To Team or Not to Team

     This week, our media studies class did an exercise where we had the choice between working with a team, or alone. Naturally, I chose to work with a team because I have always worked well with others and found that I can benefit from others' opinions. During the activity, there were multiple occurrences when one of my teammates would sway my opinion to choose a different answer, and it would help my score in the end. For example, I was set on putting a shaving mirror last on the list in an activity where we had to rank fifteen items by importance if we were stranded at sea. My teammate then reminded me that I could signal boats as they were passing using the mirror and that it would be important when lost at sea. The article Songwriting loafing or creative collaboration?: A comparison of individual and team written billboard hits in the USA says, "pre-1967, whereby solo-authored songs were less likely to be selected as singles and did not perform as well on the charts as dual-authored songs." Showing that at times, having a team is good for performance. The article The effect of personality type on team performance states that well-built teams have increased motivation, greater task commitment, higher levels of performance, ability to withstand stress, more innovative solutions, and decreased development time; so, if you have a team that works well together, it will benefit you greatly. For these reasons, I have come to the decision of working with a team because it will benefit me in many ways. It will help me to be more efficient and overall help to exceed expectations on the assignment at hand.