Chapter 3: Working with others

An important part of your work life will be working with others.  You may be required to collaborate with others, participate in work teams, share work tasks, or participate in formal meetings.

Every workplace has different expectations of working with others, but you should expect to be able to:

Collaborate with others

Work in several different teams

Monitor your performance or the performance of others

 Rotate or share roles

Speak up in meetings

Share ideas

Respond to questions and provide appropriate feedback

The following short video presents a scenario that is familiar to most people – a stressful workplace situation and the importance of being able to work respectfully and cooperatively with others to meet deadlines.

This case study is located on a film set of a daytime television soap opera called ‘Passionate Flame of the Heart’ and the scenario begins with a documentary film crew on the film set who are making a ‘Behind the Scenes’ documentary of the show. Two important factors in the film and television industry are time and production quality. Producing a show usually involves a lot of people (crew and cast) and a lot of equipment. This makes it very important to stay on schedule. Working beyond the scheduled time can mean going over budget.

When you collaborate with others you may be expected to:

Complete different parts of tasks

Tell someone when your part is finished

Work along side someone doing similar tasks

Share your ways of doing things

Discuss options and problem solve in groups

The scene begins with the “behind the scenes’ video crew filming the Director who is sitting on set looking at the script. Knowing they are behind schedule she calls over the Assistant Director and asks why they are delayed. The Assistant Director begins to explain that the Grips had to rig up lighting, but stops speaking as she is concerned that the ‘behind the scenes’ documentary crew are filming, which she is not too keen on. She offers to go check the hold up with the Grips, and the documentary crew follows.

The Assistant Director (AD) has to make sure that all the departments are working on schedule; however, like most workplaces, things do not always go according to the planned schedule. Working under pressure can affect how well you communicate with others about how they are performing their tasks.

On the set, the Set Director explains to the Assistant Director a number of changes that have delayed the filming. Sam accidentally drops  a picture he was hanging up. The Set Decorator snaps at him and tells somebody  to fix it. Then the set director tells Sam to go help Todd "to touch up'.

How you make quick decisions, and communicate with others can add to or reduce the tension.

As pressure builds, workers' patience can grow thin. These are the times when you really need to rely on your Working with Others skills. Being able to solve a problem under pressure requires you to quickly respond in the best way possible. For a group of people working as a team this may mean that you will take on another person's task.

Ultimately, you need to be flexible to work in teams.

 

Teams and work groups meet and work together to solve problems and come up with alternative solutions.  The movie Apollo 13 is an excellent example of how teams work together.  The movie was based on the true story of the United States space mission Apollo 13 that ran into huge problems during its flight.  The space craft was originally scheduled to land on the moon. Because of some equipment failure, they almost didn't make it back.

The following film clip shows a sample of how this group worked together.

No one expects you to remember everything about your job while you are learning it. In any case, when someone asks you a question, you need to answer.  But, you may feel anxious about your answer... your mind may even go blank.  It's ok to take your time and say, "Give me a minute to think about that, and I'll get back to you right away."

Remember, people expect you to answer.  So, do collect your thoughts and answer as soon as you can. 

 

Giving feedback

You may not be asked to give feedback to others in your job.  But you may have some supervisory roles or need to provide those that work with you with feedback.  You should be prepared to be polite, specific, and concrete with your feedback.  

You're a little over half way through this course.  Well done!  You can now go on to the next Chapter.