The post is developed in partnership with BetterHelp.

Tiny houses are often a shared dream at the heart of many couples. That said, designing and building your own tiny house is much more of a marathon than a sprint. It takes teamwork, compromise, perseverance, trust, commitment, and much more.

So, how does teamwork factor into building a tiny house? Read on to learn about the art of compromise and how you can apply it to your tiny house project!

Teamwork 101

Teamwork is a classic staple of corporate culture, with cubicle-laden offices featuring posters saying stuff like “teamwork makes the dream work.”

This cliché doesn’t offer all that much, however. After all, teamwork is a complex concept and not everyone may have the same shared vision.

Ultimately, teamwork is most effective when everyone is on the same page and has the same dream—say, designing and building a tiny house.

Teamwork on its own doesn’t have any purpose. Teamwork necessarily requires a goal, a task, a shared object—a sports team working together to try to win, a team of lawyers conferring with one another to develop the best strategy, etc.

Clichés and hackneyed sayings don’t really help us all that much. Fortunately, there are many helpful resources on teamwork available online nowadays, including those offered by BetterHelp.

Here are a few key aspects to teamwork:

• Don’t Do It All Yourself – A team is necessarily more than just yourself. If you try to do everything on your own, then you’re not leveraging the abilities of the entire team.

• Develop Trust and Commitment – In any kind of relationship, whether personal or professional, trust and commitment are vital. If you aren’t committed to a common goal, and you don’t have mutual trust, you are not going to get very far at all.

• Perseverance Is Key – It’s normal to struggle at some point when you’re working as part of team. What separates the best teams from the rest is their ability to maintain teamwork even during their lowest moments. Resilience and perseverance allow you to keep going, and you will naturally improve and get better along the way.

• Teamwork Demands Work – Teamwork is a pretty simple compound noun. Team + work. You can’t expect to have high-functioning teamwork without putting the work in.  

Now let’s dive into one other essential component of teamwork—the art of compromise.

The Art of Compromise

Compromise is absolutely crucial for teamwork to be effective. Whether you’re building a tiny home or doing anything else, you will need to learn to compromise in order to make everyone happy and successfully carry out your shared vision.

Establish Your Shared Vision

First off, you need to develop what exactly it is that your teamwork is trying to achieve. If you don’t have a clear-cut shared vision, you will likely get slowed down along the way, and misunderstandings are bound to arise.

The sooner you take this first step, the better. This can also be an incredibly exciting part of the project, i.e. when you are dreaming and aiming high. Just be sure that you’re on the same page as it will save you lots of grief down the line.

Know Each Other (and Yourselves)

You may not know your work partner or partners very well, or you may be best friends and/or lovers. Whatever the case, it’s always in your best interest to get to know each other better. What makes that person tick? How do they respond to constructive criticism? What is their vision of the project? These are the types of questions you must be asking yourself.

As you get to know each other better, you should also be sure to stop and reflect and take the time to do a self-assessment. What are your strengths and weaknesses as a teammate? What can you bring to the table? Do you have problems with your ego getting in the way?

The more honest everyone is with everyone else and themselves, the better. The project will go much more smoothly when everyone is familiar with each other.

Don’t Be Dogmatic

This is a tough one. It’s important to be able to draw lines in the sand. It’s essential to know when you shouldn’t compromise, when you absolutely know you’re right and that this is what would be best for the entire team. That’s part of being a leader in general.

That said, you will also have to learn to not be dogmatic. Put simply, being dogmatic means it’s got to be “your way or the highway.” If you are completely inflexible and dominate the entire process, your teammates will likely come to resent you. And how well do you think the project can really go when there’s resentment in the air?

Learning to find a balance between being self-assured and non-dogmatic is one of the most important aspects of compromise by far.

Teamwork and Tiny Homes

When it comes to building a tiny home with someone, it goes without saying that teamwork is essential. Keeping in mind the above lessons about compromise will prove incredibly helpful, so think to:

• Establish your shared vision,
• Get to know each other better, and
• Refrain from being dogmatic

Edwin and Clara were only students when they began dreaming about living in the woods together. A tiny home offered them the possibility of doing so, and thus they were on the same page (the same vision) from the start.

By working together on the home, they got to know each other better than ever, and their relationship really blossomed.

Finally, they both recognized when they should accept the other person’s point of view rather than clinging stubbornly to their own.

Conclusion

Conceiving and building a tiny home with someone requires a great deal of teamwork and compromise. If you try to do everything yourself and are stubbornly dogmatic, you’re likely to fail.

Instead, you want to cultivate a strong relationship by getting to know each other better, establishing your shared vision, developing trust and commitment, and persevering when times get tough.

If you do so, you can leverage teamwork and compromise to create the tiny home of your dreams!

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