Knowing How to Stand Up for Yourself

Why the word “no” is so powerful

It is said that teamwork is one of the key soft skills that you need to acquire. Teamwork is allowing all parties of the group to express their ideas and then follow up on them. It is mostly done by brainstorming so that everyone can be on the same path to find a proper outcome or solution to a given task.

But what happens if you are in a team where a member thinks he/she is the “alpha”? Remember that any group may have a leader. But being one does not give the person the right to control and mandate things to be done, it gives an opportunity to lead the way/the path, taking into consideration all of the team members.

Fortunately, this situation has only happened to me once. It was for a college project where we had to build a boat made out of cardboard. The challenge was that it had to navigate across a pool. Some friends and I joined in because it seemed like a cool and fun experience. But it was the first time we had a new friend join in. Of course, we were firstly pleased since more brains are better than one right? Wrong. It was all going downhill.

Being able to work within various teams is a must in any workforce, so it’s great that you could practice this skill early on in life.

With this being said, we had all decided to try to work with this new member. But it was getting harder and harder to do so. While brainstorming, we all mentioned possible and way more creative ideas but they were always getting turned down. We were all trying to be considerate but it was enough.

Just to put a name to this person, let’s say Leo was demanding we all do this and that. That it was way better his way than anyone else’s. Instead of enjoying the process of this project, everything became tedious.

In a few days, I had enough. I did not know how to share my thoughts with Leo but I just had to. My best option there was to talk to him one to one. I said that he could not continue to work like that. It was a team killer, I mentioned how I felt and how others were feeling because of their ideas not being heard.

In one way or another, he understood! We did pull off the project and even though we did not win, we had a blast. This story, fortunately, had a good ending.

This was one of my first crystal clear examples of why we should always speak our minds and not sit in the back just waiting for something else to happen. Even though this was for a school project years ago, it helped me to value everyone in the team and to say NO if someone or something is killing the group’s vibes.

You may see something similar in your work, or even in your family, anywhere you go, have the confidence to say no.

You never know, it may lead to the team's full potential.

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