Professional and Career Topics

Describe your best and worst teamwork experiences. Did everyone do their share? Did leadership help or hinder the team? What would have improved team performance? 

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William McAnally Ph.D., P.E., BC.CE, BC.NE, F.ASCE
ENGINEER
Columbus MS
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Leadership makes all the difference in the world on the successful execution of teamwork.  My best experience was a manager who took on some calculations himself (i.e., he was pitching in where needed and calculations weren't "beneath him") to help the team get the work done when the rest of the team was overloaded.  Because he was willing to pitch in to make the project a success, it made the rest of us more inspired to put our hearts and souls into it. The worst experience was where I was managing a project that had a lot of higher-level involvement (several VPs were on the team; I was not a VP) and it quickly became a situation where the VPs were pulling off people designated for my project unto other projects and disregarding their own designated tasks on the project.  But because they outranked me, I couldn't really do anything. Therefore, I was left in what felt like an impossible situation.  It's a long story on how the project eventually got finished; but it did finish.

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Angela Hintz P.E., M.ASCE
Senior Project Engineer
Buffalo NY
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Thanks for this Bill!

Some observations:

Calling a group of people initially assigned to work together within a project a "team" is premature, at best.

They may be individual experts at various parts of the required project work. But until there is evidence of team behaviors, they are not yet a team.

Productive[1] project team members are skilled at collaboration, cooperation, and communication.

They are no longer grounded in "Defensive Communication."

And when someone confronts them with their opinion, their first response will be:

"Tell me more….please."

Cheers,

Bill

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William M. Hayden Jr., Ph.D., P.E., CMQ/OE, F.ASCE
Buffalo, N.Y.

"It is never too late to be what you might have been." -- George Eliot 1819 - 1880
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During my internship was when I was really privileged to be involved in an actual team work projects. My experience while writing work the team was  positive as the team structure allowed for collaboration while executing each work item. With the proper integration of the company system it was possible to track the work done by each person and reach out to them if need be. A major challenge though, was getting in touch with persons who were working remotely on some days.

Unarguably though, I would say the leadership deserved the most accolade as it was their impeccable mode of leading that allowed for the excellent performance of the team members.

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Greatness Oyeh S.M.ASCE
Akure ON
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• Re: "Describe your best teamwork experience."

Being a small part of a major sanitary (can we still use that word?) engineering project in a NE US major city,

at a public hearing for program approval, the City's Engineer opened up the citizen's time to ask questions with:

"Our engineer's are here to listen your thoughts, questions, comments, and criticisms. Please participate."

Cheers,

Bill

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William M. Hayden Jr., Ph.D., P.E., CMQ/OE, F.ASCE
Buffalo, N.Y.

"It is never too late to be what you might have been." -- George Eliot 1819 - 1880
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Original Message:
Sent: 09-12-2023 07:16 PM
From: Greatness Oyeh
Subject: Teamwork Experiences: Good or Bad?

During my internship was when I was really privileged to be involved in an actual team work projects. My experience while writing work the team was  positive as the team structure allowed for collaboration while executing each work item. With the proper integration of the company system it was possible to track the work done by each person and reach out to them if need be. A major challenge though, was getting in touch with persons who were working remotely on some days.

Unarguably though, I would say the leadership deserved the most accolade as it was their impeccable mode of leading that allowed for the excellent performance of the team members.

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Greatness Oyeh S.M.ASCE
Akure ON
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