Being Part of a Team Is More Important Than Leading It

'' Being part of a team is more important than leading it ''

For the past 18 years of work experience , I worked in different fields and sectors and was given many chances to be either a member in different teams or a leader of many others either at my workplace or at work related to voluntary services in national committees . There were many times during which I wished that I was the leader of a team , I was only a member in . In the contrarily , there were times during which I wished to be only a member in a team I was leading ; all for different reasons due to different factors involved .Therefore I cannot totally agree that being part of a team is more important than leading it ! . It's not an " always " case . As I mentioned above it depends on many complex factors ; the task of the team , its vision , its objectives and the team's members expertise , skills , abilities , competencies and motives .More important of all is " me" ! my abilities , my experiences ,my technical skills , my leadership style , my behavioral style , my communication and s interpersonal skills and the relevance of all these attributes to the team's mission and members .

For me there were three different teamwork cases that I encountered and came up with different kinds of experiences and lessons learnt whether being a member of a team or a leader of another . They were as follows : A team in which my technical skills and expertise were just enough to make me an active member in the team but not to lead it . A collapsing team which failed to achieve its objectives and I was ordered to take over and to re-form the team with new members that could best serve its objectives . And a team that I was chosen to lead but the team members were officially chosen by their organizations as representatives and some unfortunately were not the best choice .

The first experience is with a team which is still functioning and is planning to finish all its tasks by 2014 . It's called the "Road Safety National Committee ". A multidisciplinary team which comprises of 12 persons chaired by the Minister of Interior himself. 11 are males , most of which are CEOs representing different national sectors ; Ministry of interior , Health , Education , Family Council , road constructions and others .I am the only female member and is there to represent the education and family sector . In that team definitely there is no way for me to be the team leader and will not even wish to for it's very political and a high profile team which has a major task to fitful the Qatar vision 2030 , so a powerful person of high authority should lead it . Another factor is the gender and culture issue . In that very critical team I don't think that the 11 male members will be happy being led by a woman . And most importantly is that I don't have neither the expertise nor the technical skills and knowledge in road safety policies to lead that team. But being in the committee for almost two years I consider myself a good member since I contribute with suggestions and research based ideas of initiatives and interventions that could help raising public's road safety awareness and reducing road accidents among the youth . In this team , I do agree that it's better to be a member of a team than to lead it . "As we advance in life, we learn the limits of our abilities." 1

The second experience was with a collapsing team which failed to achieve its objectives within the time fame given and I was ordered to take over and to re-form the team with new members that could best serve its objectives . It was the first assignment I was given when I joined the Supreme Council For Family Affairs in 2010 . It was a great challenge for me ; the first task given to me , the members of the team had more experiences and had been at work years before me and the task itself was not essay .It was writing report to the UN about childhood status in Qatar .In my first meeting with them , I played the role of the " good listener ' leader listening to the reasons of their failure as a team to finish the report on time . It turned out that they were not motivated to work in that team because of the leader whom they believed was a very snoopy and selfish person who always got the credit of success for herself from their previous experience with her .This was enough for me to try to play it right . First , I drew their attention to how important this report was to the country as it should reflect its efforts in children rights , so the credit of success will go to the country not to the leader nor to the team . Then , I assured them that I prefer to keep them all in the team , but adding two new members will be of a great value to the team ; one was from the international public relation and the other was a graphic designer . Throughout my meetings with them I looked for the best in each one , broke the team assignment into small tasks and allocated each task to member including myself and encouraged them to finish within a specific time frame. I even offered to help the members in their tasks if needed and promised them to have a meeting with the General Manger once the report is over to acknowledge each one for his or her contribution in the report . It really worked. All members worked on their part within the timeframe and several meetings were held to share feedback over the prepared part and finally succeeded in submitting the report on time . During that time I felt very happy that I was the leader of the team , I worked as a facilitator and a monitor whom they were happy to work with and in my opinion this is what leadership is all about . '' it's amazing what can be accomplished when nobody cares about who gets the