Collaboration and Good Teamwork

“Groans”
Rachel raised a suggestion that most people in high school would ‘groan’ when hearing they have to do a group assignment. I love collaboration and have always loved it. In primary school, collaboration could be both the best and the worst. I had a partner id always go with (he was a good friend). Id end up doing most of the work which i found quite annoying. But at the same time i got satisfaction form it knowing that i had created something so good that it was at the level, or if not higher, than people who were in a good healthy working group.

When working on small scale projects it is very easy for one person to do  the whole thing. But obviously this pattern could not continue.
Jump a few years, High school Media year 10 elective. Group work was always fun because it was a bludge. We would make the worst, but best videos because of their sheer stupidity. The other reason why theses videos worked so well was because each member of the team had the same goals and motivations to work together.

What made our process of collaboration so good was that it didn’t matter how stupid the idea was. We would test it and if it didn’t work, we’d scrap it. This meant that no idea was a bad idea. Through this creative process we could share and evolve ideas with minimal criticism and usually build the weaker ideas onto larger ideas.


Collaboration: Alliance, partnership, participation, combination, association, concert; teamwork, joint effort, working together


Continuing on this idea of good teamwork. To be a good collaborator you need to understand your strengths and weaknesses. In ‘One flew over the over the Cuckoo’s Nest’, McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) realises the team can capitalise on Chiefs height (a strength). He places him underneath the basketball hoop so when someone passes Chief the ball he can reach up and dunk it. He can also do the opposite for when the opposition is shooting, he can stop them from scoring

His strength is his height, while his weakness is emotion or speech. McMurphy This is one of my favourite examples of teamwork in film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WR_hisHKlI

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *