Teamwork Is an Individual Skill: Getting Your Work Done When Sharing Responsibility

by Christopher Avery, Erin O'Toole

Knowing how to work effectively in and through groups may be the single most important skill anyone can develop in today's collaborative, team-based workplace. Unfortunately, all of the resources available on teamwork put the emphasis on group process and ignore the role of-and benefits to-the individual. But effective teamwork isn't only a group skill set; it's an individual skill set as well. Teamwork Is an Individual Skill shows readers how to develop the skills to thrive on any team, under any circumstances. No longer will readers find themselves complaining, "I got assigned to a bad team." Instead, they'll know what to do to make any team work for them.
Drawing on over twenty years of experience successfully developing professional teams in product development, R&D, and high-tech environments, Christopher Avery and his coauthors use brief thought-provoking essays, personal and teambuilding exercises, case studies, and insights from business leaders to teach readers how to build responsible and productive relationships at work. The authors show how and why your ability to assume personal responsibility-for your own work on a team and for the team's collective work-is the most important factor in ensuring a productive team experience.
Teambuilding, the authors point out, is essentially a series of conversations between people who share responsibility to get something done. Teamwork Is an Individual Skill describes the way these conversations typically progress, and shows the reader how to predict and direct these conversations so that they can maximize the benefits to both themselves and to their team.
Designed for easy access and for use by both individuals and groups, Teamwork Is an Individual Skill will equip readers with the mental skills and behaviors that will help them achieve personal goals while contributing to their team's success.

Genres: Leadership, Business, Management, Self Help, Nonfiction

212 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

When Christopher Avery was a management consultant, this was his driving question: Why are so many smart people unhappy at work?

25 years ago, Christopher realized that the most useful skills he was teaching his smart, ambitious, professional clients were coping skills. They needed coping skills because they were stuck in a suffocating culture that systematically disempowered and controlled them. An insidious control cycle kept well-meaning, high-performing leaders and key contributors at all levels from doing their best, taking risks, learning, and operating with freedom, power and choice for the organizations’ best interests.

His own career trajectory changed forever when Christopher began working with an emerging behavioral science framework — The Responsibility Process. This powerful framework is the world’s first proven how-to approach for understanding, teaching, and taking personal responsibility. It helps us apply our innate leadership ability to face and overcome any challenge. Operating in freedom, power, and choice, we encourage and support those we lead to do likewise.

Hundreds of organizations worldwide have discovered that The Responsibility Process is the most direct, effective method for establishing a high-functioning culture that can achieve personal, team and organizational transformation and retain talent. The worldwide community of leaders who work with Christopher to master The Responsibility Process are transforming teams and organizations all over the world.

A speaker with wisdom and charisma, Christopher is popular with audiences interested in agility, effective leadership (not more leaders), and results that benefit the organization and the employees.

His classic work, "Teamwork Is An Individual Skill", inspires everyone who wants to be done with bad teams. His latest book, "The Responsibility Process", offers practices gleaned from 25 years of applied research on responsibility-taking and leadership. He’s the host of The Leadership Gift Program and its worldwide community of leaders and coaches who are mastering responsibility and reaping lifelong benefits.

In his mid-twenties, Christopher left a perfectly good job to return to school and earn a Ph.D. in organizational science from the University of Texas at Austin. Today his company is one of the go-to sources for leadership development and change management training worldwide.

Reviews

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably one of the best books about building up team wisdom.

[Eniko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must-read for everyone involved in any kind of team work: either as a closed team, inside of a company, or working with external associates/partners or other teams.

It contains some great examples and advice on how to prevent the most different conflict situations and, once in this situation, how to clean up the mess in order to still get to a successful closure.

The book also provides all along the chapters a great insight on group dynamics and the universal rules of collaboration and communication, which all serve the goal,
to form and maintain a team culture that leads to best working results on the one hand and to support successful external collaborations on the other hand.

All-in-all, it guides you with personal and team challenges towards a person with "team wisdom" and collaborative mindset.

[Roy Klein · Rating 2 out of 5]

Even though it's rather short, the book is almost entirely a filler and fluff for a single idea: Each team member should behave as if they have a personal responsibility for the outcome of the entire project. It discusses the reasons for this opinion, the desired outcome of such behavior by team members, and beyond that, as far as I could tell, it just babbled truisms and nonsense exercises just to keep going beyond page 20.

Incidentally, the book helped me solve an issue with teams that I was having at work, but it wasn't related to the book's content or premise - simply to the fact that reading on the matter helped me focus and brainstorm on my own issues.

[FREDERIC GAGNE · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book on behaviours and concept that can be applied to foster team work and collaboration.
I do recommand this book.

small downers: some concepts are repeated a few times. It's good beacuse it helps to integrate and internalize them... but sometime it feels like "déjà vu". I think the only thing missing to avoid this feeling would have been to refer to prior section while refering to concept already seen instead of having the feeling of seeing a "new" concept for the second time. Not major.

on the plus side, the book is jam packed with great concepts, practicle questions and exercice to integrate the concept in our actual team work. As an Agile Coach, it's a must read.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stopped at a third of the book, after that the idea is only reapeted with further examples.

[Nathalie Karasek · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not my cup of tea. It’s hard for me to pinpoint why I did not like the book. There’s nothing that i strongly disagree with. I felt it to be a little repetitive which can be exhausting no to read, even with such a small book. The ideas did not feel very specific to me but more like „think about this, think about that“. I also feel that the writer is making a lot of assumptions about me and my team which does not feel right for me. So in total I think the stile of writing is just not for me and therefore I could not take anything away from reading it ….

[Agile Kindergarten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basing his approach in the synergy between ethics and psychology, Avery presents tactical suggestions for both the individual and the team with the goal of creating the level of commitment and trust that characterize highly productive teams. Of particular interest is the Shared Responsibility model and Holographic Problem Solving. Both are deceptively easy to immediately adopt and immediately begin to have an impact, i.e. within that conversation. However, they are not quick fixes. This is an instruction manual for how to rewire your brain, and as such require conscious intention to fully assimilate. I was sometimes reminded of a much more folksy version of some the same material, as presented by Dale Carnegie.

[Wouter]

I didn't give a rating because I didn't give the book the required time to read thoroughly. I thought it was rather blurry and became boring rather quick, but I do love Christopher Avery's workshops on responsibility. I thought the workshops were excellent and carried a clear message but I cannot say this from this book.
And that might be because I didn't give it enough time, so no rating :)

[Alexandru Schiaucu · Rating 4 out of 5]

One can find in this book insightful advises of collaboration, stemming from the author's broad experience in the field of partnership and collaboration.

Especially if the reader wants to amplify his/hers life game, while finding purpose in responsibility, then going for the challenges in this book will definitely bring a significant difference in these directions.

[Finlay · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I have no interest in helping you learn to be a good team player. I consider that term to be an insulting label that connotes someone whose primary characteristic is compliance. Instead, my interest is in helping you make maximum use of a team of which you are a member."

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was required reading for my new team. All in all a good book about taking responsibility for the outcome of any team you're on.

[Jack Vinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome book. Here's what I said on my blog.
https://www.jackvinson.com/blog/2011/...

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Totally awesome.

1/18/13
Reread for third time. Probably the best book on teamwork I have ever read. If there is a better one I sure want to read it.