Teamwork Step 4

Teamwork: Working cooperatively with others towards achieving a shared goal.

Step 4: I work well with others by supporting them if I can do so

Outcomes

To achieve Step 4, learners will show that they are willing to support others, but with an awareness of when they can.

Earlier steps have focused on the building blocks of working with others including behaving appropriately and being reliable. This step builds on this further by thinking about supporting others too.

Learners need to be able to:

Understand what it means to support others
Understand why supporting others is important and helpful
Recognise when you can support with something

Introduction

Supporting others is about helping them to complete a task.
This might happen in one of a few ways:
- Sharing tasks that benefit from there being two or more people involved.
- Providing advice or showing how to do something if you have higher expertise and they ask for it.
- Taking on tasks if you have time available while someone else still has lots to do.
- Providing encouragement if someone seems unsure or is lacking in confidence.

Skill Starter

How would you help?

Give learners different problems that might arise in sports or outdoor activities such as, someone's shoelace comes undone mid-match, someone has forgotten the equipment they need, someone does not know how to do the skill being learnt that session.

Ask them to talk with a partner about how they would support in those situations. Then group them up with another pair to share their ideas.

5 mins

Paired activity

Discussion

Teach & Apply

It is important to try and support other people because then your team are more likely to be able to get tasks finished on time and to a good standard.
By showing that you will support others when they need it, you are more likely to be offered support when you need it.
Supporting others is an excellent way to use our skills, and to help others to build their skills too.

Although it usually is helpful and welcome to support someone else, there are a few things you should think about:
- Do you have the expertise to help out the other person?
- Would it be dangerous for you to try to get involved?
- Do they want support? It is always good to check before you get involved.

If someone does not want your support, then it is critical not to get upset about it because it is probably for a good reason.

Optional Activity

Tail Tag Battle

Split the group into 2 teams. Each player is given two ‘tails’ (e.g. bibs) which they tuck in their waistband. The two teams must try to get as many tails as they can from their opponents and put them in their waistband. When a player has had all their ‘tails’ stolen, they become motivators and cheer on their team from the side line.

Award points for helping team mates at the appropriate time, such as: giving a team mate one of their tails; protecting a team mate from the other team by defending them, helping them run faster, distracting the other team player etc.

When the time is up, the team with the most Teamwork points wins.

Extra challenges:

Include more than two teams to battle against each other, with fewer players in each team
Increase or reduce the number of tails per team
Let teams decide from the beginning how many tails each of their players should start with, e.g. fewer tails for a player who is more difficult to catch
Have different colour tails so players can only take from the same colour as theirs, or only from a different colour
Alter the time length of the game and the playing area

15 mins

Group activity

Active

Reflection & Assessment

Embed these strategies across your teaching and coaching to help learners apply what they’ve learnt.

Remind learners that they should think not just about completing their own tasks, but also about how they can support others in their teams too. Good examples can be shared and rewarded.

Use these ideas for ways of assessing this skill step to help you check learners’ understanding and confidence.

This can be assessed through a structured group activity which relies on learners supporting one another to complete the task.
Ask these reflective questions:
- What does it mean to support other people?
- Why is it important to try to support other people?
- When should you not try to support someone else?