Both employees and employers are trying to find the right balance between teamwork and individuality. When you have too much individuality, teams can’t work together properly and team project goals don’t get reached. When you have too little individuality, individuals lack the creativity or autonomy in order to produce innovative solutions to work problems. There needs to be a happy balance, a medium, in which teamwork and individuality both flourish. Here’s how you can do just that.
Realize That You Can’t Accomplish Your Goals Alone
A big part of being a successful professional is understanding that you can’t get everything done alone. Trying to do everything on your own without delegating or team work will ultimately result in burnout, inefficient work, or both. You have to understand that you have to work within a team framework in order to have success. It is critical that managers hire employees who already know this and are ready to be a part of a team. At the same time, you want those employees to retain some individuality and creativity. Which brings us to our next point.
Each Team Needs To Allow Individuality In Order To Drive Creativity
Even though you want workers to work within the team framework, you still want to provide a certain level of individuality and autonomy to your workers. If you don’t, your employees will lose creativity and won’t be able to solve problems that arise on the fly at work. You want to encourage creativity as long as it is within the team framework, and doesn’t prevent other employees from doing their job.
Finding The Right Balance Depends On The Industry
The right balance of individuality and teamwork is going to depend on the particular industry. For some coders working on development teams, they can have a higher level of individuality because they may be working remotely and only connect with their teams once a week. For marketers working together on a big project at the company headquarters, teamwork may be more important than individuality. Each industry has its own needs and requires its own level of balance.
Knowing when to lean more into individuality or teamwork depends heavily on the industry. But you are always going to need both. That is why managers want to look for individuals who are creative but understand how to work well with others. No matter what industry you are in, you aren’t going to be able to accomplish your goals alone. You are going to need help in order to reach your full potential as an individual. Knowing how to find the right balance will be key to your overall level of success.