Teamwork is such a vital aspect of life that parents and educators begin teaching the necessary skills at a very young age through games, sports, and group works. Now that you are older, you may have the responsibility of creating and leading teams that are expected to perform at much higher standards, so you need high-quality members.
We’ve put together a shortlist of key characteristics that make a great teammate. When building your ideal team, it’s good to first check for these characteristics within yourself, and then find others that will get the synergy flowing.
Personality
It’s very important for team members to be genuinely interested in one another. Having a vested interest in your teammates will help the entire team to work together cohesively because you’ve all taken the time to understand each other’s strengths, weaknesses, likes, and dislikes. If you find that one member of the team is having a hard time adjusting, consider a team-building exercise. There are many that you can do remotely if your team is spread out all over the world.
Reliability
You want to know that your teammate is going to follow through with the responsibilities they are given. This can be a tough quality to find if you’re building a team of people that you’ve never worked with before, so you may have to have a little faith. Start off by assigning small tasks that don’t carry much weight. If everyone follows through, you can move on to bigger tasks that carry more responsibility. TeammateMe makes it easy for you to build teams with reliable members through member profiles and anonymous member reviews.
Willing to Listen
Active listening in a team is very important because it helps you intentionally process and retain information. It also helps the person that is speaking feel as though their words are being truly valued and not ignored. Active listening should be used in every group scenario from listening to instructions to receiving feedback.
Here are some tips for practicing active listening:
- Ask questions
- Reflect what is said back to the speaker
- Ask the speaker to clarify
- Summarize when they are finished
Willing to Learn
High-quality teammates should know their strengths and lean into them, but they should also work to make themselves even stronger in those areas, as well as work on their weaknesses. Teams should provide feedback to their members that celebrate success, points out areas where growth is possible and offers suggestions for how to work better next time. A great team member should receive that feedback well and adopt suggested practices into their work.
Finding teammates that you have synergy with is crucial for the productivity of the team. You can almost guarantee that you will find synergy if you keep an eye out for these characteristics in prospective teammates – and you are confident that you’re bringing these characteristics to the table, as well.