Lectorial/Readings – Week 9

Image source: Simon Wild

This week’s lectorial featured a special guest lecturer, Dr Rachel Wilson (current Co-Program Manager of the Bachelor of Communication – Media), giving an important lecture on why collaboration and being able to work as a team is one of the most essential skills to have on your CV.

A somewhat useful lesson to pay attention to due to the fact that Dr Wilson put it simply, almost all jobs in the media industry, an industry I’m sure all of us are at least slightly interested in, are collaborative. Media and communication workers need to know how to work in a team, and thankfully it is something you can learn – not necessarily a skill you need to have been born with.

In the past, I haven’t always had particularly amazing group project success. So, in order to truly want to work in a team these days, I took away some reasons to convince myself why collaboration can actually hugely benefit everyone. Including:

• Increased efficiency – having multiple team members on board allows you to get the work done faster with shared responsibilities, whilst working towards a common goal or set of objectives.
• A learning experience – working in a team means you get to learn from group discussions, gaining inspiration and ideas that may not have resulted from just working alone. Teams also bring people together from different backgrounds and levels of experience which can help in creating optimal solutions.
• Support – having someone to help you along when you are struggling is a definite positive, your team members can help you get back on the track of producing great work.
• Practice good communication – teamwork activities generally require meetings that enhance your written and verbal communication skills, an ability that is worth working on no matter what you do in life.

In order to practice good team work, I also made note of three of what I believe may be the most important collaboration guidelines:

1. Get on the same page – a critical step to begin with, each team member clearly knowing what the goals and objectives are helps keep everyone focused on the same idea.
2. Create a sense of unity – developing an identity within the group and dedicating time to establish communication procedures (e.g social media connections, meeting times, etc) helps everyone feel comfortable and needed.
3. Business insight – each team member should be assigned a role and specific tasks, along with some time management being put in place. Having a schedule to stick to and expected deadlines will give the project some structure in which the team can work together successfully.