Teamwork

The ability to effectively build and lead a high performance team or to work productively as a key player contributing to the success of your group is critical to success in the modern business environment. Here at Manderson, we offer valuable opportunities to develop and test these skills.

Teamwork-related skills are nurtured throughout the program beginning in the new student orientation where students get one of their first opportunities to interact with the cohort they will be working with over the next year. The team experience in the new student orientation uses experiential exercises and introduces the basic team development model of forming, storming, norming and performing and offers valuable insight to help students work together to transform their cohort into a high-performance team.

Throughout the first year, each MBA student will have multiple opportunities to play key leadership and supporting roles in their cohort's development. As team members work together to master course material and complete challenging assignments, they often find that they are learning as much about themselves as they are about key business concepts.

What people are saying

"There is so much that can be said about the importance of teamwork in our everyday lives. We first experienced the idea of teamwork at an early age. Growing up we all unknowingly learned the meaning of teamwork from a source that is probably the most important team of which to be a part. From our families we learned to share, to work together, to be dependent, to trust and to compete within a group. Little did we know that we would be required to practice those skills from grade school throughout college and throughout our professional careers.

Teamwork is one of the most important drivers for success in any type of organization. Whether the organization is a top business school, an industry leading company or a national championship sports team, its success can usually be attributed to the ability of the individuals within the organization to work effectively as one unit. However, in order for the team to be successful, the individual members must be able to trust, to depend on, to work well with and to share with their fellow teammates.

Teamwork is such a powerful tool because it allows individuals of different ability levels to work together to accomplish a common goal. Effective teams realize the strengths and weaknesses of the individual members. As a result, success is the outcome when the compensatory nature of ability levels effectively provides a balance between the strengths and weaknesses of the individual members."

-Atokie Boman, Class of 2004