The best coworkers are those who share expertise, give constructive criticism or valuable feedback, or make a project succeed. That all looks good on paper, but in real life, it's not so easy to become the perfect coworker. Image from asana.com
Unfortunately, working well in a team heavily depends on your personality and this becomes particularly hard if you are introvert. When your job requires team work, your career success doesn't only depend on your skills, but also on your abilities as a team player because we all know there's no "I" in team.
Working too much and spending too much time around your colleagues doesn't guarantee success either. People who are stressed out and burnt out are more likely to perform worse on the job. In fact, research shoes that people who use all their days off are more likely to get raises down the line. Plus, you are not in most your sociable, affable behaviour when you are stressed out and worn out.
Although you might think that the best team players are the ones who work hard and are always there when you need, research shows that people who have many activities after work are the best team players. According to a 2015 paper in Business and Society looking at 347 workers at 80 companies in Canada and China, people who ranked higher in engagement with the community were those more likely to be trusted by their colleagues.
"Hiring managers often dismiss volunteer work and community involvement as irrelevant, or even a potential distraction," stated Ilan Vertinsky, one of the paper's authors. "But really, people with busy evening and weekend schedules are exactly who should be getting hired."
Don't let bullies get you down. Bullying is not a phenomenon restricted to schools. It also takes place in the workplace and more often than you might think. According to a 2015 survey from the staffing company Office Team, 1 in 3 employees reported being bullied at work. Out of those, 13 percent admitted this situation was the catalyst for their resignation, while 17 percent of them took no action after being bullied.
A 2015 study of 327 Spanish employees published in Anxiety, Stress and Coping: An International Journal showed that bullying in the workplace can cause a vicious cycle since people who get bullied are more likely to find themselves in the same situation in the future.
The way to end this vicious cycle is to confront your bullies and stand up to them. If you don't want confront them, you can simply report this person to hold the bully accountable. However, if someone is highly critical of your work, you can simply ask them what they would have done differently.
Being an endless source of opinions and perspectives can be important, it can also backfire and be bad for teams. Research suggests interfering with projects by pointing out what is wrong with them can frustrate its momentum. If everyone has an opinion on anything, nothing will get done.
So how can you be proactive yet supportive of your colleagues? It all comes down to the way you deliver your message. Research suggests that you need to provide about five times as much positive support for the ideas of others as you provide negative feedback.
Although it might be tricky and time consuming to provide positive feedback when you have a deadline to meet, it does mean that your colleagues will be more appreciative of your alternative plans, goals or benchmarks.
Some of us tend to listen to music on our way to work, but does everyone know that this music can affect your performance and work environment. According to a 2016 study of 266 adults in the Journal of Organisation Behaviour, cheerful music seems to improve people's moods, helping them to be more cooperative and efficient in decision-making.
Although gossip is frowned upon, research shows that some kinds of gossip can actually bring about numerous psychological benefits and can also help teams work better as a group.
This kind of gossip, however, has to be positive in order to have a good impact in the workplace. If you hear how someone got a promotion, it might help you learn from what they've done to make it so you can follow in their footsteps. Therefore, it helps to improve productivity at work.