Importance of Team Work

I must thank Asha for hoping that an opportunity comes my way to see the Taj Mahal. We never know. It might just happen, God willing.

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Team work is important. It teaches all of us to work together, even though we may all differ in our views on just about anything.

This write-up is about team project work.
Engineering students are required to work in teams on projects in their final year, in a company of their choice but related to their branch of engineering.

4 years back a team of 4 students (let's call this team 1)took up a mechanical engineering project as dissertation and 2 students (team 2) took up a refrigeration project in a nuclear facility, some distance away from our city. These 2 teams would travel by bus every day, report at the site, do their work and return back late evening. 1 gate pass was issued to one team which meant all the members of the team should report at the site together to pass through the security gate, unless 1 or 2 were absent and were not going to report later that day, at the site. It was tricky and these things were explained well in advance so that all of them understood the importance of starting together at the same time each day. So the team spirit had to start right from there! Working together would come later!!

4 students coming from 4 different backgrounds. In team 1, 2 came from the villages of Andhra and were staying in a rented room in T.Nagar. 2 were residents of Chennai.
All of them had to assemble at a particular bus stop at 8am. It can be expected that initially all will have problems with the time schedules. For 2 days they struggled, fought over this and that. Their guide was very strict that all 4 should come without fail unless very sick. Otherwise they would not get through with the project. As young lads of 20 tempers are supposed to run quite high but how they all managed to control it just so that the team finished work at hand was a revelation to me. They would comment badly in whispers so that the bad one never heard of it so that there was no spoke in the wheel at any time. I will quote just one major instance in each team.
On the 3rd day the T.Nagar guys din't appear at the bus stop even by 10am! Despite repeated calls to their mobile phones there was absolutely no response of any kind!! So these 2 din't know whether to proceed without them or not. Eventually they decided to go in person to T.Nagar and find out the reason as it was really too late to report at the site that day.
When they reached the place they could hear the other two talking quite loudly but when they called out to them and knocked at the door, it was opened by one fellow while the other fellow was covered with a blanket from head to toe! All 3 chatted for about 3 hours arguing about wasting a day and all the while, the other fellow slept through or at least pretended to be in deep sleep :D
The other guy said once they both knew it was going to be late they just din't want to even respond to calls as they were afraid of what the other 2 will say. That was the excuse but he promised to 'tell' the sleeping beauty about it and assured that this will not occur again next time.

Later it was decided to take up a few rooms near the site itself and stay there itself until their project got completed which took about a month and more.
This seemed to work better. They finished it though with so many complaints amongst themselves, yet one thing that emerged from this exercise was that they learnt to adjust somehow with each other's failings or shortcomings in that period. It was a good thing to have happened especially since all were on the verge of starting a career. Unity in diversity.

The 2nd team had only 2 guys. One would work very hard at the project while the other would prefer to roam around the city in his motorbike which meant 1 fellow was left to do all the work and include this lazy guy's name also in the project. There was so much heart burn. Towards the very end the other guy read up the report and starting projecting as if he had been instructing this other guy over phone at every step! This made the hard worker even more angry yet peace had to be maintained at any cost for the sake of project.

How teams were formed seemed to be god's handiwork. They just joined in!

When it was time to face the viva voce, those who worked hard were able to answer questions from the external examiners better than those who showed scant interest or merely submitted their copy of the same project report with all their names on it as a team.

Even if its the same project, same age people working in the same place, some put their hearts and souls into their work, some run errands, some just watch as if it din't concern them at all. But when its time to answer questions, it shows who worked!! So no one can fool everyone all the time.

The true nature of the person comes through in such situations so very transparently for everyone to see or feel. Teams, Families, Office... it's all about the same thing. How we see, place, depend, perform, behave when we are put together for a purpose.

It's a good learning experience of how many kinds of people we may have to come across in our lives - project or no project.

Mahalakshmi.