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May 27, 2006

Seeing the "I" in Team

Some popular notions of teamwork promote "selflessness" as a critical success factor. But the reality is that success in execution relies on acceptance of requirements by people who conduct the activity, and those people never want to stop being "themselves". The question is, can they find a self that they prefer, in the context of the group's needs?

Organizations rely on an interesting balance of interests: that people will accept the way management combines its awareness of people as resources with its awareness of people's autonomy.

The basic factors in this balance can be teased out quickly as shown below:

The illustration suggests and even argues that the way a member of the organization operates is subject to at least four different predispositions. This raises the question of whether a member of the organization feels compatibility amongst his or her four different predispositions. Additionally, at any given time, one or more predisposition may dominate. And even further, the predisposition(s) can easily be complicated by the influence of superiors or peers who "cast" him or her in certain positions that may feel more or less tolerable or interesting.

Often, organizations -- or at least their managers -- take it for granted that the member's four predispositions are aligned. The vocabulary of jobs, as seen inthe bottom half of the illustration, promotes the idea that alignment is almost matter-of-fact. At least, the assumption is that the member of the organization is experiencing a level of compatibilty amongst the predispositions that is critically adequate for effectiveness in the work at hand. Just in case, a combination of incentives and penalties wrap around the person, helping them to rationally "bind" the four predispositions together themselves.

But despite these behavior-management tactics, psychology, politics and luck are amazingly effective at changing the balance. Each is an influence with a more or less direct "line of communication" to the four different predispositions.

High-visibility persons intuitively feel that their profile (of predispositions) is under more pronounced scrutiny than do low-profile persons. In effect, the stakes are higher, and this raises the sensitivity that their predispositions have to the influence of psychology, politics and luck. It also raises the level of need to develop or exercise personal skills for managing the predispositions.

But this is not to point out an issue special to the upper ranks. Instead, the observation is more one that proves the point by magnifying it. To the extent that the organization's key objectives depend on personal commitment to goals and to "professionalism", efforts to leverage a balance of predispositions must practice a higher consciousness. They cannot afford to lose sight of the many ways that the person's four predispositions might combine to offer acceptance or resistance to the experience of the initiatives that the person predicts for themselves. The truth is, without the "I", there is not much chance of having a team.

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at May 27, 2006 6:31 PM

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