Can Your Team Really Ever Be A Team?

Previously I've used sporting analogies to talk about business folk in general and then Sales people in particular.  This time I'm returning to business people generally, though maybe with a slight bias towards Marketing and Sales.

Let me ask you, is a sporting analogy appropriate in every instance?  Or is it true that every group of people striving to reach a common goal is a team?
Is the Three Musketeers' cry of, "All for one, and one for all" appropriate all the time?

In your Sales team or your Marketing team, do you view your colleagues as team-mates or competitors?  If you get an order, does this mean that one of your colleagues hasn't got it, or have you only deprived a competitor company of the business?

If one of the team achieves what they set out to do, is this seen throughout the organisation as the team achieving what the team set out to do?  Or does the reverse apply, where the individual may have reached their goal but the rest of the team are seen not to have reached theirs yet?

Let's look at this from a sporting perspective.  If a rugby player scores a try, the team gets the points.  If players from the same team score many more tries than the opposition, the team gets lots of points and, in the absence of penalties, the first team win the match.  This then is definitely a team sport.

If a racing driver starts from pole position and stays in the lead until the chequered flag, or has passed all the cars that are in front of them by the end of the race, they are the winner, but is it a victory for a team or an individual?  Of course it is a victory for a team!  All the 'supporting cast' will have had to play their parts to perfection too for their driver to cross the finishing line in first place.

In fact it would be hard, if not impossible, to think of any sport that isn't a team sport, even if there is only one performing athlete in the mix.

Back in business though, things can be subtly different.  The skill sets and the rewards structure may be such that one person can meet their target and be rewarded, whilst another doesn't and so doesn't get rewarded.  They may well be part of a group who all report to the same person, but compared with our sports example, they don't appear to be a team, however the office jargon may describe them.

So how should we describe that group?  A useful alternative in this case is to call them a 'Committee'.  A team is where all win or no-one wins; the team's performance matters more than individuals' performances.  A committee is where one person can win but others can lose.  If you have a committee, the sports analogies actually ring very hollow, especially those about team spirit!

Is your team focused on short-term goals, as with a sports team, with importance and intensity characterising the members' behaviour - a desire to win the current game - or not?  Do they give their all for today and let their position in the league table take care of itself?  Are the elements of competition and results strong in your 'team'?

Most business scenarios do not have this same degree of short term intensity.  Instead they are complex and there are obscure links between cause and effect.  Even in competitive industries, many of the people in one organisation never get to meet their competitors, and the evidence of the results of their work is usually not as strong as in a sports team.  Many cannot see how their individual efforts contribute to the overall result.

If only the 'team' behaved more like a team, there may be more to be gained from these analogies.  A relay squad knows its job it to get the baton to the finishing line, but that only the runner on the anchor leg will actually cross the line with the baton.  Good communication, the mutual trust to pass clients from expert to expert as their needs change throughout the sales process, and the knowledge that the only thing that matters is the order, not who gets it, would stand many business teams in a lot stronger position.

We need to use sporting analogies with care here then.  Plus, there will be people in your organisation who hate sports, for whom competition is anathema, and indiscriminate sports analogies will alienate those people, not include them.

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