Most people realize that when people in a business come together, they often come from different backgrounds and experiences, so some toleration of these differences is essential when forming a group. However, comfort and ease of communication, among other issues, means that some common agreement on beliefs, values has to occur. How many “teams” have you been on where everyone is on a different page, no one is pulling together? Lots, you tell me, lots…

But in forming common values, that does not mean inflexibility in what the group defines as important, because in a changing environment that has to remain somewhat fluid as new information comes in – and it does in this world we live in!

So conformity can be problematic when the sands are shifting so often. It may end up that the strongest or most aggressive ego defines the prevailing attitude or belief, then you can end up with the situation above…the “star” takes over.

You can see, things aren’t easy when it comes to team building…

What I would add is that many team members have not had previous experience being part of a team, as hinted at in the article! The benefits of team work may not be so clear to everyone involved in a team, there may be a lot of people who believe that they got to this point relying on number 1, and they are going to stick with what they know works. The question is, what are you going to do with these people? Secondly, there are people that believe that team work means conformity to the prevailing ideas and attitudes of the group, as opposed to self-acknowledging your own strengths and weaknesses and passing the ball when your teammate is more likely to “score” among other skills of being part of a team. If I can concentrate on that idea alone, selflessness means that you should expect the ball to come to you when you know you are the best one to score too! Ummmm, those things can be a tall order in an ego dominated society…not so easy to implement.

That is why trust building has to be a big part of team building, also there has to be a recognition (ideally) that the goal is important, but as the philosophers say, it is part of a process too. Otherwise a me, me atmosphere makes team building hard. If you have ever played on a team where one person hogged the ball, looking for glory, you’ll know what I mean. Eventually, the team members just throw up their hands in disgust and eventually join another team. Or they sit back and expect to lap up the gravy, while the “star” produces- until things don’t go so well, then the whole thing falls apart. I think readers may have their own experiences with this sort of thing.

http://www.parentingatwork.org/help.html

Carla

I’m the founder and president of the Parenting in the Workplace Institute (we maintain the Babies in the Workplace website you referenced in your blog). I wanted to comment on one thing you mentioned–that we don’t talk about hard data on the website. You’re right–unfortunately, there have been very few formal studies of these programs, and so our analysis of the benefits (and parameters for success) is based on hundreds of interviews of people at baby-friendly organizations (and a few organizations in which this concept was not successful because it wasn’t set up properly). However, we are hoping to seek funding in the near future to start coordinating numerous formal studies (we have a number of academics who are eager to do research in this area) so that we have the data to ascertain the effects of these programs more conclusively (and to determine how to make the programs more effective).

Thanks for such a great blog on this topic!

Carla Moquin