Please Give An Example Of When You Have Successfully Worked As Part Of A Team?

This is a commonly asked question during an interview situation or within an application form, where it asks "please give an example of when you have successfully worked as part of a team?".

• How to identify situations where you have worked as part of a team?

There are many times when we have worked as a team, but because it is just an everyday occurrence we do not always recognize the skills involved. So have you ever needed to provide a service or a product where more than one person has been responsible for the final outcome, take that person out or put a less competent person in their place and the outcome would drastically change for the worse, or were a lack of effective communication would impact badly on the service or product offered? This identifies that you have worked as part of a team.

• General examples

A fast food outlet - Everyone from the counter staff, chefs and management are vital in providing the customer with a fast, clean and efficient dining experience.

On an assembly line - In a factory each person in the chain need to complete their job in order for the next to continue. Any incompetency in this area would see the production line come to a shuddering halt, increasing costs and frustrating colleagues.

A movie production - Scriptwriters, Camera Operators, Actors, Director, Producer among many more roles. Yet again these varied occupations have vital roles, then once it is in 'the can' other areas come into play such as distribution and promotion and could if managed incorrectly render all the previous hard work meaningless.

• What are Employers looking for?

As you can imagine there are few employed positions where team work does not come into play at some point. Employers know this but they want to see what role you performed, the successful outcome and how important your contribution was. They also like to see that you can communicate effectively and that you have a proven ability to get along with colleagues.

We were given targets on monthly basis and used to achieve it almost everytime, in the month ends especially all the departments co-operate each other, and this was the environment where I have worked for a long time.

We can observe that there are many kinds of people round the globe. Some of them are pretty confident to become team leaders while others just follow what others make them follow. The 1st category is of those who have a couple of abilities to be employed in many fields to express them at their level best.
I was also a group leader during my academics. I was supposed to conduct a science lab practical. I was also a member of the organizing committee of my department at university. We were supposed to organize picnics, study tours, parties and functions at department level. I supervised a welcome party for our juniors with the help of other organizers. I arranged a record party. It was very economical. You know everybody admired it because I came to know that our forerunners were unable to compete with that party. It was an honor for me that I was the head organizer and I did that thing at my level best. It is our determination and capabilities which make our tasks easier than before. In fact, I proved I was good team leader over there.

Being a team player is very important in today's business scenario. Team work leads to work being given different view points. Brainstorming leads to new ideas and combining the resources of every team member can lead to completion of work in a quick and efficient manner. Absence of team work leads to disintegration of team as everybody is concerned with self preservation. Dividing work and getting results in time leads to lot of time saving.

An example of teamwork done is preparing a power point presentation within a deadline. If only one person was set to work it would have taken days and would have been almost humanly impossible to research the data, sort it out and compile it into a presentation.

Getting a team together and distributing work amongst all the team members was the first step. Everybody went and did his own quota of work and within a short time we had all the inputs. By putting our creative energy together and sharing ideas the presentation was ready well before the deadline. As a result of various inputs, lots of fresh ideas were generated and the presentation had a very streamlined and rich look.

All my working life.   You have to identify your colleagues' strengths and weaknesses, then (the hardest part) your own.   Play off your w's against their s's and vice versa.   Above all, be chirpy and gee everyone else up.   I know it sounds naff, but if you lead by 'we can do it' example, the team will follow and hey! You are now the team leader (in fact, but not neccessarily recognised as such).