In the office where I work, we are encouraged by management to function as team players. However, what I’ve notice over the last 25 years is that the phrase “team player” seems to mean something different to men than it does to women, generally speaking.
The women, in general, seem to think that team player means helping out other workers. For example, if 10 women are assigned to wipe down 10 tables in the lunchroom, as soon as one is finished with her table, she will move on to help another.
Whereas, men, in general, seem to understand team playership otherwise. To them, it means we’re part of a team. There’s a Team Captain and the rest of us are assigned specific duties. That’s what it means to be on a team: everybody does their own job. So, if 10 men are assigned to wipe down 10 tables, that means when I’m done wiping mine, I don’t offer to help John, Jack, or Jim with theirs, because I don’t want to muscle in on their responsibility. If John finished first and offered to assist me, I would tell him: I don’t need your help, I can do this.
The men’s interpretation of team player, by the way, seems to be management’s. As office workers, of course, we mostly deal in data-processing and not table-wiping, but that seemed like an illustrative example. Has anyone else experienced this dichotomy?
My interpretation of being a team player is having the attitude that “Managment” is always right. Whatever my personal feelings about what they ask me to do, I will do it cheerfully, because the bosses know what is best for the company, not the lowly grunts that do the work.
Well, I’m a woman, and I wouldn’t have come up with either interpretation on my own. To me “team player” means the same thing as “plays well with others”: you are able to get along with whomever you are assigned to work with and make sure things get done even if you don’t like them. Since it’s a “team” you have joint responsibility with others, so there isn’t so much you’re assigned X and s/he is assigned Y - you are both (all) expected to work as a group to complete the project in a timely manner. Obviously you shouldn’t slack and expect others to pick it up, too.
I haven’t noticed that personally.
I think the idea of a team player that you’ve ascribed to women is closer to the mark. In fact the other version of a team player that you give is pretty much the opposite.
I have some experience with team work as it applies to flying aeroplanes so I’ll use that as an example.
In a two pilot crew you need to work together as a team to get the job done. If this doesn’t happen then the job may not get done and the result could be unpleasant. Sure you each have individual responsibilities, but ultimately if one of you can’t cope with your own job then the other person must take up the slack. If pilots had the attitude that your male table cleaners have then they might sit there as the aeroplane dives into the ground, happy that they’ve made all the correct radio calls and switched all the right switches. After all, the reason they’re about to crash is because the other guy’s fucking up, not them. He might even lean forward and speak in to the mic for the cockpit voice recorder and say, “Message for the accident investigators, I’m Bob the co-pilot, and I’ve done all my duties correctly, it’s the Captain who’s made the mistake, not my responsibility, say hi to my wife, bye.*”
An extreme example, but I think it makes it quite clear that a team members responsibilities don’t end at his own tasks.
One difference that I’ve heard discussed extensively is that men clearly expect teams to have a captain or coach giving directions, and team members follow, but female culture is based on a “power-dead-even rule.” There is a popular diversity video by that name that gives lots of explanation and examples. The theory is based on boys being acculturated in team sports and girls being acculturated in things like playing house, where everyone needs to buy in and get consensus and being too bossy will get you shunned.
So the men may be like, “I went out, I ran the play, and Joe dropped the ball.” Maybe they need a more interventionist coach to now say “Jim, go help Joe wipe the rest of that table.” Or, reading between the lines, maybe what they need is a manager who will say “Jim, go help Jane debug that mess since your code was a lot cleaner and she got stuck with such a screwed up part of the program.”
I’ve talked about this with a buddy of mine. Men want very much to be competent, so when people take over their job, they can resent it. I saw a situation with snow falling and two guys being unable to get chains on their tires. A stranger got interested in it (“Grrr. Problem. Must solve.”) and ended up lying down in the snow yanking chains on this strangers’ car. Then it hit him that he was potentially violating the Man Code, and turned and said something like, “Well, unless you got it…” The owners were happy to let him try, as they were out of answers. But the point is that he knew that jumping in on a peer’s job implies that he’s incompetent.
The idea that men and women are “the same except for conditioning” is One of Those Funny Things People Used to Believe. When even Time Magazine doesn’t follow it any more, you know it’s fallen out of favor. Hormones really do affect thinking patterns.
I haven’t noticed the gender thing, probably because when I’ve been part of a “team”, the group has been mostly women. In my experience, when a company is asking me to be a team player, what they usually mean is do as you are told, don’t make waves, and cheerfully pick up any extra work somebody else drops". I tend to run from jobs with the “must be good team player” line in the description. “Must be good, uncomplaining drone” would be more honest.
The Army pretty much uses your girl definition for Team Player. If I saw a private sitting on his ass while others still had shit to do, I would council his ass on not being a Team Player.
All my experience with the phrase “Team Player” involves management letting employees know that anything less than blind obedience and wholehearted approbation of policy indicates a failure to be a “Team Player.” Apologize to a user/customer because we created a problem? “Not a Team Player.” Provide a suggestion to improve the quality of our output without being solicited for a solution? “Not a Team Player.”
There may be places where the phrase is not simply an effort to kick shit on the heads of underlings, but I have not yet encountered it.
There’s also the connotation of “we need someone to take a bullet for the team.” When the going gets tough and the client starts screaming, a good team player will step up and say “I screwed up. It’s my fault.” In a perfect world, the company will be so happy to have a scapegoat, the team player gets moved off that project and assigned to a better one.
Don’t laugh. It happened to me once.