Team work

Rant function on.

Something that we have all talked about at one time or another is how well a group has worked together towards a common goal. Teamwork. Teamwork is defined as: the concept of people working together cooperatively.

Aside from any required technical proficiency, a wide variety of social skills are desirable for successful teamwork, including:

• Listening - it is important to listen to other people's ideas. When people are allowed to freely express their ideas, these initial ideas will produce other ideas.
• Questioning - it is important to ask questions, interact, and discuss the objectives of the team.
• Persuading - individuals are encouraged to exchange, defend, and then to ultimately rethink their ideas.
• Respecting - it is important to treat others with respect and to support their ideas.
• Helping - it is crucial to help one's coworkers, which is the general theme of teamwork.
• Sharing - it is important to share with the team to create an environment of teamwork.
• Participating - all members of the team are encouraged to participate in the team.
• Communication - For a team to work effectively it is essential team members acquire communication skills and use effective communication channels between one another e.g. using email, viral communcation, group meetings and so on. This will enable team members of the group to work together and achieve the teams purpose and goals.

Obviously as players in a game, we do not need to carry teamwork to this level of depth and complexity, but we do need, at least in my mind, to listen, respect, communicate, and participate. The biggest bit of difficulty with me and others comes in when there is an apparent disparity between the experience of some members versus others. Newer characters often have not had the experience of how to work well togther in a team, and at times this shows with rushing an enemy or enemy group, and precipitating a disaster. I have been on both sides of the equation, and profess to feeling jealous and intimidated when someone tries to impart wisdom by, "just do this." I want to know why I should "just do this", and reasoning to the effect "because it works" doesn't sit well with me. I want to know why I shuld just do a certain thing when I have the possibility of six or seven things that I might do.

This is a hard situation to be in for both sides. Trying to explain one's experience from the other side is difficult, as at times you find one style of operatino that works very well, and one may get trapped into using that in all situations as the standard attack, as an example, Keen Frost, a very good tanker in CoH in my opinion. His preferred tactic is to set a point where he will bring back all his enemies he can gather up (herd). then he will lay down an ice patch and keep them all in one place as best as possible. It works, and works very well. But my problem with it is that it is hard to feel like I'm holding up my end of the team. I have almost no input as to how the activity goes, and also no opportunity to develop supplemental tactics that might benefit the team. And in my impatience to at least try to have some effect or feeling of worth, I was one of those who leapt in without looking in hopes of showing that I could handle things and precipitated more than a few team disasters. (( Belated apologies to those I accumulated debt for ))

There may be a myriad of possibilities, but only through experimentation and talking with your team members might you uncover other methods. This can cause problems, as experimentation quite often does not work well, which reinforces the "one-way" method of handling the problem. "Don't fix it if it ain't broke." I can't argue that that style is wrong. It isn't, it works. I just believe there are more ways and I believe there is always another way to approach a problem.

A caveat here is if you're after experience fast, find that one way that works best and go for it. A solid method that you know and use often really speeds up experience accumulation. The downside is that when it doesn't work - teamwipe and debt.

Rant function off.