Team Work

Throughout centuries, collective environments have made many kinds of daily challenges easier, and increased an individual’s chances for survival. In the 20th century, however, the role of teamwork started to change, as technological progress contributed significantly to individuals’ safety and labor efficiency. Today, many people are able to sustain themselves even working on their own; they need collectives mostly for socialization, friendly support, and so on; survival has been upstaged. However, teamwork is still valued in many companies around the world. It has its own advantages, and it is beneficial at times for companies to make people work in teams rather than individually. But, in my opinion, while this approach seems to suit extroverted personalities perfectly, an introvert like me would appreciate an opportunity to work on tasks either individually, or just with a couple of colleagues.
It is usually believed that competition between coworkers is beneficial for any company, as employees strive to do their best, show their best performance to outperform each other, and thus contribute to the company’s profits. Personally, I find competition a non-contributing factor in my performance. Knowing that I need not only to do my duties responsibly, but also to show off trying to prove that I am better, causes excessive stress in me. As if simply doing the job in time and high quality is not enough, I feel obliged to do it in a way nobody else does. As a result, I (as well as other workers) may tend to become more concerned about how my performance looks in the eyes of my boss rather than about simply doing a quality job.
CEO Hal Rosenbluth, the author of the book The Customer Comes Second showed how competition—this inevitable part of teamwork—affects personality. While interviewing one potential employee, Rosenbluth could not get rid of the feeling that the latter would be troublesome, though everything seemed to be alright. Rosenbluth invited that person to...