. Sometimes, its means figuring out how to help members solve a problem rather than taking advantage of an individual failure. Sometimes, it means putting team’s goal above any individual agenda.

Action Orientation

Be active. Action Orientation means being willing to act, or do something. Also, it can represent encouraging members to take action. This ability is often provided by a formally designated leader or by a member of the team. This is action that overcome obstacles, break through barriers, and deals effectively with nagging problems.

Personal Style

Be positive when facing problems. Personal style can be divided into positive and negative style. An effective team member has a positive personal style, like energetic, optimistic, engaging, confident, and fun to work with. A negative style can be cynical, defensive, hard-to-work-with whiners, and less competitive. The function of personal style is to affect the first three factors.

Teamwork factors is an individual part. A team is made up of each individual. How an individual is can really affect how a team is.

Summary

After learning the whole picture of teamwork and the six factors that can affect people being a good team member, we can easily know about the disadvantages of ourselves and improve ourselves by using each factor.

LaFasto, F., & Larson, C. (2001). When Teams Work Best. Thousand Oaks, California.