Perseverance and Teamwork: Traits and Skills for Academic and Career Success

Running Head: Academic Essay
Academic Essay
Perseverance and Teamwork

Academic Essay
Manifestation always relies on to sticking with it and it is about finishing what a person
started. With the help of perseverance, one can achieve creative and spiritual states which one
might not experience otherwise. Sometimes, lack of it might make a person suffer in
unhappiness. In the face of distractions, resistance and disappointment, one can only be saved
by perseverance (Datu, Valdez , & King, 2015). In the same way, the teamwork strategy is
also being used in many organizations. One big motive to use team work is for translating
organizational values to certain rules which are created for team members only. This helps
the team members to create self-managed identification with the goals of the organization
(Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2016).
Perseverance is a trait which should be possessed by all the students. All the successful
students have this trait. It makes a person refuse to give up despite of all the difficulties a
person is facing. Perseverance always will make a person see his failure and learn from his
mistakes. It also empowers the students to keep on trying until the goal is attained. Students
who possess this trait always values the hard work, hone their problem-solving skills and
always takes the responsibility of the progress they get at their academic career
(Madhlangobe, Chikasha, Mafa, & Kurasha, 2014). They never make any kid of excuses in
case of their failures and also, they do not blame others.
Perseverance that is related to the students is always rooted in the domain of the social and
emotional learning. It stems from CASEL’s social and emotional learning competencies.
They are self-awareness, self-management and decision making. It also includes Social
awareness and relationship skills (Williams & DeSteno, 2008). They help in building the
productive relationships with the teachers and the other students. Few aspects of
perseverance’s of the students can also be socio cultural as they relate to socio economic
variables among the students. CASEL is collaborative for academic, social and emotional
learning. It actually is a leading organization in United States for the advancement and
development of academic, social and emotional competence for all the students.
There are four tips with the help of which the students can learn the trait of perseverance and
can succeed at their universities.
Encourage Positive mindfulness: Students usually get demotivated and think that they are not
good enough or they are left far behind. Such type of thinking may hamper the student’s will
power to succeed. Students should be reminded that they will never feel or say such negative
things to their friends, especially who are struggling with problems. Teachers or other
students should reframe them into positive ones. This positivity helps students think that they
are good enough and eventually they will succeed. Mindfulness should be practiced to
encourage student’s judgement and positivity (Brunt, 2015).
Efforts should be praised and not intelligence: People should believe in boosting self-
confidence of the students and academic performance. Recent studies have shown that
perseverance is hindered by these kinds of praises if intelligence is given more importance.
Teachers mainly should focus on how hard the student has tried to succeed and they should
encourage students to break their tasks into smaller parts to achieve perseverance (Colloques,
2016).
Failures and mistakes should be seen as a growth perspective: Students who are
perfectionists, they have more fear of failure. They avoid giving up easily on the subjects or
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Academic Essay
activities. A few students equate their failure with the lack of intelligence and take everything
on their self-esteem. Taking matter of fact approach, students should be encouraged to
analyse what went wrong and seek help whenever needed.
Students should be given chance to struggle: Sometimes teachers are tempted to rush in to
help the students when they come to know that they are facing problems in the assignment.
Although, struggle is important in order to build self-confidence and perseverance. The urge
to intervene should be resisted by the teachers so that the student learns the trait of
perseverance on their own.
An approach called teamwork is not at all new to people. It is rather historic and probably
older that the phenomenon of formal organization. Its benefits were known by the people in
1920’s only. In today’s world, a team player is known to be as skilled person and is capable
of becoming a exceptional employee. Team is actually a number of people with skills who
are committed to the common purpose and have a common set of performance goals
(McEwan, Ruissen, Eys, Zumbo, & Mark R. Beauchamp, 2017).
Teamwork is defined as the joint action done by the group of people in which every person
subordinates his or her interests and opinions to the utility and efficiency of the group. This
clearly does not mean that the work of an individual is not of any significance (Adams, Cain,
Giraud, & Stedman, 2012). It means that work can be done efficiently and effectively when
one individual goes beyond to work in teams. When all the members of the team harmonize
their contributions and their goals towards work, the effective team work can be produced
which will eventually take the team to the common goal they share.
It is very important for the students to learn the function in a team environment in order to
learn teamwork when they enter into the world of jobs. Researches have been made where it
is found that students learn best from the tasks which involves tasks and social interactions. If
instructor is making students learn this skill of teamwork, they must recognize the difference
between the individual and group of people working in teams (Kamarudin & Rehman, 2012).
School practices, often, emphasizes upon the competition and individual achievement over
collaboration achievement. But by using cooperative learning for some of the activities,
instructors might develop problem solving skills and social skills in the individuals so that
they can communicate and make decisions whenever needed (E. Asyali, Saatcioglu, & Cerit,
2014). Although, cooperative learning does not actually help in developing teamwork skills.
But in case of the cooperative learning, if it is structured properly, it can help the students to
learn how to work in groups as well.
Two founders, Mueller and Fleming in the year 2001, found out that teachers play an
important role in setting up conditions for the group learning and enhancing teamwork in
students. Although, this approach had some problems associated with it. The teachers were
uncomfortable with the collaborative approach. Then in the year 2002, Ettington and Camp
found out that teachers provide proper planning in order to make improvement in the
teamwork skills in students (Holloway, 2004). Teachers must design the group tasks with
important consideration of the skills development. Then teachers should create groups which
requires skills for the task. Then monitoring of the groups should be done by the teachers
only in order to check whether the students are learning the skills or not. Finally, evaluation
must be done by the teachers and based on the evaluation, rewards should be given so that the
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