“You better learn how to collaborate, if you want to work in the media industry.”

This point was underlined:

You better learn how to collaborate, if you want to work in the media industry.

It was put in bold:

You better learn how to collaborate, if you want to work in the media industry.

It was italicised:

You better learn how to collaborate, if you want to work in the media industry.

Well it wasn’t italicised but you get the gist.

As  pointed out in our lecture today, employers are much more interested in a graduates ability to work in a team than they are in their tech skills, initiative, communication skills or enterprise. On the surface this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense since the majority of our schooling lives tests our ability to succeed as an individual above others. But intuitively it makes a heap of sense: when you get a job you rarely work alone, a majority of the time you join a company with a number of pre-existing co-workers, this is especially the case in the media industry. In this situation your ability to bring out the best in others and to collaborate well in team environments is the difference between a harmonious workplace with great output and a hostile workplace with sub-par output.

I’m sure employers also factor in that it’s quite easy to teach someone how to use a camera, but it’s a a lot harder to teach them how to be a good collaborate. Collaboration skills can take years of self-work, self-censorship and practise and it’s easy to get set into dissonant ways of collaborating. So what steps should you take in adopting this vital ability?

  1. Get in early and start now.
  2. Learn how to be a good leader, share your opinions and make your voice heard.
  3. Become a better listener and get interested in the viewpoints of others. If someone’s voice isn’t being heard ask yourself why and help them to feel enabled.
  4. Become an even better negotiator, sometimes it’s not a) or b,) sometimes you gotta go with c).
  5. Develop clever ways of dealing with disagreement, sharing opinion, giving criticism and making one’s voice heard.
  6. Practise professional communication,  gif’s aren’t the only way to deliver your opinions on a workmates thought.
  7. Establish good peer relationships, after all this industry is a small one.
  8. Develop your knowledge within your own discipline and bring that knowledge to the table. The purpose of a  collaboration is to combine the skills, interests and knowledge of all the team members to create the best possible output, so make sure you can contribute.
  9. Have fun, no one likes a stressful group project, am I right? And chances are it won’t be your best work if your not having some fun.

If you do your best at making this attitude a permanent state hopefully by the time you graduate it’ll be second nature. And if that didn’t rile you up enough here’s Vanilla Ice talking about collaborating:

Well he’s talking about something.. haha.

Catch you later, Louise Alice Wilson