Teamwork and Interpersonal Skills
What this domain tests
The exam checks team roles, stages of team development, constructive communication, empathy, assertiveness, feedback, conflict handling and respect for diversity.
Core ideas
- Team vs group: a group shares a label; a team shares a goal, interdependent roles and mutual accountability.
- Tuckman stages: forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning. Conflict during storming is normal and should be worked through, not suppressed.
- Roles: leader, facilitator, implementer, checker and specialist. A team is weaker when everyone plays the same role.
- Empathy: understanding another person's position before responding. It is not agreement.
- Assertiveness: stating your view and needs clearly while respecting others. Aggression ignores others; passivity ignores yourself.
- Feedback: describe the situation, the behaviour and its impact, then invite a response. Avoid labels such as "careless".
- Conflict styles: avoid, accommodate, compete, compromise, collaborate. Collaboration works best when the issue matters and time allows.
- Diversity and meetings: respect language, gender, religion, disability and experience differences; arrive prepared and do not talk over others.
Worked example
Two technicians disagree about torque settings on a joint. One says, "You always rush." The other walks away. Better approach: separate the person from the problem, state the specification, check the manual, run a trial and record the result. Reasoning: the conflict is about a technical fact, not character. Using evidence turns a personal argument into a joint problem, and documenting the result prevents recurrence. This is collaboration, not compromise, because the correct setting is discovered rather than averaged.
Mark-losing traps
- Avoiding all conflict, which lets problems grow.
- Attacking the person instead of the issue.
- Agreeing in the meeting and complaining afterwards.
- Groupthink: nobody challenges a popular but wrong idea.
- Free-riding on shared team marks.