Big Team, Little Me – My Internship With a Group

“Big TEAM, little me.” The baseball team at my high school always chanted this mantra to remind themselves that the accomplishments of the whole group were more important than any one person’s individual achievements. It’s catchy, right? Who knew that it could be applied outside of the sports world?

At Affect, people are assigned to different accounts and work together on their tasks as a team to produce incredible results for our clients. At the staff meeting this morning, I watched as everyone gave their update about the accounts they work on. No one said, “I did this,” or “I secured this coverage.” Instead the word “we” was extremely popular. All recognition was due to the team instead of individuals.

The reason I even feel that this is worth blogging about is because I started to think back to school. As students, we always dreaded group projects. In every group, there would be the people who do work and the people who do nothing except talk about how much they hate the class or professor. At the end of each project, we always had a chance to evaluate our group members. I always filled these out honestly so that everyone would get the grade they deserved, and I admit that sometimes I filled them out with a little too much honesty. It was a way to make sure I got the recognition I thought I deserved, a good grade. I was less concerned about truly succeeding as a group.

So this brings me back to the “big TEAM, little me” mentality.  In an agency, everyone works together on projects. If a client is satisfied, you don’t tell them exactly what aspects of the project you worked on to make yourself sound better. Likewise, if a client happened to be dissatisfied, you wouldn’t tell them it was because one person on the team wasn’t pulling their weight. It’s just unprofessional, and the client really wouldn’t care. Luckily, I work at an agency where everyone contributes, and no one coasts along. All of our little “me” assignments contribute to the big “TEAM” picture and overall success of the agency.

It’s really important for me – and anyone in the professional world – to remember going forward that I’m an important member of the team, and if it was a job for only one person, the project wouldn’t have been assigned to a group. Succeed as a Big Team.

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Tagged as: Affect, baseball, group project, Internship, New York Intern Project, team