Soft Skills Rule of 7: No 3. Teamwork
Let’s say you’ve hired a contractor to build your new home. You’ve done your homework: researched and assured that they are a reputable team, studied their blueprints and budget specs, and feel confident in the fact that they will be the best fit for all your building needs.
...Then October hits: weather takes a turn for the worse, the lead electrician comes down with mono, your contractor is going through a divorce, and suddenly you can’t get a call, email or even a text back on any questions or concerns you send their way. This company doesn’t have any red marks on it’s reputation and you are doing your best to keep the ball rolling, but there is just no movement forward as your home sits in skeleton structure of arrested development with no end in sight… and winter on its way.
What happened here is more than just “bad luck.” It shows a failing in the communication and teamwork of the contracting team. Teamwork allows for team members to take turns carrying the heavy weight, creating forward momentum even under the most difficult of circumstances.
...This is why we don’t just hand the ball to the Quarterback and walk away.
It takes Teamwork...communication, collaboration, it takes all pulling shift together, fulfilling all our posts to the best of our ability—and keeping alert so that when we do get a “man down” situation...we are attuned and ready to adapt and rally.
Because the game doesn’t stop when a one person on the field gets injured. We huddle, we strategize, we fall back on our back-up plans (which means we have to first HAVE back-up plans… and back-up plans to the back up plans).
Communication and Teamwork can keep you moving forward --- yes, even through all the unknowns, from flood to fire, even to a pandemic.
This only works, however, if you put in the time upfront. You can’t have a backup-plan to the plan, if there is no plan to begin with. If there is no blueprint, how do we know which walls are load bearing and which can be moved? Teamwork leverages skills from the Interpersonal sector and makes them effective towards a goal.
Where the Interpersonal skill base has communication, empathy, and openness as it’s hallmark… the Teamwork set of skills provide the diplomacy, collaboration, and dependability it takes to move the group of interdependent people forward together.
Adaptability. Understanding. Support. Through Teamwork soft skills, we can achieve any task, however daunting, by being willing, open, and reliable members in service to our mutually agreed on goal.
This means that, while losing your Quarterback or head Contractor might be a huge personal loss, it doesn’t have to be the thing that tanks the game, or stymies the completion of your house.
When we use Teamwork, we use our individual assets for the betterment of the whole; therefore the loss of one -- though a challenge -- is not a defeat, but an opportunity.