BEING A TEAM PLAYER AT WORK

Some work environments are so hostile and antagonistic that it seems like it's every man for himself. Instead of working together to get tasks done, coworkers compete with each other, backbite each other and try to sabotage each other's success. The good news is there are steps you can take today to be more of a team player and not contribute to workplace chaos.

A recent article posted to Dummies.com, the website associated with the popular …For Dummies self-help book series, outlined the Ten Qualities of an Effective Team Player. Among the qualities are demonstrating reliability, communicating constructively and cooperating and pitching in to help.

Demonstrating reliability means that the entire office, including your immediate supervisor, can consistently count on you to do what you are specifically assigned to do. This is foundational to being a team player because you can't expect to be successful in team projects if you can't even handle your own fair share of work. This quality is joined at the hip with pulling your weight in a team project. If you are reliable enough to get your own work done, you are reliable enough to carry your fair share of a team project.

Communicating constructively goes right along with working as a problem-solver. In other words, don't you dare criticize someone else's idea if you don't have the guts to bring a better solution to the table. While communicating constructively will run the gamut of positive and negative opinions of someone else's suggestion, you should focus your criticism on the idea itself, not the person delivering the idea. Personal attacks have no place in a professional work environment. When you do need to shoot down an idea, explain why exactly the idea won't work, but don't just be a generalist naysayer. Always mix in positive criticism with negative, i.e., "Your idea would solve this part of the problem, but it still wouldn't address this other part of the problem."

Cooperating means you don't overtly or passively fight against a team project because it's not going the way you would have liked. Let's say you had an opinion on how a task should be accomplished, but the other team members outvoted you and decided the team would accomplish the task a different way. This does not give you license to be a mule that stubbornly resists pushing ahead with the project. Learn to be flexible, to bend and to compromise. These qualities are essential to being a team player.