Team work is simply demonstrating what experience you have of working within a team. Think of examples which will tell the interviewer of the behaviours you demonstrated as part of that team that enabled you and them to work as affectively as possible. Clearly teams need to pull in the right direction through alignment to common goals and objectives. Teams need to share information and decide work accordingly they also need to delivery a quality product regardless of the individual.

Examples of positive behaviours within the team work competency include building a team that works well together, using (and identifying) the teams different strengths and weaknesses, the inclusion people, recognising skills of team members, sharing idea and information, prompting listening and understanding, playing your part in the delivery, checking what your doing in the context of the rest of team and organisation, planning both resources and management of activities.

The negative behaviours to avoid within the team work competency would be for example, working in isolation to the detriment of the task, not talking or sharing ideas, not seeking out others view, not taking into account other team members contribution.

Different roles will of course require different levels of team work to be demonstrate. As you get up to team leader or manager the desired behaviours at interview will be more aligned to prompting team work and how you may have created and managed a high performing team.

Team work competency based interview questions and answers

Tell me about a time when it was necessary to work with others to solve a business problem? What steps did you take to understand the problem ? How did you work as part of the team ? What was the outcome ?

Working together is at the heart of this answer.

Demonstrating good team work people skills such as, respecting and valuing the ideas of others (and their perspectives), working towards common goals (such as the organisations objectives or targets), making best use of the skills that others bring to the problem and ensuing all team members are listened to are important. You need to share ideas and solution with the team and also accept constructive criticism. When change is made, it’s well communicated and understood and importantly success is shared with the team with any lessons understood.

I have further explored the team work competency while reviewing the United Nations approach to competency based interviews.