How to Be a Good Teammate At Work
The underrated skill to succeeding in your job and career
At work, we don’t work on solo missions and our work doesn’t exist in a vacuum - it exists in relation to things that are bigger than ourselves. One of the best things you can do to build better relationships and achieve your goals is to be a good teammate for your peers and colleagues.
In this lesson, I’m going to share what it means to be a good teammate, why it matters in today’s workplace, and provide some actionable tips for how you can become a better teammate while increasing your own personal chances for success at work. In this post, I’m going to talk about practical and actionable ways you can be a good teammate at work to help you and your team achieve your individual and team outcomes.
Help Me Help You
Early on in my career I was working on a project that I had no idea what I was doing. I reached out to a teammate, who then took an hour out of his day to walk me through how he did a similar project. This caused him to have to stay late to finish what he was working on and I was grateful for his support. In the end, I figured it out, and at the end of the project everything was great.
At the end of every project it was customary to have a celebration dinner with the team, and out of curiosity, I asked him why he was so willing to be generous with his time, and he told me that “we’re all working toward the same outcome, and if I help you, chances are you’ll help me or help others on our team.” He went on to say that he felt that being a good teammate and helping others was part of his job, and that when he realized this, it not only helped him be more effective, but it also helped him be more successful in finding career opportunities.
Sure enough, he was right. Years later, we actually worked together again on another project, and while it had been years since we had last spoken or worked together, we both welcomed the chance to work with one another and we were able to successfully complete a very difficult project. This experience taught me something that sounds simple and overlooked but has paid exponential dividends in my career: Investing in being a good teammate to your peers is a worthwhile endeavor.
Our Work is Bigger Than Ourselves
At work, we often think about building a good relationship with our manager, or how we might be perceived by executives, but we rarely think about how we engage with peers, cross functional partners, etc, which is why I believe so strongly in investing time and effort into being a good teammate. I’d even go on to venture that investing in learning how to be a good teammate is a career hack that will yield you significant positive outcomes. The beauty of this is that regardless of where we work, most of us have teammates and most of us already have what it takes to be a good teammate, we just need to put it into action.
The Navy has this wonderful concept of “ship, shipmate, and self.” You’ll notice that self is last. While I wouldn’t go as far as to suggest that work is like being in the Navy, I love two things about this concept in the work environment. First, it acknowledges that who we are is a part of this, but only in relation to the team, and the broader organization. Second, it puts self last. Your work is important and means something, but only within the broader context of everything else there, such as your team, your company, and the market.
Furthermore, we all are so incredibly focused on our own goals, our own projects and our own deliverables that being someone who is not just thinking about themselves but about others actually is nice for a change. This doesn’t mean that you can’t focus on your own goals and projects, you have to hold yourself accountable. But there is absolutely a world where you can proactively go out of your way to be a good teammate while trying to deliver exceptional results.
Why Being a Good Teammate Matters
Nobody works in a silo
Unless you are in business for yourself, you don’t work on things on your own. Everything you do, involves working with others to accomplish a goal or objective (and I would even bet that entrepreneurs would tell you that they have teammates) Before COVID-19, thanks to the changing nature of work and technologies and tools, we were already doing more collaborative work than we ever were before. Similarly, everything other people do, requires others to work with you, and other teammates. If we take these statements to be true, getting anything done in a business context requires working with other people. Learning how to be a good teammate or peer, can help your broader team, or company achieve goals faster.
You need people to work with you
But being a good teammate isn’t about being charitable or nice. It’s also about being able to advance in your work and your goals. With whatever you are working on, you will need the help and work of others to help you achieve your goals. When you invest the time, energy and output in being a good teammate, helping your peers, providing feedback or advice, or connecting them with others, they will be more likely to do the same for you.
You can get collisions
At a simple level, all business is a mix of people, processes and workflows and the interplay between all of those. Figuring out how these intersect is what companies and people do each day. Choosing to proactively help others or be a good teammate allows you to get exposure to what I call “collisions” or when people, process and workflows come together. By choosing to help a teammate work on a project, you get the chance to expose yourself to a new problem, new idea, or new initiative. By providing feedback on a colleague’s idea, you get additional ideas for the initiatives that you are working on. And by helping connect your teammate to someone else in the organization who could be of help, you are opening and availing yourself to new relationships (collisions) that can help you in your own work. Being a good teammate does just as much for you as it does for the people that you help.
