To Team or Not to Team

 

When it comes to working together with other people, I would say I was better off doing just that. But as I grow older and change, I realized a crucial part to survival (as well as just working on projects), is to know how to work by yourself first. Of course, it is much more challenging than working with other people, but I realized, based on my natural tendencies and how I work, my comfort zone involves working with other people. The reason I'd like to work by myself is to expose myself more to working alone, and I could be surprised with how well I do it. 

With the Lost at Sea activity, a team and I had to figure out which items were most important for survival in a limited amount of time. I also realized that working with other people also depends on how much of an expert everyone is. For example, even if you are working with many people, it will be useless if no one knows what to do and has no experience. However, if someone is knowledgeable on the task given, then the team probably ends up fine. I thought of this when I looked at the official coastguard rankings of each item. When there is a daunting, random situation that heavily depends on each person’s contribution, it somehow depends on luck when it comes to “who completely knows how to solve this problem?” I want to work alone to learn how to rely on myself only, because multiple situations can very, and sometimes you get stuck in the worst situation where no one knows what to do. However, there can be an expert present. But when that is not the case, I’d like to train myself, even in simple situations, to work by myself in order to make me a stronger and a better thinker. 

With Songwriting loafing or creative collaboration: A comparison of individual and team written billboard hits in the USA, Pettijohn illustrates collaboration in the example of social loafing, which is when team members begin to contribute less to a task, and how working together versus working alone can produce two very different but interesting outcomes. One example comes from an opera. “In another study, Simonton (2000) found that operas were more successful when composers wrote their own libretti compared to when librettist and composers worked together” is noted in the article. What I see from this is that while people may think working alone does not produce a result as good as working together, they may be wrong. In fact, I didn’t know composers that worked alone made the opera more successful. Next, Pettijohn emphasizes that the success of working alone may just depend on the time. “The findings indicated that after 1966, songs written individually were higher in quality and more popular on the charts than songs written together.” This quote describes that during a certain time period (1966), artists who wrote songs by themselves were much more successful and popular. This goes to show that even working by yourself can work wonders just like working in a group. 

Moving on, from Team building and group dynamics: creating and fostering a culture of teamwork requires trust, collaboration, and accoutability, Becker illustrates an event where people had to work together in a short amount of time (like with the Lost at Sea activity). Like in the article, another pro of working alone is that you will not be involved in arguments or conflicts which may delay the final product. "Darci understands that you can have great products, you can have phenomenal software, you can have the smartest people, but if they're not playing together, it's never going to get you ahead," Bruce Leamon, an authorized partner of The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team, states. This means that if you work together in a group with everything going smoothly (no arguments nor conflicts) things will get done. However, it is not always the case. Also, as the world is ever changing, so are people. You may never know how someone may act and talk, and it may become a disadvantage during a task.  

Although it is tempting for me to be a part of a team, I would like to mix things up a bit and see how I do the portfolio by myself.