I am in an interesting situation because I play tennis, which is an individual sport, but in college every match I win adds one point to the team’ score and we have to get to four points. So college tennis is all about the team and not about the individual. Working with others has always been fun for me and I always thought about myself as a good team player. My strength in working with a team is that I get done everything other people assign to me. Every time one of my teammates told me to do something I got it done on time. I also built great relationships with all the people in my group. This is not only my excellence because I had great teammates who were all very friendly people. However, I helped to build these good relationships by always being positive and open. Also, I am always respectful with everyone; I think this is one of the most important things in life.
My weakness in working with other people is to encourage them to do better. I focus too much on myself and my role on the team even though I know that encouraging others is very important. I hoped that I could improve in motivating others throughout the term. We had a meeting early in the morning in the middle of the term and everybody was tired and no one really wanted to work on our project. I knew that we needed to get things done so that we do not fall behind, so I had kind of a motivational speech about why we should work hard even though we are all tired. I told them that we are only going to achieve our goals and put a great project together if we work hard every time we meet. We probably had the most productive two hours of the term after my speech, which I consider to be a great success. One my teammates’ final evaluation was: “Finally, Daniel enabled others to act. He demonstrated this by supporting the ideas of the team and by being respectful to others.” Also, after the last class one of my teammates came up to me and said: “It was great to work with you this term.” I learned that motivating my teammates is crucial and that this will make me a great team player one day. I can utilize this skill in my college tennis career because I know how much it matters for my teammate if I motivate them.
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