Maria: Rory. do you like teamwork?

Rory: I suppose it depends on the nature of the team. If you've got clear goals and good leadership as well as the resources to accomplish your task, then yes, I do like teamwork. But if there is a lack of one of these things, then it can be very problematic.

Maria: When was the last time you worked with a team?

Rory: Actually, it was last weekend. I was in a conference in Voronezh, and one of the things we had to do was a question and answer session. And it wasn't just individuals answering questions. We had to work with the people next to us to come up with good answers to the questions the audience asked us.

Maria: Do you like to work or study with others or just by yourself?

Rory: I like to study by myself more. When it comes to work I don't have much choice. I have to work with other people. We work in a big team here. When it comes to studying, I prefer myself because I just think it's hard to have a shared sense of dedication and vision to what you were doing that way.

What's the most important thing for teamwork?

Rory: Um, I think I mentioned it already when I talked about goals and leadership and resources. But if I have to choose one of these things, I would definitely choose leadership. I think it's the most important thing ever to have either one person or a group of people who are in charge and who can take control of the situation and make things work.

Maria: Rory, do you like being a leader?

Rory: Uh, most of the time, yes. But I think it's important to be careful of the toxic effects of leadership when you're constantly in control and making top level decisions, that can have a detrimental impact on your personality, and it can maybe make you a little bit less tolerable to be around. So, yes, but I have to be careful about that.

Maria: Could you tell the world, are you bossing people around?

Rory: Uh, I always think that's in the eye of the beholder, isn't it? I think I try and be as fair as possible, but other people might have a different opinion. I hope that if they felt like they were being bossed around, then they could tell me,

Maria: Do you think teamwork is important?

Rory: Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's essential for society as a whole. And then in teams, it's also quite essential that people learn to live and work together towards common goals. So, yeah, it's beyond important, actually.

Maria: Rory, thank you very much for your answers.

Questions and Answers (Part 3)

Maria: Rory, what are the advantages of working as a team?

Rory: Well, I think if you could encapsulate it in one thing, it would be sharing. So you share your resources and that means that you can accomplish things more effectively because you have more. You share your time so people contribute what time they have and that builds up the amount of time that's available. There's also some abstract things like shared expertise as well. So you have different experts working on a problem. Then you should be able to come up with a solution more effectively. And that really helps counteract the disadvantages, I think.

Maria: Do you think companies should encourage a culturally diverse work environment?

Rory: I think that depends on the company. I think there are some firms that benefit from having sort of a homogenous culture like security, for example. So if you have people that need to communicate easily and effectively and communications breakdowns are not something that can be overcome quickly, then you need to be able to do this and cultural diversity is not such an important thing. On the flip side, places could benefit from heterogeneous work culture. So, for example, a school like ours, we have people from all over the world. And if we're teaching English, that's actually quite important because it's not just people in Australia and England that speak English, it's people from lots of different countries. So it's kind of important for people to hear these different accents and different kinds of English. So that can be quite beneficial. So all in all, I feel like it depends on what the purpose of the company is.

Maria: Does team work always lead to higher productivity and project success?

Rory: If it's done well, then yeah. There's a term in business called the Pareto Principle, which is, like, 80 percent of the work is done by 20 percent of the people. So if you have five people on the team, then one person is going to be doing most of the work for that team. And so in that sense, I think it might lead to higher productivity for that one individual. But for the group as a whole, I'm not so sure, because there are always some people who don't do so much work. It's not necessarily because they're lazy. It's just because maybe one person takes more control than other people and that once you identify these 20 percent of people, then it's important to either leave them alone to work and produce this wealth of material or support them as it's appropriate. But that's just individuals. That's not whole teams. So you have to be careful about how it's set up, basically.