Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I`ve been out of the corporate culture for more than 10 years, but I still keep hearing about "teamwork." Ya gotta be a team player. Everything is all about being part of a team. We need to be on a team, right?

Suppose you`re part of a team and your job is to follow the guy (or gal) in front of you. You`re not supposed to ask questions, just stay in line and do your part. What if the person in front of you walks off a cliff?

Lemmings are known for this weird behavior. They`re all team players. For no apparent reason, the whole team just plunges off a cliff to their deaths.

Another interesting point has to do with unions. When you`re part of a union, part of a team, do you have individual worth or value? Or do you sacrifice your own personal value in favor of the group? How do you get merit pay if your union contract doesn`t account for individual salaries?

What`s so great about playing on a team?

One aspect is that when several people work together the chances increase of their all succeeding. But is it always necessary for this group to have a "leader?"

Entrepreneurs are clearly oddballs. They don`t play on teams. They usually wear all the "hats," doing all the jobs, and "control" everything involved in their own business. They have their own expectations, goals, processes, and they fully expect that their ideas are the only ideas worth putting into play.

If an entrepreneur encounters a different idea, they always evaluate it from the perspective of how it helps them individually, what benefits the new idea will offer to them individually. They`re really not that interested in a team.

Can we say that being a team player is a characteristic that removes the entrepreneurial characteristic? Is being a team player opposite of being an entrepreneur? Could we say that you can have one or the other, but not both?

I`m not a team player. That`s why I`m starting my own company. My motto is, "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself." I don`t like relying on others. My job at Staples is all about teamwork, and when I`m there, I do as I`m told. It`s one thing to be an individual, it`s another to be insubordinate. I`m a team player when it`s one of my responsibilities to be such, but it doesn`t come naturally. I long for the day when I`ll be an army of one that answers only to himself.

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Making limitless possibilities much more limited.

Now that`s an interesting take, and one I hadn`t thought of at all. :-D

Team Leader, eh? Are you thinking along the lines of modern-day corporate lingo that "we have to be more entrepreneurial in our approach to doing business?"

I do agree that a Team can achieve things a lot, Being an entrepreneur we work with the team.

Will Peter
The Anstad Group
www.anstad.com

Okay, so it looks to me as if the word "team" has now been so thoroughly spread around that it substitutes completely for the word "employee."

Is there any difference in people`s minds between the two concepts?