“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” – Henry Ford.
Right from the first week’s blog post of May 2021, we have seen that we cannot build anything significant without teamwork. Therefore, it is crucial to know how to mobilize or form a team to change the world from whatever level you are.
Mobilizing a team that will be successful can be tough to achieve as some people may still be struggling with the team’s vision. You will have to be patient with people to allow them to learn and grow. When mobilizing a team, you must be clear with what you want to achieve with the team. You will then know the kind of people you need in the group. What should their belief or value system be? What should their interests be? What skills should they have? You wouldn’t want to employ the services of a doctor to build a house, would you? If you’re going to form a band of musicians, you look for people who can sing and not people who can farm!
Let’s assume you are trying to get a group of your classmates together to prepare for a forthcoming examination. The first thing you do is write the goal down to know what you are trying to achieve. You then go on to mobilize a team of reading partners that can make this possible. After that, you develop a group contract which is a written or unwritten document that defines the aspirations of every member in the group. In countries, this is called a constitution. In your case, your chosen students should be hard-working, punctual, willing to learn, and ready to abide by the rules of the group.
Because there are so many subjects you take; your team should have people interested in the same topic. There’s no use studying in the same group comprising Physics and Literature students, so you don’t have to be reading and asking questions from people who are not learning the same thing as you. The values and pursuits of those in your group should be the same as yours. I have personally met students who get tired after reading for 30 minutes and some that can read for 2 to 3 hours straight without getting tired. You need to know about these different skills. Some are more comfortable reading late at night, while some prefer reading during the day. Therefore, it is better to form a team with students who have similar reading or studying habits as you.
Mobilizing a successful team is worth it, and I will love to hear about your experience in mobilizing a team in the past or how you intend to mobilize one going forward.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Charles Adimah is an entrepreneur and the Project Manager of B2SL INITIATIVE, where he manages the vision. He is a great believer that a prosperous Nigeria is a product of successful Nigerians. You can reach him via email at charles@b2sl.org.
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Your teammates should be 100% inline with the team vision.
Team work brings about success
Thank you sir. I have a question sir.
You said, “it is better to form a team with students who have similar reading or studying habits as you”. When I was in school, the school administrator shared my classmates and I into studying groups. These groups comprised of ‘very good students’ and ‘average students’. Their reason was that the ‘very good students’ will pull the ‘average students’ up. These ‘very good students’ are the type that study hard and study ahead of the class while these ‘average students’ are those who are just satisfied with what we were taught in class. As a result, the ‘very good students’ were far ahead of the ‘average students’. When the studying groups were formed, it was difficult for the ‘average students’ to spend longer time studying and at the same time difficult for them to assimilate on time, they kept on dragging the ‘very good students’ back to topics they knew very well already. As a result of this, the ‘average students’ kept pulling the ‘very good students’ back making the study group unprofitable for them. My questions are,
1. What the school administrator did, was it right or wrong?
2. As a student who is expected to obey school rules and regulations, what advice will you give to such ‘very good student’?
The values and pursuits of those in your group should be the same as yours…thank you sir for this great piece
If everyone is moving together then success takes place.
📌📌📌📌
Hmmm…
The pursuits of those in your group should be the same as yours in order to achieve that very thing you all are aspiring for🤔
Hey Victoria, very good questions. I believe that your school administrator meant well by putting excellent and average students together so that the excellent students could help the average students to become better. People do learn both positively and negatively from each other.
I think what was missing was that the average students in your group did not aspire to become excellent students. In the post, we talked about how all the members of a group should have a common goal. Without the desire of the average students to learn, there could never be progress.
To answer your second question, you could raise the issue politely with your administrator so he or she could possibly re-emphasise the purpose of the group. In real life though, you may be lumped together to work with other people who do not have the same goals as you. My advice to you would be to do your best irrespective. If for example, you were meant to read a whole chapter, do it and try to help those who are willing to learn.
Hope that helps?
Yes sir, thank you sir.
Cooperation is very crucial in making a good team
Thanks for this B2SL
I literally learnt that it’s essential to understand every member of the group and also when mobilizing a team, you need to mobilize a goal
It was kinda adventurous though
It was based on some kind of competition within my school, and in my department actually, we were asked to create a project and defend it ( *Physics* ) which is to be submitted before the end of the term, so I surveyed those potent enough and are like-minded with me , we created a project on the London Tower Bridge, we drew the sketch of it, with the use of Cardboard, paints, glass and many more items, we created a 3D format of it ..we started by making a sketch (done by a set of people in the group) I assessed it, also we wrote out some necessary facts about the bridge, while I supervised and created the *making myself*
It was splendid sir!
I once created group reading for my friends and I, they happily embraced the idea. We all came together, working as a group, solving questions, teaching one another and it continued like that for awhile but didn’t last long.
Most of them started giving excuses,exempting themselves from the activity and I wondered why? But only for them to say they were no longer interested giving excuses, and so as not to seem like I’m forcing them,I ended it also. Even though the group reading helped us a little,I still can’t understand why they gave up?
We had a biology project. I was picked out to select 5 other students. I chose who I thought were the most capable. We were asked to find lizards, frogs, and rats for the dissection practical. Even though some of my team members lived far away, I made sure we kept in touch mainly through whatsapp. I made sure we were all clear on whom would look for which animals and when.
💯 Team members need to have same or similar goals.