Finding Your Team
Ego, an individual’s sense of self-importance, plays a role in most of the things you do throughout your day. Naturally, it is advantageous to care about your goals while preparing for your desired future. However, having an egotistical mindset while participating in a team is exactly what Patrick Lencioni warns against in his book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Ego breeds dysfunction within teams because it is divisive. It is essential that teams work together to achieve a common goal, because when a single person puts their own goals before the group, the whole team fails. After all, a group that does not work towards the same goal is not a team at all; instead, it is a group of individuals, each working for their own gain.
Lencioni’s book features a narrative about how teamwork is essential in the business realm. He depicts a failing business that, from the outside, appears to have the best and most qualified board of executives. However, this board is dysfunctional because each member is not working towards the same goals. With the company’s impending bankruptcy, the team hires a new CEO to mend the situation. The new CEO emphasizes that working towards a common goal (and setting aside ego) is necessary for the reparation of the company. This means that each team member needs to go beyond their departmental duties and assist each other in meeting collective goals. This also means that no single member of the team should have to bear the brunt of the work that goes into achieving those goals.
The foundation for any functional team is working together as a cohesive unit. When an individual member continuously puts their own gain above the group’s needs, that member’s contribution is diminished. As a last-ditch effort to repairing a dysfunctional team, Lencioni suggests that removing members who have large egos is beneficial because they were never truly working for the team. A large ego can be identified when a member does not aim to go beyond their own personal goals for the overall benefit of the group. Essentially, the individual’s personal goals are not in alignment with the group’s goals. This will, inevitably, lead to dysfunction because their desire to be a productive member is not present.
After reading Lencioni’s book, I was able to recall a time that I put my personal gain above the goal of my teams. In high school, I joined clubs because I wanted to build the best resume possible. While understandable, this ego-driven goal was often at odds with the collective goals of my team. Although I was not intentionally being a bad team member, my motives were not completely for my love of the organizations and so I didn’t put in my best effort. At the time, I just didn’t understand how important every team member is in their contribution to the group. Reflecting on my past, I can now see how my ego prevented me from being more effective. Today I am more knowledgeable. I have learned the secret to being truly successful in a team: Find a team you believe in.
By aligning my personal goals with the team’s collective goals, I have found myself to be a more effective team member. As I entered college to pursue a psychology degree, I knew that it would be beneficial to gain experience with psychological research through joining a research lab. While perusing my university’s psychology labs, I prioritized finding labs that both enriched my education and facilitated a positive team environment. I did not want to repeat my previous mistake, so finding a lab that had goals that I supported was critical. I joined two research labs, both of which have goals and projects that I want to positively contribute to. For example, as a research assistant in the Interactive Measurement Group, I am on a team in which we are writing a research paper and constructing a poster detailing our findings. Prior to joining the Interactive Measurement Group, I knew that one of the lab’s goals to write and create a poster appropriate for presentation at a psychological conference. My own goals of gaining this valuable experience align with the team’s goals of writing compelling and innovative research papers. I want to be a good team member, so I am timely with my assignments, I desire to be knowledgeable about our research, and I want to be helpful to the other members when they are struggling with their individual tasks.
Teams are everywhere and learning how to operate within them is an incredibly important skill. Lencioni’s book opened my eyes as to how being an unproductive team member is detrimental to the entire team. It made me realize that when you join a team that has goals that you believe in, it becomes much easier to want to be an effective the team member. Finding a team whose goals align with yours also means that your team will help you accomplish your own goals and, in turn, follow your dreams.
References
Lencioni, P. (2002). The five dysfunctions of a team: A leadership fable. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Samantha Dannen has been in the Interactive Measurement Group since Summer 2018. She is currently a senior at UNLV studying psychology with a minor in anthropology. She plans to graduate in Spring 2019. Following graduation, Samantha plans to obtain a Ph. D. in social psychology.