Teamwork

Teamwork [citizenship, social responsibility, loyalty]: Working well as a member of a group or team; being loyal to the group; doing one’s share. Personified for example by Sam Nzima (Source: VIA Institue)

The Noel Strengths Academy defines it this way:

Those activating the strengths of citizenship value “doing their part” 

  • They have a sense of social responsibility 
  • Faithful members of their team, group, or community 
  • Loyal 
  • Acknowledge the need for others: everyone has a contribution to make 

Yes, strengths can be overused…or underused

  • Underuse: Selfishness
  • Overuse: Dependency

Key Research:

  • Rank order of Teamwork in populations from:
    • US : 13
    • European:  13
    • Asia: 8
    • Latin America: 8
    • Sub-Saharan Africa: 10
    • Middle east: 8
  • In a study of character strengths and adolescent peer relationships, the strengths deemed most desirable/important in a friend were honesty, humor, kindness, and fairness, and those most connected with higher peer acceptance were perspective, love, kindness, social intelligence, teamwork, leadership, and humor (Wagner, 2018).
  • Workplace study found that the most important predictors of work-related outcomes were signature strengths fit (signature strengths that are applied at work) and the strengths of teamwork and creativity. Those character strengths that most highly correlated with total workplace well-being (positive emotions, engagement, positive relationships, meaning, and achievement) were zest, teamwork, hope, love, gratitude, leadership, and perseverance (Harzer, Mubashar, & Dubreuil).
  • Character strengths and character strengths-related person-job fit played a central role in work-related outcomes. Signature strengths fit and the character strengths of creativity and teamwork were the strongest predictors (Harzer et al., 2017).

Tayyab Rashid and Afroze Anjum offer 340 Ways to Use VIA Character Strengths including these four for Teamwork:

  1. Volunteer weekly for a community service project in your town, one that deals with what you are best at. Find new friends through it who share your passion.
  2. Facilitate a group discussion and attempt to achieve consensus on a conflicting issue. Regardless of whether an agreement is reached, come away from the discussion having learned more about people with different views on the issue.
  3. Arrange or attend at least one social gathering monthly. Try to bring people from different parts of the community together.
  4. Volunteer for activities such as serving as a Big Brother or Big Sister or constructing a Habitat for Humanity house. Encourage friends and neighbors with spare time on their hands to accompany you.

Learn more about teamwork

Business school professor Amy Edmondson studies “teaming,” where people come together quickly (and often temporarily) to solve new, urgent or unusual problems. Recalling stories of teamwork on the fly, such as the incredible rescue of 33 miners trapped half a mile underground in Chile in 2010, Edmondson shares the elements needed to turn a group of strangers into a quick-thinking team that can nimbly respond to challenges.

Trust is the foundation for everything we do. But what do we do when it’s broken? In an eye-opening talk, Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei gives a crash course in trust: how to build it, maintain it and rebuild it — something she worked on during a recent stint at Uber. “If we can learn to trust one another more, we can have unprecedented human progress,” Frei says.

Trust is on the decline, and we need to rebuild it. That’s a commonly heard suggestion for making a better world … but, says philosopher Onora O’Neill, we don’t really understand what we’re suggesting. She flips the question, showing us that our three most common ideas about trust are actually misdirected.

Podcasts to feed your Teamwork

Meditation for Love

Read more on meditation and kindness:

 

 

 

 

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