Attributes of a Team Player-2
Enlightened and Empathetic
No team is set up to achieve nothing. Every team is set up to accomplish a set goal. A team of eleven players in a football game aims to defeat the opposing team within the allotted time.
Each player that makes up the team needs to be enlightened about what they hope to achieve and how their independent roles are essential for the accomplishment of the overall goal.
Enlightened here can be interchangeably used with educated. Every team member must have the requisite education needed to function to enable them to contribute meaningfully to the overall goal of the team.
Imagine that the goalkeeper or the strikers in a football team knows zilch about the game, but found their way there because of their contacts. How do you think that team would fare in the competition?
When people who are not enlightened, educated, or have the technical know-how of a particular field, but are foisted on other members to be part of the team, it creates problems for the team.
Don’t just be a number but choose to be a member of a team, that’s what makes you a team player.
Secondly, Empathy is another virtue needed to be a team player. Qualified members of the team might have other challenges that would need you to tolerate them.
For example, a stammerer might be very skilled but finds difficulty in expressing his opinion during discussions.
Empathy makes you patient with them and sees through their challenges without making them look less human.
Also when they encounter personal challenges while working with the team, empathy gives you the strength to share the pain with them and provide a shoulder for them to lean on.
For instance, a team member assigned with a critical aspect of the task calls to inform the team that he won’t be able to deliver the task because his wife, daughter, or mother just got involved in a fatal accident or fell seriously sick.
A good sense of empathy would determine how you react in such a situation.
Will you be more concerned with the unfinished task or the life at stake?
Once again I ask, are you a team player?
Idede Oseyande
(c)2022
@idede_oses
