11.2: Working in Teams

American business does its work, for the most part, in teams. Imagine you’re a brand manager. Who’s on your brand team will depend, of course, to some extent upon what your product is. But it’s likely to include not only package designers, manufacturing experts, accountants, legal (to worry about trademarks, for instance), social media experts, and others. Those “others” might include a content marketer, an SEO strategist, a visual designer, an editor, and a public relations expert.

In the medical world, a primary care doctor will head a team that will include, typically, a nurse, an LPN, and an administrative assistant. So, being able to be a good team player is crucial to success. Everyone has to work with others to achieve their goals. That includes someone working at a Fortune 50 company, a college professor, or an entrepreneur. Let me share three examples:

· Producing this textbook has involved a team that consists of several people. I wrote it; my department chair and my course coordinator edited it; the head of Prince George’s Community College’s faculty development unit, who oversees the mechanics of open educational resource development, coordinated production, and a student worker formatted it into LibreText.

· A real estate investor probably has a team consisting of a rental agent, a handyman for repairs, and several different types of contractors (HVAC, painters, carpet installers, plumbers), and, perhaps, a property manager for a rental house.

· Except for the very smallest businesses, a small business person always leads a team. Take a local ice cream parlor: At the very least, there will be several people to work the counter, scooping the ice cream. Behind the scenes there will be a payroll service, an accounting service to prepare tax returns, and, on call, plumbers, refrigeration experts and others.

Our team might include those who give us emotional support, including our family or perhaps coworkers. So, what makes a good co-worker?

First, you must be accountable. If you say you’re going to do something, do it. If you make a mistake, own up to it. This is part of integrity, but only part.

Second, you must be flexible. Being willing to take on new challenges to support your peers is important. T.Rowe Price, the Baltimore investment advisor who is known as the father of growth stock investing, often said, “Change is the businessman’s only certainty.” In reality, he could have said, “Change is the only certainty,” a point emphasized by Sophie Tucker, one of the most popular radio personalities of the first half of the 20^th Century who once said, “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and richer is better.”

At work, as in life, “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.” (Maxwell, 2022). To take just one example, when the Covid pandemic struck in 2019, colleges across the country went into an almost instant transformation. The undergraduate experience which had been face-to-face became remote within a matter of, typically, two weeks. While there is some debate about whether this was necessary, at the time it was believed to be necessary to deal with a fast-spreading and deadly virus that even experts didn’t understand very much about.

And it wasn't just colleges. Offices emptied. Bosses bemoaned the loss of creativity, team-building, productivity. (Studies later showed productivity actually increased as people worked from home, setting the stage for battles over whether and how often people should return to offices.)

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): An empty office during covid. (CC0;Pavel Danilyuk viaPaxels)

Any change is uncomfortable, even when the ultimate result is better. Usually, change takes place incrementally, over time, so people have time to adjust. In the case of Covid pushing classes online, it was almost instantaneous. There was a lot of talk among faculty at the time about how stressful it was; two years later, teaching online classes was no longer a big deal. For students, the situation was somewhat different: Students 18-24 were very discombobulated by the move of college classes online. For the traditional college age group, a major part of the college experience was the socialization experience. For those 30 and up, many decided online was good because it helped them manage their other responsibilities – work, child care, etc.

If change is inevitable, developing a growth mindset is crucial for personal and business success. In this video, Carol Dweck, a Stanford professor, explains the early research:

Developing a Growth Mindset with Carol Dweck

A positive mental attitude keeps morale high. People who have a positive mental attitude are optimistic, uplifting, and don’t give in to hopelessness even in the worst of times. It used to be that a positive mental attitude was something that only motivational speakers talked about. Now it’s something that serious researchers are studying. Here’s Dr. Alia Crum, a psychology professor at Stanford University, explaining that if you change your mindset you change the game.

Change your mindset, change the game | Dr. Alia Crum

So, what are the characteristics of a positive mindset? First, resilience. Resilience is being able to recover from stressful and challenging life events. Resilient faculty and students transitioned online without getting all worked up during the Covid pandemic; it was a challenge to be met and conquered, and nothing more. Courage allows you to go after what you want. Remember the video with the woman who at 22 was in charge of marketing communications for a Fortune 500 company? She exemplified courage in going for that job. Optimism involves transforming negative thought patterns into positive ones; “there are no problems, there are only opportunities.” Gratitude – being thankful for the small things as well as the big things in a day – makes us healthier and happier. Acceptance. Radical acceptance is accepting whatever happens; it’s saying goodbye to the way of life we once knew. Sometimes we have no choice; a football player’s career comes to an end because of injuries or age; a tornado destroys our home; cancer changes our life. Radical acceptance is summed up in this song from the Broadway hit musical Chorus Line:

A CHORUS LINE - What I Did For Love Broadway 2006 Natalie Cortez

Just for fun, here’s the finale of A Chorus Line, when it became the longest-running Broadway show on September 29, 1983, after 3,389 performances. (It has subsequently been surpassed by Les Misèrables, Cats, and Phantom of the Opera.)

A Chorus Line Finale

Sometimes You Just Have to Vent

Sometimes you just have to let out your frustrations. But venting can be risky. Career threatening, even. So, be careful when doing so.

Rule No. 1: Don’t vent to your boss. Ever. Or to those below you in the organizational chart. And keep your comments about your co-workers and bosses objective: “Bob was rude when he interrupted me, and that made me feel he doesn’t have confidence in my work.” Don’t fling blame.

Develop an action plan. Do you need to talk to the co-worker who created the situation or go for a walk to cool down?

Rule No. 2: Don’t put your complaint on social media, in-house or public. Ever. Anything written on screen can be risky. Instead, consider sending yourself a voice memo. Then delete it.

Sometimes, of course, venting to others has its upsides. Some call center workers vent to each other about customers who are especially rude, or about their kid’s latest tantrums. But be aware that venting to others can make them feel more negative emotions, and make them more likely to treat others rudely that day. And even venters can feel worse after venting. (Feintzeig, 2022)

PRACTICAL EXERCISE

• What do you think about the concept of a positive mental attitude being important to a successful? Have you experienced an example in your life where a positive mental attitude made a difference to a team you were on?

Your instructor may break you down into teams of three or four people or may choose to have you work independently. In either case, write a short paper (no more than 250 words) explaining how a positive mental attitude improved your performance at work. Be sure to cite at least three separate sources, one of which should be from an academic journal. In a face-to-face class, be prepared to discuss/present.

-OR-

With other members of your team, develop a short video illustrating one type of behavior that is distracting to people in a work environment.

References

Feintzeig, R. (2022, August 8). The Right Way to Vent at Work. The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rig...&mod=djemITP_h

Maxwell, J. (2013, June 19). Maxwell leadership. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/JohnCMaxwel...1620381877954/