Are team-building experiences important? Do a group of employees really need to get along or like each other in order to produce good work? Of course, most believe the answer to be yes, but I think it depends upon the work environment and how interdependent each player is on one another. I, personally, have always wanted to get along with everyone at work. I don't believe it is necessary for everyone to be best friends or to spend countless hours outside of work together, but mutual respect is vital.

A few years ago, the company for which I worked required that we each take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to devalue, I mean understand how our personalities are fixed and how we might best work together. Because I needed this type of test to figure out I was an extrovert who likes to think and knows she is intuitive and perceptive. Basically, it means I am an Explorer Inventor. See? Now you will know how to work with me.

Another company I worked for asked that each of us take the StrengthFinders assessment test. Like I needed a test to tell me I was a strategic thinker or that I liked to talk to people. Some things you just know about yourself and if you are true to self and observant of others, you should be able to determine how to get the best out of both (you and others).

We live and work in a time when it is easy to just send an email and withdraw from voice-to-voice or face-to-face contact. many would decry the need for such communications for IT seems to have taken over. I, frankly, miss it. I miss the chance to watch a face as I tell a story or understand what a gap in conversation sometimes means, for it isn't always what is said, but rather what isn't. And that cannot be read into an email or interpreted in a text message.

Today, as I look about my office at co-workers that I appreciate, respect, and genuinely love or around my dinner table at the children whom have taught me so much about being a person who can let go of pride and understand the value of hard work, I have also learned the most important lessons in life and work. It isn't about having the perfect team or the perfect love, it is about doing your best and inspiring others to do theirs. And if it all falls into place, pride can't settle in too comfortably and happiness doesn't have a chance to escape.

But my intuitive, thinking self already knew that.

by rayannethorn