Five Ways to Become a Better Team Player

Five Ways to Become a Better Team Player: Almost every employer these days is seeking “good team players” – but what does that actually mean? Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, author of the new Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy, says the job requirements of today’s employees have changed profoundly. In the past, she says, “product lifecycles were longer and a lot more work was routine and well-understood. You’d spend a great deal of time to figure out the perfect way to assemble a car, and you’d assemble it that way for a long time.” For modern employees, though, innovation is a fundamental part of the job description: “We need to do something, reflect, and analyze quickly, and then learn to learn – those are today’s critical skills.”