Sunday, March 2, 2008

Mysteries of 'being a good team player'

"My team is not happy with me. They have told me that I am not a good team player", said the young engineer. The latter part of his statement triggered alarms in my mind. Over the years, I have learnt that when it comes to receiving negative feedback, one is in a much better situation if the negative feedback is about some particular action/task that one has done. In that case one can understand the mistake made and try to do better/avoid it next time. However, if one receives feedback like 'you have an attitude problem' or 'you don't have passion for work' or 'you are not a team player' then the situation becomes much more tricky. Firstly, it is often very difficult to figure out what exactly one did wrong. Secondly, it is usually very difficult to change these impressions/perceptions (regardless of what one does).

Let us come back to our young engineer. What happened in this case was that the team/ work group that he was part of decided to on a picnic to a neighbouring state. Our friend did not go along with the team for the picnic. He did not want to go out of station for very strong (but very personal) reasons. However, he covered for the team during that period by putting in extra hours in office- including many night shifts. This lead to a peculiar situation. Our engineer felt that he displayed 'team work' as he had put in additional effort - enabling the team to minimise work disruption while they enjoyed the picnic. Some members in the team felt that our engineer did not display 'team work' as he did not join the team for the picnic (or as he declined to 'play with the team' !). So what could have been a 'win-win' arrangement degenerated into a 'lose-lose' situation.

There are many dimensions here -the possible differences in the understanding of even very commonly used terms & their adverse impact, power of metaphors in our thinking and of course our primary topic - mysteries of 'being a good team player'. It has been argued that human thought processes are mainly metaphorical and that we understand and experience things and concepts (e.g. the concept of 'team work' in our case here) in the network of their metaphorical affinities.

The underlying metaphor in the case of 'team work' is essentially that from the field of sports - a sports team. While this appears rather straight forward, there could many complications here. There are many types of sports/games. The type of 'team work' that is required varies widely from game to game. The type of team work required (and hence what makes someone a good team player in that context) is different in the case of a soccer team as compared to that of a cricket team, a relay team (in athletics) or a Davis cup (tennis) team. Now the amount of interdependency among the players in a soccer team is higher as compared to that in a cricket team and much higher as compared to a relay team. In the case of a relay team, what is required to be a good team player is essentially to run his/her part of the race as fast as possible and to exchange the baton well with the other team member(s) involved. In the case of a Davis cup team, all that is required from a team member in a singles match is to win that match and get a valuable point for the team/country. Obviously, the same type of approach will not make one a good team player in a soccer team!

Now let us take a closer look at 'team work' in a workplace context. As we can see from the above discussion, when different people say 'team work' or 'team player' in a workplace context, they might be using the sports metaphor (team) with very different types of games in mind. This can lead to a lot of misunderstanding. Actually, there are additional factors involved here that could complicate the situation even more. The tacit definition of 'team work' in highly individualistic cultures could be significantly different from that in collectivist cultures. It has also been observed that there could be gender related differences in the understanding of what makes one a good team player. Part of this could be because of the fact that young boys and young girls tend to prefer playing different types of games (e.g. 'war games' and 'doll games' - to use a stereotyped example)! By the way, it is interesting to note that we can learn a lot about an individual/ team/ organization from the metaphors/expressions they use to describe key experiences.



Jo said...

I think you make a valuable point. When we receive blanket rejecting criticism, it is difficult to respond or even apologise effectively.

Roy Baumeister of Florida has shown the devastating impact of rejection. We look in a mirror less if a "computer" declines to play a game with us.

I suspect, and few of us could process see this when we are at the receiving end, is that the group was mirroring what they felt. They he rejected them.

The dynamic here was that he felt the initial role conflict as rejecting (they didn't appreciate his dilemma), he subtly communicated that, they responded.

Hats off to him for seeking mentoring. Few of us could have done that calmly.

My thoughts are that an older and wiser head needs to intervene to re-establish group loyalties, and when the bruising subsides, help anyone interested to imagine alternative ways they could have demonstrated loyalty to each other.

What do you think?

Prasad Kurian said...

Thank you very much for the comment.

It is interesting to consider the implications of 'individuality' of the team members on team effectiveness. Logically speaking, recognizing/celebrating/leveraging the uniqueness of the team members can contribute immensely to team effectiveness and individual happiness.

For this to be successful, there is at least one important condition to be met. "Roles for each of the team members need to be deigned to suit their uniqueness" AND "the roles should 'add up' to the team deliverable".

While it can be argued that the 'add up' mentioned above need not be restricted to 'simple addition' (i.e. that it can also include the 2+2=5 kind of synergistic 'add up'!) and that the team deliverable is not always 'cast in stone' (i.e. that the team deliverable can often be negotiated to some extent to match the team strengths), in many contexts it is still not easy to ensure that the 'condition for success' mentioned above is met - defining roles, managing interrelationships and combining outputs are often quite complex and messy. Of course, the situation would get more complicated if the team members perceive that the different roles in the team are not of the same status/importance.

Another important aspect here is the nature of the team deliverable and hence the nature of the interdependencies in the team. One problem with a generic name like 'team' is that it can stand for very different types of groups that have been put together to achieve very different kind of objectives/deliverables. So the degree of work related interdependencies among the members in the team can vary widely. It could be further complicated by the tendency to put together a team (since 'team work' is fashionable!) where a 'team' is not really required to achieve the objective (i.e. where a group of people working independently - with someone synchronizing their outputs - can achieve the objective)! It has also been observed that sometimes teams get formed part of the process/strategy of 'throwing people at problems'. This can lead to situations where the team is not even clear about the team deliverable. Of course, if the team deliverable itself is not known/ understood, formulating/understanding individual roles in the team is likely to become a 'designed to fail' exercise!

cool geek said...

Not being a good team player doesn't harm much but acting too smart does here is my personal experience