Date: Sunday, June 21th 2015

Participants (from 9 countries):

Team A-Panel PRO: Abdel, Huong, Leandro, Jami, Lu Kun, Sidi

Team B-Panel CON: Cheska, Rick, Amine, Johny

Team C-AUDIENCE: Andre, Sunita

Host: Rick

Moderator: Marwa

Panel PRO summary:

When some people study in groups, they can help each other to understand the subject and it may help everyone to widen their perspective by listening to one another.
People need other people to survive.
Society needs everyone to perform their respective duties in order to keep it running.
Even in sports that are a single-player sport, it's not 100% individual sport. It still needs the second player.
Even Kings need consultants and right-hand personnel to be a successful king.
While working in a team, thoughts and ideas flow more freely and people can use this to make their job or projects in a more efficient way.
When you are trying to meet a deadline and you haven't finished or done your task, you can ask for help from your co-workers or colleagues.
History has shown that the Human Being is a social species and our successful survival is always dependent on other humans’ work.
When studying new languages, we need other people to obtain knowledge from or to practice with. We cannot learn or improve our speaking or communication skills all by ourselves.
Buildings and cities are not built by one person; it’s the result of a team work.

Panel CON summary:

Some teams need the leadership of some key people in order to be successful.
Sometimes, the success of a team is built on the individual performance of some key people.
When you work with a large number of people, work could turn into a mess because everyone would want to submit their inputs and it could create confusion.
When you work with a reduced team, results can come out faster and efficiently. The less people you depend on, the faster your schedule would go.
Teamwork is extremely important but:

a. Any successful organization, team, group of people, community, company or movement, you will realize it was first initiated by one person. Innovation, initiative and inspiration are critical aspects of leadership.
b. A Successful organization needs a leader because he or she will introduce motivation, mentorship, guidance, direction, and encouragement, even in the face of risk and possible failure.. These qualities are required of a leader or individual to turn a team of people into an efficient and effective team., to face their fears and to strive towards an overarching goal.
c. Successful leadership is accomplished in an individual level.
d. It takes a person to form a team and to make it work.
e. A group of people without leadership may not do much or anything at all.

Is a process which starts with an individual: an individual thinks about it, that individual initiates it and the team or group would support it and would see it accomplished.
All the major inventions in life started as an individual’s idea.
If one person undertakes a job, project or task by himself/herself, if he or she successfully does it, he or she would be the sole beneficiary of the rewards.
Working on team sometimes makes people lose their concentration and therefore, they find it difficult to finish their work.
Working alone would allow us to manage our times and schedule according to our personalities and skills.
Sometimes, while working in a group, you relay on decisions which may not convince you or maybe you depend on decisions which are not taken wisely.
In cases where something goes wrong inside a team o group, people tend to avoid recognizing their fault or it could even be difficult to identify where the mistake was made.

AUDIENCE summary:

Sunita remained undecided.
Andre remained undecided.

Both panels did an outstanding job presenting their arguments therefore the audience couldn’t decide.

For breaking the tie, the moderator was asked to choose the winner:

Marwa chose the panel CON (team B) as the winner. Congratulations team B! Thanks so much everyone for participating!

Below are the links to listen to this debate:

Listen online:

Download:

Team work versus individual performance - Recording file - June 21th

For people who did not join the live, feel free to contribute the ideas in the comment blanks below.