How to Comfortably Transition from School Teams to Work Teams

Identify Established Skills

1. Actively listen to all team members. Teamwork is heavily reliant upon face to face conversation. Without actively listening during meetings you could miss important information. Teams require people who can absorb, understand, and consider ideas and viewpoints from other people.

   1. Recognise the way you have actively listened to teammates during school projects to ensure everyone contributes their own ideas.
   2. Apply this to the workplace when speaking with teammates or engaging in meetings.
   3. Listen carefully to team members and take notes when possible.
2. Establish a personal plan of organisation. Forming a concrete plan of your responsibilities within a team is necessary. Without a plan you could fail to meet deadlines or forget about a task, which could cause the entire team to fail.

   1. Remember the guidelines you set for yourself during school group projects to keep you on task.
   2. Use the same organisational strategy at work to keep track of deadlines and expectations
   3. Keep track of the responsibilities given to you by your boss to ensure you are completing them.
3. Be comfortable speaking up when you have an idea. When you are new to a job it can be scary to speak your mind. It is important to communicate any ideas or concerns you have to show you are actively participating and to add to the group conversation.

   1. Use the tools you've gained from having to present to your peers and think of speaking at work the same way.
   2. Take any opportunity you have to speak your mind and share your input to ensure your voice is heard and appreciated in a work meeting
4. Utilize your interpersonal skills to communicate effectively. To make sure you are respected by your employers and peers it is necessary to be emotionally intelligent. This requires awareness of your own behaviors as well as the feelings and actions of those you work with.

   1. Think back to times you've worked in groups and the effects you had on your peers and the way their actions affected you.
   2. Constantly reflect on what you could improve, but don't forget to remember the things you are doing well.
   3. Observe your co-workers behaviours to adapt to the team dynamic that may already exist.
5. Understand written communication guidelines for the genre you are in. Don't blindly write for your team without understanding the proper format to follow or correct language to use. It is necessary to recognise the style choices made by writers within your own genre so you can follow accordingly.

   1. When you wrote for different subjects in school you didn't write the same way. The way a lab report is crafted varies greatly from an English paper.
   2. Study examples of the genre you are writing within and adapt your writing style to fit it.
   3. Write to the proper audience and use the correct language.
6. Encourage success as a group versus personal success goals. Don't let your personal goals over power the goals the team has set out. Teamwork can only be successful when the goals of the group are valued higher than the individual. There is no 'I' in team.

   1. Consider how you were graded on group work in school. You were graded as a team, not individually. Apply this idea to professional teams.
   2. Don't engage in teamwork for solo recognition.
   3. Think of the big picture of the work you are doing and how it relates to the company goals as well.