A working team is the core of a healthy and efficient company. Even if every worker has a relevant skill set, today the productivity can be obtained also through the creativity and the problem-solving, the testing and an equal share of enthusiasm. These are all transversal skills that we can find and develop much better when we form a team. A team is a group able to work for common goals, increasing the performance level to achieve what individuals could never obtain. One of the most required skills in the staff selection is the ability to be able of working in a team, or the ability to cooperate. But what does that mean exactly?

Why aren’t all groups also teams?

The ‘team’ term usually indicates a close group of people able to work together to reach the same goal: exactly like a team of athletes. We can put together the members with the best skills, experiences, and competencies in their field but we still won’t have a team. Members must also, and above all:

• cooperating with the group
• working to achieve common goals

These two apparently simple points include a set of personal skills that are not easy to obtain and manage. Often, even if well disposed towards the group and the work, behaving in the right way when the time to act comes is not easy. In fact, each of us can influence and get affected by variable group dynamics.

Cooperating with the group

Being part of a team means being prepared to cooperate with the colleagues. This consist of different personal skills that can be innate or learned through time. The cooperation is constant and creates a connection between the group members, where everybody gives and shares cooperation. The ability to listen, the attention to details, the empathy for people, the willingness to help the others and the ability to share competencies are necessary. Cooperation also implies to be able of asking for help and admit our mistakes or the inability to do a job as well as the understanding of our improvement areas.

The willingness to cooperate increases productivity avoid stressful situations and diminishes the margins of error. However is inevitable that at some point there will be misunderstandings or problems, here comes into play another essential quality to work in a team: the mediation capability. Being able to solve or avoid all conflicts requires a positive and professional attitude towards the work and the people. Being able to handle colleagues that have a different temper, age, perception, and experience. Taking action gently when arguments are born, bringing back the attention on a professional and not a personal level.

Working for common goals

The group’s goal is more important than the individual ones. The team main purpose is focusing on achieving the goal is and serves also as a compass to guide the members. The competitiveness is the number one enemy of a team because makes ineffective or completely blocks cooperation following the interests of a few members or an individual. But by placing the group’s goals above all, everybody can feel himself as a part of a team, providing his input without reserves, offering solutions and ideas knowing that the others will do the same.

Why the team building takes place outside the workplace

Every skill and quality so far set out can be learned. Additional ones already belong to our personality, but they’ve never been necessary because of lack of opportunities. That’s when team building exercises are useful for bringing out some characteristics, also outside the working environment and often outside the workplace. Getting involved in role play and simulations that apparently have nothing to do with the work itself is essential to develop or bolster the group dynamics, to better know the colleagues and learning to trust them. Looking at both them and ourselves in a whole new light, and all of this without the stress or tension of the workplace. Last but not least the funny and recreative element which has always strengthen relations and got people united.

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