Are you a Team-player or a Take-player?

The other day my niece asked me: What is the meaning of a Team-player?  When I inquired why she was asking, she told me that she was having problems with this concept of working on group project and maintain being a team-player. Whenever she has to do joint projects with her classmates, she finds herself being the only one bringing ideas to the table to execute the projects and ends up doing most of the work! So she was getting frustrated and upset that everyone will gladly take the credit for the joint work even thought they know they did not contribute anything significant to the result of the work.Worse they seem to have no guilt conscience about it. On a recent team project she realized it was happening again, so she decided that each chapter of the assignment was going to have the contributor’s name in the footnotes. An uproar arose in the team and one of the lazy ones said she was not being a team-player!

In response to her question, I explained that most people don't know what team-player really means. Ironically, I think the term team player in practice is a euphemism for egocentric individualism. From my experience and observations I find that most people are socialized into selfish individualism, but really use the term Team-player as a permission to openly take credit for other people's ideas and efforts while obfuscating their personal selfishness, exploitation and incompetency.  If you bring nothing to the table, then you are not a team player but a take player!!! Take-players not only steal information and credit for others’ work, but they are very manipulative and prey on you emotionally, psychologically and to some extent financially.

Increasingly  I have also observed that when you refuse to share information with the Take players, they actually get viciously upset towards you and they are the first to say you are not being a Team player as a way of labeling you as an outsider or the uncooperative one! Honestly, when I am the only one sharing the information, then there is no team let alone any sharing going on!

I have encountered colleagues who will solicit the information from you and then rush to send an email to other co-workers or project colleagues with your ideas, even stand up and make a presentation with plagiarized information and never even acknowledge who originated the idea!!! Therefore, I can relate to my niece’s feelings of frustration of doing all the work and then having to share the credit with those that did not earn the credit! Why Take players are not ashamed of this behavior, I don’t know. Unfortunately, there is a whole generation of adults that have lost a sense of common decency?

For the most part there is information I don’t mind sharing and let someone enjoy shining with my knowledge whether they acknowledge me or not. But there is some information has got to stay in the vault! My advice is – when you have such a colleague in your environment keep your mouth shut like a vault! Being a big advocate for win/win collaborative partnerships, cooperative arrangements and mutually beneficial relationships, it’s difficult sometimes, to withhold information around the Take players.

Copyright @ January 27, 2011 by Dr. Tendai Ndoro begin_of_the_skype_highlighting  end_of_the_skype_highl(DocNdoro) – Founder, SLIPPA/Brighten The Corner Foundation; CEO EDCTrainers, LLC.