Being likeable helps everything you do
Whether we want to admit it or not, people that are likable and who are viewed favorably tend to get more opportunities, whether that’s the assignment or project we want to work on, the new role, or in some cases, compensation raises, promotions and career advancement. I don’t want to suggest that you should do things just to be liked or seen favorably, but when you can be seen as helpful or resourceful, that tends to bode well for your own performance and development.
Progress towards the long game
Your job is not a single game with a start and stop, but rather a repeatable one with lots of chances. In your future, what you do now matters, and while you can’t always see it, the relationships you have and the people who you meet will play a role in it. Investing in being a good teammate has long term benefits that we know exist but we cannot always envision in the moment.
This could be getting help for something you are working on down the road, a career opportunity from someone who views you favorably, or access and exposure to opportunities. Not to mention, if you are hiring at any point in the future, people who view you favorably are likely to be interested in working with you.
Who Should You Focus Your Efforts On?
If you could direct your activities anywhere, I would start with these three groups of people
Direct teammates - These are employees who are directly on your team, either working toward the same goal or a similar one.
Example: I am on a team of product marketers, and one of the things that I do is to invest some of my time learning about the other things the other product marketers on my team are working on to see if I can help them in any way
Cross functional peers - Cross-Functional work is becoming the norm, which is why having relationships with your cross functional peers is important. These are individuals who you work with who are not a part of your direct team, but perhaps a part of your larger organization or business unit who you work with in order to execute specific projects or programs.
Example: As a Product Marketer, one of my main cross functional peers are on the Product Management team. I’m constantly talking with them and working with them on some joint projects, but I also try to get to know them and learn about some of the other projects they are working on that I don’t have a day to day purview of. On occasion, I can often recommend suggestions, but simply showing up and showing that I care, often helps me build a stronger relationship.
Other people within your organization
Example: Within my broader organization, I spend time trying to be a good teammate to the sales executives and customer success teams. The reason I do this is because while I don’t directly report to them or work with them, my work often touches the work they do with customers. Trying to help them often helps me get exposure to what’s going on with customers, which in turn helps the projects that I work on. Furthermore, One thing that I do well is I often will share with them what I am working on, which allows them to get a glimpse of what’s coming up, and allows me to get feedback before I release anything at scale.
How to Be a Good Teammate: Act Like a Giver
One of the best mental models to envision being a good teammate comes from Wharton Psychologist Adam Grant. Adam’s seminal work in givers and takers is the epitome of what it means to be a good teammate at work. Consider the following excerpt:
“Every day, employees make decisions about whether to act like givers or like takers. When they act like givers, they contribute to others without seeking anything in return. They might offer assistance, share knowledge, or make valuable introductions. When they act like takers, they try to get other people to serve their ends while carefully guarding their own expertise and time.
Organizations have a strong interest in fostering giving behavior. A willingness to help others achieve their goals lies at the heart of effective collaboration, innovation, quality improvement, and service excellence. In workplaces where such behavior becomes the norm, the benefits multiply quickly. Consider a landmark meta-analysis led by Nathan Podsakoff, of the University of Arizona. His team examined 38 studies of organizational behavior, representing more than 3,500 business units and many different industries, and found that the link between employee giving and desirable business outcomes was surprisingly robust. Higher rates of giving were predictive of higher unit profitability, productivity, efficiency, and customer satisfaction, along with lower costs and turnover rates.”
So how do you act like a giver, and become a good teammate at work? Here are some examples and tactics that I have used myself that I have found to yield positive results
Actionable Advice on How to Be a Good Teammate
Here are some of my tactics that have led to improved relationships and outcomes as a result of investing in being a good teammate
Amplify the work of others
If someone on your team is doing something good, tell others about it. This serves two purposes. 1) it helps them get recognized for good work that they are doing and 2) it helps find other opportunities for the work to get noticed by others which could lead to better opportunities for that individual, or for others within the company. We’re all focused on the work we are doing each day that it’s easy to turn blinders to anything else that is going on. I think this is especially true in a remote or hybrid environment where you aren’t seeing people each day.
