Teamwork Makes for Better Solutions

Bristow employees live our values every day because it's who they are, and that's what makes Bristow unique. This article highlights Maintenance Inspector Rodrigo Sória from Bristow’s Brazil operations. Sória knows the value of teamwork and collaborates with his team every day to deliver quality service to Bristow’s clients.

What does teamwork mean to you?

Teamwork means working together within a group of people who are dedicated to carrying out a task in pursuit of a single goal. We share our unique experiences and opinions to create efficient and effective results.

Within my own team, I hold a meeting each day before we begin our work. I introduce the day's planning and distribute the tasks to each employee. During this meeting, we discuss the best strategy to carry out all our tasks safely, efficiently and with quality. Each task is very different and has a different timeline, so if someone completes their task and notices that someone else is still working, they help however they can to finish the task. We’re a team, so we work together.

Why is teamwork important?

Teamwork is critical because we can share our experiences, decrease our individual workload, complete tasks faster and increase the quality of the work product and service we deliver. A good team produces lots of benefits – for the individual, for the company and for the customer.

The whole is truly greater than the sum of our parts. When we work together, our skills and talents are multiplied to create a winning team.

How can we create a collaborative environment?

We can create a collaborative environment by cultivating trust within our teams, working toward the same goals, providing training for the team and developing good leadership. Good leaders make use of each member of the team, leveraging their individual abilities to contribute to the betterment of the entire team. A good leader is completely open to dialogue, and willing to listen to suggestions to make the team better. A good leader creates solutions and motivates the team to keep the work going. Even if we don’t have a leadership title, we can all be leaders within our own team by creating a collaborative environment and contributing to the team.

Tell us about a time that it would have been easy not to work with teamwork, but it ended up being beneficial.

Teamwork is fundamental in my current role. Every member of our team relies on each other to be collaborative to get the job done. Sometimes it may be easier to work by yourself, but teamwork can help lighten the load and for everyone and increase efficiency within our tasks. Everyone brings different knowledge and points of view to the table, which can help solve problems faster. As a team, we can accomplish so much more!

One day, my team was given the task to make an aircraft available for a client’s flight the next day. This was a very important flight for the client, so we needed to deliver. Unfortunately, a critical part was in customs, so we needed to wait for it. We worked strategically so that all the time we spent waiting for the part was put to good use to do other work on the aircraft and prepare so that installing the part was the last task in the process. Our maintenance team collaborated with the supply team to perform the task on time and deliver for our customer.