Do you collaborate well with others?

I consider myself a team player, so, yes.

Maybe it’s just because you haven’t found a good person to collaborate with? My time in college and most of my adult life have taught me that there is time when you don’t have to feel bad about not being able to collaborate well with someone. I’ve had my fair share of encounter with assholes mostly out of obligation and I hated every moment of it.

I used to think I was not good at collaboration, until I entered the workforce and made better friends. And believe it or not, my job as a teacher taught me to learn to be a leader, how to listen and make other people work with you. I’ve recently finished a group project, and my teammate was hell to work with. She had very different ideas of how to do things from me, and she was much less organized. Fortunately we always managed to find a middle ground in everything though not as good as I would like it to be, and she was diligent enough to do her job and take on my work when I was too busy with other things. She is also my friend so there’s that.

No, I don’t think I do. I’ve been on a lot of project teams and led quite a few, and I don’t think I was ever at ease with the process of negotiation and consensus forming. I did it, but I didn’t like it.

I have a hard time delegating because I like to see things done right and rarely feel like putting that degree of confidence in colleagues if I’m not sure of their skills. I don’t like to pursue solutions I can see problems with, just because the team accepted them. Also, the curse of every team is that one person who doesn’t pull his weight. I have never known how to deal effectively with the one who’s getting a free ride off the others instead of contributing a fair share.

My preferred work style is to take on a task that can be done alone, with a clear goal and timeline, and then be left alone to do it, preferably for months. Progress reports, fine, but I don’t want to be supervised. At my level of professional skill, I don’t need it. I will work with the client or the interfacing department when the time comes.

I do collaborate well but I have to focus on the ‘team’ aspect intentionally. I prefer to lead or work independently.

I have been learning to in recent years. My tendency in the past, and still somewhat in the present, is to compare myself unfavorably to other people on the team. But since I joined the Unitarian congregation in my area, I have been working on committees and in leadership positions with many people who are bright, capable and accepting of others’ mistakes. It is not a combination I’ve met with many other times in my life and I have been thriving. I am currently the chair of the Nominating Committee, which has the difficult task of filling vacant volunteer positions. The committee I’m working with are all working hard and accepting of each others’ ideas. It’s tough work but a pleasure to collaborate.

No, not at all. I’m highly-introverted and don’t work well with other people.

Years ago, I learned that teams and commitees are very different things within a workplace. A team means colleagues working together, collaborating, to achieve a goal. With a committee, the pieces of a project are given to various individuals, who work independently and then come back together with their results. I always thrived in the latter situation; when I had to be on a team, though, I’d be overwhelmed and behave passively, avoiding participation.

I worked on gigantic projects most of my career; and collaboration was essential. For me, personally, it was hard to stand by idly while massive errors were being made in areas that impinged on mine a little bit, but we were affected. However, I learnt to stay out of the way, just to keep my job.

Collaboration is hard when others will not take the time to gather all the facts.

I find that those that have outlined duties/ assignments to complete work best as the team gets it together later as one group effort.
Divided the chores ,projects according to those who want or have that area of expertise better than the whole group.
People learn from those that are skilled and sometimes the skilled person learns a different way to approach an idea or problem too.
Win Win for the whole group.