There are a couple ways to do this, especially in a hybrid or digital world:
Slack or other digital channels - Create a thread or a chat to celebrate wins, and share learnings, etc. This can be something that you do weekly, or perhaps you can just incorporate it into reading what's in the channel during your weekly team meeting
Team Meetings - Speaking of team meetings, this is a great place to recognize others. If you carve out 5 minutes of each of your team meetings to amplify people’s work, this is a great way to incorporate this behavior into the culture of the team
Weekly or Monthly Roundup/Newsletter - If you are a team lead or people manager, create a monthly newsletter or internal tool that summarizes the wins for the team
Be their research partner
We benefit greatly from collaborative work and getting diverse perspectives. Furthermore, we also connect and relate with others over shared interests. One great way to do this is to be a “thought partner” to someone else who is working on a project. For example, if your teammate is working on sales forecasting for the next quarter, send them an article on the latest trends in sales forecasting with a brief summary of what you learned. Or, find other artifacts, deliverables or outputs within your company or team that are relevant to their work, and offer to spend a half hour reviewing them and giving them your thoughts.
Simply showing others that you are thinking about them will win you points and help build trust. One of the ways that I do this is I always try to send relevant articles, books, podcasts or other resources to my teammates on specific topics that are relevant to them. This helps provide resources or thinking to spur the work that they do, but also communicates that you care and are thinking about what they are thinking about as well.
Connect their work to other people
An orchestra has lots of people and numerous types of insturments playing their own unique tune of music. Without a conductor, the people in the orchestera might not know what each other group is doing and doesn’t know the parts of the orchestra outside of their own. Working in a company (especially a large one) is very similar - you all are often playing the same song, but without coordination and knowledge, you may not listen to what else is happening around you.
This is why as a teammate, embracing the role of the conductor and coordinator can be extremely beneficial. By helping others see, either what else is happening, or being able to connect their work to someone else’s you can create harmony that didn’t previously exist.
One thing that I always do is that if I know of someone working on something that could be valuable to someone else, I always offer to Jane to see if I can connect her to Tim in case they might be able to help each other. In addition to strengthening the work of both of these people (as well as strengthening their networks) this also helps you build relationship capital, which can be helpful in the short and long term.
Reach out to them to provide feedback
Asking feedback can be a difficult thing to do. So instead, reverse it. Proactively reach out to someone to offer to provide them feedback or suggestions on what they are working on. For example, one of my teammates regularly has to produce presentations and content that get seen by customers. Because I know this is a highly creative process, feedback is super helpful to her, and myself and my other teammates often will proactively schedule time with her so she can show us early drafts of her work before they get in front of customers. This allowed us to let her know what we thought, but it also gave her the chance to pitch what she was working on which strengthened her confidence in what she was doing. It also gave us the chance to see ideas that we could incorporate into our own projects that we were working on.
If they’re doing a good job, tell them
Most people appreciate those folks who they work with who are upbeat and positive. But if one of your colleagues is doing something well, make sure to let them know that feedback. In-timely and context-rich feedback is helpful not only to help people gain confidence in what they are doing but also so they can feel engaged and connected to their work. If you need guidance on how to give feedback here are some tips and suggestions. In my previous role, we actually had a feedback app, which allowed for teams and peers to provide informal feedback to others on their work. I found this to be super helpful when I would get feedback, and I would also make a point of trying to give this feedback when I felt it was appropriate.
Genuinely care about them
Workplaces that create cultures rooted in caring for one another are likely to increase engagement and well-being. Genuinely demonstrating your care for your teammates is a way to facilitate greater engagement and positivity in the workplace.
Granted, depending on your workplace, showing emotion or genuine care may not be culturally natural, or looked upon positively. This is the exact reason why I've tried to demonstrate compassion towards others in the workplace. When you show up, are kind, but care for others, people not only appreciate it, but genuinely want you to be around. Genuinely caring for your teammates is a small gesture, but if done repeatedly, will help you build relationships that last long past your time together on your team.
I’m sure most of you know how to care for others, but for me, one of the things I do is I regularly schedule 15-20 minute check-ins with some of my peers, just to check in to see how they are doing. After I recently left my team, one of my team members let me know that this was a practice that she was going to start doing to carry on the legacy of me doing that for her and for others. That meant a lot to me, knowing that a small gesture could lead to such an impactful outcome, and I know that it absolutely did strengthen our working relationship together.
Lessons From The Front Line: Examples of How to Be a Good Teammate
I asked a number of my old coworkers who were great teammates to share what they felt they did to try to be a good teammate at work. Here are their stories:
Jenna, Product Manager
For me, being a good teammate stems from my childhood days of team sports. I loved being a part of the team, and knowing that my contributions were part of a bigger mission, just like being on a sports team. Career wise, that translated into working in roles where I always had work on my plate, but where I could also provide assistance and help to others on my team or in my company.
