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To tell whether you're a team player, it's important to first understand what the term means-and why it's so important.

A team player is someone who works within and supports his entire orgaization. The team player doesn't attempt to do as much work as possible on his own by taking on a ton of tasks, but rather to focus on contributing to the efficiency of a team designed to get the job done.

For example, at my work, there are two women working at phone support. One of them will pass customer trouble tickets when overwhelmed, asks managers to deal with angry customers when she feels uncomfortable, and always leaves at the time she's scheduled to leave. The second woman takes on as many tasks as she can, which results in overtime in many cases.

From reading that description, you may be persuaded to think that the second woman was the better worker. But though the first worker took on less tasks, she managed the time she was scheduled to work to ensure that the entire team got their tasks done, and utilized the specialization of the managers-in this case, their experience with talking with angry customers-to improve efficiency and increase our customer satisfaction rates.

A promotion came up recently-the first woman immediately was offered the position. On the other side, we're constantly having issues with the second woman's customers-many times, they end up speaking with a manager anyways, and in a more frustrated state than if they were handed off in the first place.

Ask yourself-how do you manage your time and how do you utilize the resources of your team to get tasks done? If you can say that you're at or close to peak efficiency thanks to your coworkers, you're on the right track-but if you think you can do it all yourself, think again.

Learn more about this author, Phil Dotree.
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