Teamwork Is Not Easy… And Here Is Why

I came across a couple of visual yesterday on LinkedIn that made me think a lot about how complex it can be to have a group of people really working as a team.

The first image is a pretty straightforward visual of how a people going in the same direction can help each other out in the common interest to complete a task.

Being able to count on your team mates to carry you though a rough patch, to help you avoid dangerous mistakes, to conquer a problem bigger then one person… so many concepts of teamwork can be drawn from a simple image.

But if the benefits of working a team and not a collection of individuals is so important, why do so many team fail?

This second image provides an illustration of all the character traits a person needs to be truly successful. Look how many of them have to do with how you interact with people on your team.

For a team to really work efficiently, its members have to be able to share both risk and reward, they have to be both comfortable and confident in who they are and they have to be willing to trust and take leaps of faith.

When you have a team full of people who like being on a team, you will be successful. On the other hand, when you have a team full of people who don’t really like being on a team, you will be a lot less successful.