My experience with TEAM-work and why I thrive in a collaborative environment
“Teamwork is a cooperative process that allows ordinary people to achieve extraordinary results”, said J. Scarnati and I agree (just in case the title wasn’t obvious).
Do you know that feeling? When your team is ‘in the zone’? It’s a sweet mix of emotions — excited, challenged, safe, and successful. You’re pumped to get out of bed in the morning and energized throughout the day. Yes, being part of a great team at work is a phenomenal feeling. If you know that feeling, hold onto it. If you haven’t experienced it yet, read on for my experience and insights on how to create and become a part of a winning team.
As a professional, back in India, with 5 years of work experience in firms like JP Morgan, KPMG and PwC I had worked with different teams on varied projects. As a member of my undergrad college dance team, I had also interacted with group members in an informal way. So, when I joined the master’s in business analytics course at the University of California, Davis and was chosen to be a member of the California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) Practicum team, I felt confident in being able to navigate the three quarters till project completion with my teammates. Little did I know then that I was just a small fish, suddenly out in the ocean.
Our practicum project is for CPMC Research Institute’s Cancer Avatar project, which involves testing drug efficacy for precision medicine in cancer treatment. The role involves updating an existing pharmacology dashboard to perform analysis of various cancer drugs on patient tumors and creating a new platform to include tumor genomic profiles. My practicum project team consists of four members — two from China, an American, and myself from India. For the first time, I was working for an Industry and a client that I had little knowledge of, with people from diverse countries and backgrounds, and to add to that, I am also the Project Manager of our team! The practicum has been an enriching experience in teamwork. In this article, I have listed some of the key challenges and workarounds and benefits to be derived from working as a team.
Three key attributes of successful teamwork
1. Communication: Good communication is at the heart of great teamwork. Our team communicates often, the members are happy to share ideas, brainstorm together, ask for help or feedback, and be contradicted. Having clarity is important: While each of us has a basic understanding of written and spoken English, and we would not be in a top graduate program in the US if we did not, our interaction styles have been molded by our past experiences. Asking for clarity is an important rule during team meetings. Listen to everyone: We make sure to listen to fellow team members and consider their thoughts before offering our own solutions and input. Pausing before a point has been agreed upon to give time to all members to agree or raise their concerns makes everyone feel valued. Fix a communication channel: After deliberations on WhatsApp, WeChat, and email, we stuck to using the college Slack channel for most of our communication. We also have each other’s phone numbers, and we use them during emergency situations (for eg: assignment deadlines!). We set lines on when it is ok to reach out after hours. Encourage informal meetings: While we discuss project goals and action items, we make sure to also discuss other things happening in our lives. This keeps the tone less-formal and more fun. We also make plans to collaborate on Kaggle projects or meeting for hikes, outside of class.
2. Commitment to team success: Team members share common goals, values, beliefs, as well as commitment and motivation to succeed; for example, each team member strives for perfection — which means that if a task has been identified, every member works towards completing it in the best manner. In our case, we are motivated by the fact that the team's success would see a happy client review at the end of our practicum. It involves applying our learnings from class as well as from each other to put our best foot forward.
3. Identify Team Strengths and Weaknesses: I believe my MBA degree and client-facing roles, sometimes, navigating through tricky situations, made me the natural choice to be the project manager, but I chose to be the data lead of our project in the first quarter. One of the teammates who good at writing and editing would create insightful presentations and reports, while another teammate who has prior knowledge in healthcare provides insights for the project. The fourth member is a fresh graduate and eager to learn new tools helping us search for solutions whenever we are stuck during python coding or creating tableau dashboards. While we are aware of our strengths, we also discussed our weaknesses, and we allocate tasks to bolster our confidence. Having such supportive teammates gave me the confidence to become the project manager for our project this quarter and to be able to receive compliments from the client for managing it well.
Five Benefits I derived from Teamwork
1. Conflict Resolution Skills: Conflicts inevitably happen when you put together a group of unique people. While the practicum may seem all roses and sunshine, we have also had our disagreements. One such moment was when a team member, in his enthusiasm during a client meeting, suggested how we could expand our platform to include more details. By then, our project scope had been finalized and we had worked hard to create a timeline to ensure project delivery. Since this was not discussed earlier with the group, the other members were taken by surprise. Once the meeting was over, we decided to have an internal call to openly talk about this. Though the member’s intentions were to improve our final product and in turn add more value to our project, we all spoke about how sudden changes could disrupt the team’s motivation. We decided that in future, to have an internal dialogue before committing to any requests. Later, we met to further discuss what the changes would mean to our timelines and how we would allocate work to accommodate this new request. After all, having each other’s back is what teammates do!
2. Promotes a Wider Sense of Ownership: Team projects encourage you to feel proud of your contributions. Tackling obstacles and creating notable work together makes team members feel fulfilled. Working toward achieving a common goal allowed us to feel connected to each other as well as to CPMC, our client. In a corporate setup, teamwork is not just helpful for employees. It benefits the employer in the long run as well. Employees that connect directly with their workplace are more likely to stay with the company. Teamwork allows people to engage with the company and add to the bigger picture.
3. Increased Efficiency: Sometimes, you will have to handle projects that have unrealistic and non-negotiable deadlines. At those moments it isn’t enough to issue an “all hands on deck” order but to delegate properly. When members use their experience, specialization, and skillsets, targets will be achieved and tasks will be accomplished on time, with minimum errors. During a particularly stressful week of assignments, we once received an urgent client request to make a few changes to the dashboard and the documentation. We delegated tasks that minimized overlap and utilized each other's strengths to submit the assignments and the client requests on time.
4. Dividing the work lets you grow your skills: Changes in technology and increased globalization mean that organizations are facing problems so complex that a single individual simply can’t possess all the necessary knowledge to solve them. When team members use their unique skills to shine in their own roles, it creates an environment based on mutual respect and cooperation that benefits the whole group. Our group was able to revolve roles of a project manager, data lead, visualization lead, and technology lead by dividing tasks and in turn helping each member develop key skills needed by a data analyst.
5. When you work in a team, you grow as an individual: There may be no “I” in the team, but being part of a team helps you grow. By sharing information and cross-training each other, each individual member of the team flourishes. Working with teammates from diverse backgrounds helped me discover new concepts. I also learned from someone else’s mistakes, like not taking too much at once, asking for help when needed, etc. which would help me sidestep future errors. I also learned that I had good management skills.
References:
https://activecollab.com/blog/collaboration/what-is-teamwork-actually
https://www.atlassian.com/blog/teamwork/the-importance-of-teamwork
