Friendship and Team-Work

Team Members should be friends?

Aristotle suggested that friendship, like successful team membership, has three components:

* They must enjoy one another’s company.

* They must be useful to one another.

* They must share a common commitment to the good.

Team Members Must Enjoy One Another’s Company

What does it mean to enjoy another team member’s company? What is it
that just makes the other members of a work team not just tolerable but
enjoyable?

A mistake many new (or even existing) team members make is to place
their emphasis on being liked by the other team members. They work very
hard at appearing likeable, so others will value them as a member of
the team. And, at first glance, this seems to work. Gestures of
friendship, loyalty and often even rewards go to the team members who
have the greatest “apparent” value, like a pair of shoes or a new car.

But, sadly, this effect is only temporary. Once the team members and
organization fail to “catch the eye” of the purchaser (the powers that
be), they “trade up.” This results in a team that is more like a
marketplace, and can lead to a team culture of deceit and high
turnover. Team members operating this way fail to see the other members
as people of equal value; they see them as objects or goods to be used
for their personal advancement.

For an effective team to form, the opposite must happen. Team members
must look for the valuable skills and work traits in the other team
members, and work on building connections across skill talent or trait
lines, such as transparency, dependability, accountability and trust.

Aristotle taught that by enjoying other team members’ company and
concentrating on who they are, we learn what it is that makes a person
a trusted member of the group, and ultimately, a friend. And that is
when effective teamwork starts to take off.

Team Members Must be Useful to One Another

A team, especially at work, is a means to develop a network and system of shared usefulness.

Team members who have high job satisfaction within the team’s tasks,
and who stay with a team for years typically develop a deep
understanding of the reciprocal value of cooperation with other team
members. Once team members experience this interdependent value,
cooperation usually increases.

Why? They begin to see and experience the benefits that accrue from
team membership. It moves from being viewed as an obligation to
becoming a source of personal value.

Developing a culture of goals and metrics that are team-oriented, where
team members can act in self-directed ways that multiply the
effectiveness of the entire organization, can increase team cohesion
and perceived usefulness among team members. Like a symphony orchestra,
each team member is treated as a specialist and knows just when he or
she is most useful, in resonance with the whole team or even the entire
organization.

Team Members Have a Common Commitment to the Good

Creating goals, metrics and benchmarks for team success creates a
culture in which the team members strive to make their team and
organization successful, while remaining accountable for their own
actions. The result is a commitment to the common good.

A team that is lacking a commitment to the common good is one that will
fail. This is the responsibility of all team members, not just
management. Once team members make the choice to be “useful to one
another,” as well as “enjoy the other team members’ company,” a unified
set of goals can emerge. These unified goals translate into increased
productivity, lower turnover, and the development of a team that is
high-functioning and effective.

So do they need to like-like each other?

Do team members need to be friends with one another as opposed to merely tolerating other team members? Yes.

This is done with a paradigm shift, “making myself an effective team
member, one who is dedicated to being a team member as opposed to
making myself desirable for membership within the team.”

Michael Cardus is the founder of Create-Learning-Team Building, an experiential based training and development consulting organization, as well as a blogger for TeamBuilding NY.
Mike specializes in team development and leadership development
consulting and training, creating team-building programs that retain
talented staff members, increase production and effectiveness of your
team. He lives in Buffalo, NY, and travels to you to serve your
team-building and leadership training needs, wherever and whenever fits
your schedule.