Organisations rely on teams and team members to deliver services, provide solutions, and contribute to its performance and survival.
A team is a group of people, who are organised to perform a range of tasks that requires different skills with individual team goals.
There are personal qualities that are essential for teamwork, and organisational success.
A team member should be able to demonstrate the following personal qualities.
Here is a list of four (4) personal qualities that you should bring into teamwork:
1. Personal uniqueness
The consciousness that every person is unique with particular characteristics, personality, experience, preferences, etc. These qualities refer to both you and other members of your team.
Therefore, recognise your individual uniqueness, and develop the qualities that improve your importance to the team. In addition, personal qualities are not developed evenly, and an individual will need to remain sensitive to his or her blind spots.
These blind spots are areas you’ll need to identify and develop the required knowledge, skills and abilities in order to remain vital to teamwork and team success.
2. Commit to team objectives
Team leaders value team members who are committed to the team’s objectives, and demonstrate this commitment by effective collaboration with other team members.
An individual’s ability and preference for team working creates a perception in team leader and team members of the individual’s self-worth.
Each team member should link their personal uniqueness to roles necessary for the team to achieve its objectives.
Equally, team members should be flexible to take on additional, different and at times difficult team roles and responsibilities.
A team member should improve his or her communication skills to enhance his or her effectiveness in the team and workplace.
The ability to listen, process, and respond in one-on-one or team communication is essential.
A desire to improve understanding of communication values, process, and principles is necessary.
Therefore it is essential for team members to appreciate and understand cultural elements of communication in relation to gender, age, life experience, and ethnicity.
Each team member should ensure he or she reinforce his or her communication skills with effective working relationship with each team member.
4. Personal excellence
The capacity of team members to commit to consistent high quality work outcomes.
Personal excellence is an attribute that every team member should demonstrate during simple and complex tasks.
Personal excellence is about being exceptional, being more than average team member, and demonstrating exceptional qualities in knowledge, skills, competence, and behaviour.
Personal excellence and demonstrating exceptional teamwork attributes can be improved through feedback, impact audit, learning and development.
Team members should have an understanding of stages of team development, and this insight to improve their efforts for teamwork.
