7 Tips to improve teamwork skills

These 7 tips provide some simple, but effective tricks which you can discuss and take into account at the beginning of your groupwork. 

Tip 1: Split the work evenly and clearly and minimise overlap.
Avoid sitting with 5 students round one computer. Let everyone work on their own chunk of work, this improves efficiency and having sole responsibility over your own section gives a boost to your motivation.

Tip 2: Meet consistently at the same place at the same time.
Avoid spending a lot of time texting and emailing team mates to arrange a meeting time. Ensure regular meetings at the same place at the same time.

Tip 3: Make everyone feel important.
One of the ways to make others feel important is by listening to them. Take a look at the active listening guided learning page for more information.

Tip 4: Never blatantly oppose someone’s ideas
Think about how “Are you sure that’s right?” sounds nicer than “You’re wrong”. The article provides interesting tips about how you could change the perspective as if it was your opinion which was wrong, making it easier for team mates to admit the mistake.

Tip 5: Learn names
You may laugh at this point, but a lot of us have been in a situation where we’ve felt there’s too many people to learn. Politely excuse for mishearing a name and ask them how to spell it, it can make a big difference in your future teamwork.

Tip 6: Praise like a teacher would (whenever you can)
Its so easy to criticise and you may not realise how often to do it. But you can count on one thing, the target of the criticism will remember. Fortunately the same applies to compliments. One small compliment has the opportunity for a real turn-around in someone behavior.

Tip 7: Lead the team – ANYONE CAN DO IT!

To get a more in-depth description of these tips and tricks, you can take a look at this article.