Why do 50% of our IT projects fail? This is one of the issues of the Minsk meetup (informal meetings of interested people to discuss various topics). The main answer was: “Lack of team.” Isn’t it true that 50% is a lot? What is the absence of a team? Who sabotages teamwork? The ability to work in a team is such an important characteristic when applying for a job in the civilized world that future candidates are recommended to put this quality first when interviewed. And employers are more likely to choose an employee with good teamwork skills than with high personal professional skills. Why? Because, despite high personal professional skills, one person can ruin the work of an entire team! Do we know how to work in a team? Here is an illustrative example of our citizen who immigrated to another continent and received a decent job in accordance with his higher education. In his words, a strange person, an organizational psychologist, testing or talking every Friday with each employee, tells him every time: “You work well on personal projects, but you have problems in team work: you are proud, focused only on your personal results , you create tension among other team members." And he proudly says: “Yes, I am like that.” And he is very surprised why they tell him the same thing every time. Probably, a naive psychologist hopes that an educated person will still ask: “How can I change this?” But he doesn't ask that. He asks why they keep a psychologist on this team. My opinion is that they keep a psychologist there in order, firstly, to make maximum use of the employees’ strengths and smooth out their negative influence (for example, who to keep on the team and who to stay away from it) . Secondly, there is hope that a person will not only be proud of himself, but also want to develop. Thirdly, coordinated work of a team is not an easy process, but its effectiveness is many times higher than individual work. I suggest you try on yourself and your team the Bodynamic F8 model or 8 functions that are vital for the team to work effectively and not be a group of dissatisfied people taking away a common cause like “a swan, a crayfish and a pike.” Team members know their place in the team, i.e. they know what and why they are doing (in the example given there are problems with this point), they willingly provide support and care to others (and not “we have a female team, with all the ensuing consequences”) are capable show initiative (and not “my house is on the edge ...”) are able to determine the value of these initiatives (and not “the game is not worth the candle”); according to my observations, we are doing much better with the devaluation of initiatives than with the initiatives themselves; they understand the long-term prospects of their team’s work (and we are not small people, just bolts in a big machine) are able to take on real work (and not just argue why it is needed) are able to adjust their plans to the plans of the team, if necessary (and not “I have my own work”) are able to solve problems and improve the situation in the process of conflict (and not answer “so I won’t do anything at all now...”) Well, how? Can we work as a team??