Teamwork

“You don’t inspire your teammates by showing them how amazing you are. You inspire them by showing them how amazing they are.” –Robyn Benincasa, World Champion Adventure Racer

                Teamwork can cause a great amount of success or ruin very successful athletes or player. Teamwork is very important in dance for many reasons, one being partnering. When you are partnering with someone you have to be able to connect and trust if you can’t trust your partner the dance or lift or move will never reach its full potential. Also with group dances, you have to work together to feel each other’s energy to know how to stay on time, and to match the dancers around you.

                Respect is one of the biggest parts of teamwork. You must respect your teammates and coach because when people feel disrespected they get discouraged and may even feel unwanted, once this starts people start to slack off and the negative work ethic is way more contagious than the positive work ethic is.

                Trust is also very important. If you can’t trust your teammates and tell them stuff and know they will be there for you it is going to not be as fun to go to practice. When teams work the best together is when they get along and know that no matter what their teammates will be there for them no matter what at the end of the day.

                Bonding makes team closer. You need to know your teammates and be comfortable around them to be able to perform at your highest ability and to reach your greatest amount of potential. Getting to know every single person on the team and have personal relationships with all of them usually makes teams come together quicker, and makes everyone more comfortable on the team, also leads to having more trust and respect. Plus it’s more fun when you know your teammates well.

                Encouragement. It is important to have great encouragement within a team; some nice motivational words to push you through the end, to keep you focused or even to just keep you working hard. Encouragement is not always an easy thing to do, when teams hit rough spots or less successful times, but it is necessary to get the team back to a more successful route.

                Leadership. Not just a captain or a coach but every team is going to have people that are natural leaders; you don’t need a label to be one. Leadership is not hard when the team is successful; it’s hard when the team is having a rough time. Great leaders are great even in the hard times. While being a leader you have to make sure every single person on the team know they are special and there is a reason they are on the team, they are a contributing member and that the team wouldn’t be the same without them. This may seem silly, reminding them they are special, what does that have to do with anything? Well knowing you help actually is motivation in its self. The cliché statement, “a team is only as strong as its weakest link,” is actually very true. The back row is what is pushing the front row to be better, and so on.

                Teams will always be more successful with great teamwork but that has to start with great teammates.