One of mine

In the private sector the word “team” gets abused and over emphasized. At least that is my opinion. Seemingly when there is no team the managers keeps on throwing the word at you thinking that just by repeating the word “team” will automatically make the team to appear. In some sense I understand that. At a certain education level that might be the case. If you are dealing with people who are able to think for themselves, they will form their own opinion no matter what the managers do to make up a team. The moment that happens the managers effort becomes useless.

Talking to our HR managers I have realized office politics is a very common thing. I agree too. After all it is people from variety of backgrounds and educational levels working together in any given work place.

Recent happenings at work made me thinks of how to be in a team. To be precise what conditions one would have to fulfill if I am to be a member of their team. Please do not misunderstand this. I don’t have a separate team. I belong to the team of my company/team/department/etc., but I will call that my team. In my mind if the person  next to me to be included in my team (or the person next to me wants me to be a member of his/her team) him/her needs to fulfill certain criteria. So I list…

1. I should be able to trust the person. If that person get caught in playing double games, get caught in lies, get caught spying on me, I will not be in a team with that person.
2. I should be able to have faith in that person. When that person needs me, I will be there for him/her but reciprocity of that is expected. You could call it selfish but I think the TEAM is a collectively selfish concept
3. That person should be able to speak his/her mind (may be at least in confidence). If that person speaks someone else’s mind or to put it in other words mouth piece of someone’s, no can do…I will not be part of that person’s team.
4. Independence is the key. If you don’t have independent mind, if your thoughts/ideas are someone else’s or they are being controlled by someone else, I would be reluctant to be a part of your team.