Subscribe Via RSSHidden Meanings: “Team Player”
The word team gets used quite a bit in business-speak. You hear “team player,” “make this decision as a team,” and “take one for the team.” Since team means a group that works together and shares responsibility, it’s easy to think these phrases mean everyone has equal input and responsibility. Au contraire, my friend.
Meaning
“team player” = someone who makes a sacrifice for the sake of the group
“We’ll _____ as a team” = “Your opinion doesn’t matter much”
“take one for the team” = (see team player)
Examples
“She refuses to just go along with our decision. She’s not a team player.”
Person 1: Wasn’t it my turn to lead the discussion last time?
Person 2: Can’t you just take one for the team?
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8 Responses
Wow! I never thought of it like that! I guess “team” doesn’t have the positive meaning that we all think.
Dr Chun Wong’s last blog post..10 Autism Myths
Right – on the surface it’s made out to be such a positive thing, but when you stop to think about it “team” usually means that someone has to give up something. Kind of like the Asian idea that we sacrifice for the good of the group.
It depends on your work environment, really.
In my environment, there’s emphasis on individual initiative in figuring out how to do the job, but we all are team players in that we are unified in our direction by my boss, who is a super hero.
He will tell us to do something like “I need you and your coworker to architect a solution for our WAN site connectivity, and present it to the team at our staff meeting”. What that means is go figure something out and work with a partner, then be prepared for people to ask questions.
Sometimes that works out nicely for us, and sometimes it doesn’t, but a team player is certainly not someone who sits back and gets stomped all over.
I think of it as I can’t be a team player if i’m not out on the field.
Archkittens’s last blog post..Initial impression: Cisco Network Admission Control, Volume 1: NAC Framework Architecture and Design.
Sandy, I’d never thought of being in a team as having to give up or sacrifice something, but I guess you’re right. Teamwork means everyone compromising and coming to a decision that everyone agrees with.
I find “team” to mean “Don’t ask too many questions about this idea that everyone else already has agreed on.” And also, “Just do what we tell you to do.” I actually find it difficult to be in the 1:1 collaborative work situation that I’m in now due to many instances of having had to “play nice on the team” in the past.
janny226’s last blog post..Anxiety Dreams
I have to laugh at how now we’re supposed to teach kids how to do groupwork. Supposedly bunching them in multiples is NOT groupwork! We have to assign them roles. So we spend 20 minutes passing out nametags with their roles (“notetaker”, “timekeeper”, “leader”) but the activity never goes right because every kid wants a say! How do you tell a child that their job is to shut up and take notes while their friend gets to do all the talking? And tell another one that her job is to watch the clock instead of being creative?
Supposedly this gives them “real life skills”…which I guess it does, but I would never want my child to be taught to keep quiet and watch the clock in a group.
Simple, you yell at them. It is a time honored and effective skill used by many, many parents and teachers, including my own. It also helps to obtain permission from the parent in full view of the child to violently beat the child if they deviate from expected behavior.
Worked for me.
Archkittens’s last blog post..Initial impression: Cisco Network Admission Control, Volume 1: NAC Framework Architecture and Design.
Yep, Sandy, those all sound like skills that they’ll need in later life!
Dr Chun Wong’s last blog post..Does Vitamin D Deficiency Cause Autism?