Collaboration is a huge huge HUGE part of the Media industry as virtually everything is done in collaboration with another person or a group of people. It has been found that rather than having extended technical skills, employers are mostly looking for people with good collaboration, i.e. initiative, communication but especially teamwork skills. Of course most people would prefer to work on their own because they can do things how they want them to be done, but in reality teamwork is a part of most aspects of life, especially in Media and Communications. So whether you like it or not, you really have to suck it up and get on with it if you are going into Media. Besides the bad things about teamwork (doing all the work and getting no credit for it, people letting you down, not feeling comfortable about expressing your opinion, not being able to compromise, etc.) there are actually some very beneficial things about collaborating. For one you can easily brainstorm ideas and bounce them off one another, it is easy to keep motivation and focus, you can get things done a lot faster and you can also accomplish much bigger projects because you are sharing the workload with other team members. However, teamwork doesn’t always work due to the fact that some people just can’t work together; it is not that they don’t get along, some individuals just have very different ways of working. But there are actually some great ways to help solve obstacles that may pop up on the way if you are stuck with someone:
- You need to form a connection where you trust one another; trust is built from honesty, openness, consistency and respect
- Identify and develop a sense of unity within your group
- Generate a set of team rules that your group must abide by during the project
- Arrange a list of resolution procedures
- Conduct good meetings and record what is discussed in these meetings on paper