What has always helped me, is that I have been lucky to work for managers or leaders who seem to value when their employees help other people. I realize that not everyone has this, which could make it harder, but working in large companies my entire career has made me realize just how important it is to get the help of others when it comes to successful outcomes of projects. This has two implications. First, I try to pitch in especially with my teammates who are trying to be successful (because that ultimately ladders up to my team's goals) and second, because I do that, it helps me become successful with my projects because others know that I’m helpful and want to help me succeed as well.
Obviously, there is a balance, in that you can’t spend your entire day helping other people. But I find that setting aside a couple hours each week or month to proactively reach out to others to provide them feedback on what they are working on, answer questions they might have, or simply just try to help connect them with other people pays dividends.
Mark, Management Consulting
In consulting, you are constantly working with new people and on teams. Your reputation as a teammate and co-worker is paramount to getting new opportunities as well as for your own development, so there is a clear driving force for wanting to be a good teammate. But bigger than that, consulting very much is a profession where projects that are successful are ones where everyone pitches in and does their part. Sure, people who are more experienced (ex: Partners with 20+ years of expertise) have an advantage in some ways, but the solutions are better, the strategies we recommend are stronger, and the work we do is more enjoyable when people work together.
In my experience, I have always tried to do 3 things. First, to do my job and to be excellent at it. This requires understanding my role and how to do it well. Second, to do what I can to do what’s best for the client. And then finally, to make sure I know what everyone else’s role on the team is, and if there is a chance for me to use my skills or knowledge to help them, I try to do that.
On the last project, this meant spending time with one of my team members to help them get up to speed on the Consumer Products industry (this was their first consumer products case) I like to think of myself as an “opportunity spotter” - if I can spot an opportunity, for myself or for others, I try to connect the dots.
Finally, in our profession, the gold star is becoming an equity partner. One of the only ways you can become a partner is when people (Not just leaders, but also junior staff members) provide feedback that you are not just a good manager or leader, but a good teammate. You literally cannot advance unless you are someone who others want to work with, or who has put effort into helping others. If that wasn’t a strong enough reason to do that, I don’t know what is.
Kelly, Consumer Products
As a people manager, one of the best things I did this year during COVID-19 was spend time trying to get my direct reports to start helping each other and thinking about not just their own work but their work in relation to other people. I cannot be everywhere at once, but one of the best ways to get leverage is to scale myself through others. I told team members to lean into helping one another, and gave specific actions and examples of the types of things that they could do to help one another. I also articulated (and followed through when it came to reviews) that this was going to be something that I was going to evaluate them on for performance through this year.
Conclusion: Be Human
Ask most players in the NBA who the best teammate was over the years and many will say Mike Miller. While he was a standout college player and had many successful years, Mike became a legend and NBA Champion alongside the likes of Lebron James and Kyrie irving. Here is what people said about Mike
“He’s a chameleon — meaning he can fit in any different room,” said LeBron James’s longtime friend and business manager Maverick Carter, whose relationship with Miller began shortly after Miller and McGrady attended one of James’s high school games. “I’ve seen him with high-level businesspeople and owners, kids, people from all different backgrounds. A guy from South Dakota, he’s not from one of the coasts, he’s right in the middle of the country and I think he really can adapt to any room.
“What I do is, I understand people,” Miller explained. “I understand what they’re going through. I understand it’s a team sport and if there’s going to be individuals inside it, how do I relate to every one of those players differently?
Mike understands what most people in the working world could stand to know - at work, you exist in a world with others, and knowing the role you play in relation to others (ex: teammates) contributes to how you can achieve your goals. Investing your time in being a good teammate can payoff in so many ways, such as the case with Mike, who has won multiple NBA Championships
Some people might rightly ask, “but why would you invest this time when you have other priorities on your plate?” It’s a fair and important question to ask, afterall, we only have a finite amount of time each day and a lot on our plate. So much of work is figuring out what the highly levered activities are - not everything you do has equal impact or outcome, and part of your job is to determine which are the highest levered activities that are going to yield results. In my experience and watching others, investing time in being a good teammate by doing these things is a highly levered activity, which is why I make time to do it.
Furthermore, investing time in being a good teammate also leads to your own engagement. Research suggests people who have friends at work report higher levels of engagement and lower levels of burnout.
Business is fundamentally about people, and the more you can invest into people, the better results you are going to generate. Not to mention, it never hurts having a few extra friends around the office.
An organization is a mixture of people producing things that generate signals and insights. I think that the more you can invest in engaging and supporting your teammates, the better you are going to be at connecting people, signals and insights that lead to better work outcomes.