Job Discussion Forums

[merlin]

"A Team Player"
This little phrase means different things to different people.

When I say it it means that a person places the needs of the organization/team over the needs of one person. so when playing sports it means you pass the ball, play defense, do assists and other things that don't give you the glory of points but do help the team win.

Oftentimes when a person gets into a leadership role they begin to confuse the needs of the team with their needs. An extreme case is the "mother hen" manager who wants to keep all her little chicks in line and sees any wandering away from her watchful eye as being "anti-team". The "mother hen" confuses her motherly instincts and needs to control and nurture others with the needs of the organization. Oftentimes (but not always) this is an older woman without children or grandchildren to take care of.

Then there is the "good 'ol boy" meaning of "team player". In this case it means you keep your trap shut and/or cover something up. Don't nark. In extreme cases like Oliver North you're expected to be the fall guy.

I personally agree to participate in the first one, much to the consternation of managers who believe the other two are the only ways to be a "team player".

How about you? How many other meanings for "team player" can we come up with?

[denise]

If it involves working with the other teachers to the advantage of the students, yes, of course.

If it involves working with a management firm for which I have no respect and which doesn't seem to give a damn about the students (or the teachers, for that matter...), then no. The students are my priority, and I will happily work with people who have the same priority.

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[ChinaMovieMagic]

Regarding 'team playing'...back in the 1930s Lin YuTang, as well as many other Chinese intellectuals, focused upon the dominant/dominating West. TEAMWORK was one of the key success-elements analyzed by Lin. He wrote about the sports ethic promoted/learned by the future elite in England's elite "Public Schools". The lessons could be used in corporations and military and maintaining the British Empire. "Sun never sets on the...stiff upper lip."

RE: team playing...in terms of sports and profit-sharing corporations

[ChinaMovieMagic]

'Handful of sand' (lacking clay/coherence) is a phrase used by Lin YuTang and/or Sun YatSen to describe China's traditional focus upon the extended family, to the disregard of the society/nation.

In contrast, 'a block of granite' was how Lin described Japan's tightly-woven collective society.

In response to the ever-increasing eco-cidal crises, Bush Inc. state: "The USAmerican standard of living is non-negotiable." This is NOT team-playing with the planet-as-a-whole, but dangerous Us-Them thinking, as in the concept 'GroupThink,' and as seen in the malignancy of the cancer cell.

[merlin]

I'm not so sure if I want to be on the Chinese team OR Bush's, or the Japanese or whatever team.

The Japanese team-oriented society has its merits for japanese people but very little to offer a non-japanese. I'd suspect the Chinese concept is very similar.

Such a worldwide "team" could work only with groups of people who have no strong national identity.

In other words, My team.

[moonraven]

A team player finds it easy to set aside personal needs to control and works with others towards common objectives and goals.

A team player doesn't find it necessary to cut his/her teammates off at the knees in order to feel good about what he/she is doing.

Not all of us are team players, and that's fine. But if we are not, we should be working towards independence or running the show where we work. If not, we are just sabotaging the team.

[Ben Round de Bloc]

I work in a situation where there's lots of talk about how teachers need to be team players, but I don't see it in action. Where I teach, too many people are too insecure about their jobs, status, and abilities, and it prevents them from playing as a team. They're too busy watching out for themselves, trying to guard their backs, and trying to get in their stabs before others stab them first.

The system functions (or malfunctions) on the idea that it's more important to lamer los huevos of those in positions of power than to support each other and work together as a team. Being a team player clashes with the every-man-for-himself, suck-up-to-get-ahead practice in the work place. In this respect I'm afraid I have not adapted very well to the local tradition. In the words of Ferris in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, "You can't respect somebody who kisses your a s s . It just doesn't work."

In the local traditional view, a team player is someone who does most of the work while receiving none of the credit, makes the bosses look better than they are, and doesn't complain about anything.

[moonraven]

Ben Round,

You captured the Mexican group dynamic in the workplace very well.

The lack of team player skills becomes very evident when one is part of a team of, say basketball. My former neighbor told me that the basketball team for which is was playing (the TEC, Tlalpan branch) was so dysfunctional (everyone wanted to shoot all the baskets) that they hired a psychologist to try to instill team player habits. (It was not a success.)

[dmb]