Teamwork

As reflect on my college experience and lessons learned, I can't help but think of a group of people who really defined my last undergrad semester of college.

Team Maven after presentations this April

A significant part of my last spring semester in 2012 (about 200 hours) was spent working on my capstone project, a campaign for Mojo Ad. Mojo is the Missouri School of Journalism's student-run advertising agency, where we work to create three full-service campaigns for a national client. While my team worked on T.G.I. Friday's, here are some things I learned from the experience. 

1. Importance of relationships

Building a relationship with each team member on an individual level was vital to operating in the group. Whether it was chatting with them about a class, knowing who their boyfriend was or being familiar with their other commitments, this information became relevant to their work style. While there is a threshold that can be crossed, having these relationships made people want to be together and meet to work on our campaign.

2. Patience

Work must be productive if you want it to be completed with ten people in the room. Discussions required little interruptions and patience to develop the great ideas, because if someone was in a rush or felt anxious, everyone could tell and the feeling spread. 

3. Being concise

Making your point directly in a group conversation instead of beating around the bush when talking is incredibly important. Being on my Mojo team taught me to articulate well and think of things in terms of the key takeaway instead of the process of doing it.

4. Working together instead of silo-ing off 

My Mojo team met so much not to discuss what everyone's roles were doing, but to do work then and there. Instead of somewhere to talk about what we would do, we would sit with 2-4 people and crank out the content after discussing its purpose. This is where teamwork shined, whether we were working on a Google doc or collaborating to make a video. 

Because of exhibiting these behaviors and presenting our work in an engaging manner, my team won the internal competition of the best campaign! I'm still in touch with most of them today, and four of us were at the Career Fair on behalf of Mizzou or a company they work for. Thanks to Mojo for a great experience!

Hannah, Taylor, me and Lauren at the Meet & Greet reception before the Career Fair