Team players have one thing in common: the desire and ability to make decisions with a greater goal in mind. This means setting aside your ego to find the best way forward.
Even if you are at the beginning of your career path and have little experience, consider your participation in a team or campus group, and how you contributed to its success, as well as how you learned to work with others during this experience.
The best way to analyze information, evaluate your own work, and come up with new ideas is to think beyond yourself. Take time to really absorb the information that colleagues and managers share
And make sure to reflect these ideas. When communicating in the workplace, being attentive to what is being said is key to reaching goals and creating relationships.
Without a sense of how your work in a STEM job will translate in the real world, you cannot put your soft skills to real use.
Being able to apply ideas to a range of situations and effectively analyze results shows a big-picture approach to your vocation.
To solve big problems in STEM-related fields such as engineering, software development, research, computer science, or biotech, you must be able “think outside of the box.”
This means identifying the problem your work is meant to solve and presenting multiple solutions you will prototype and test until the right solution is reached. Being willing to take a different perspective can make all the difference in making the best decisions.
Finding the right balance of realism and optimism, humility and ambition, and strength of mind with flexibility is key to being a strong member of any team.