Team members will reluctantly, if at all, accept a new member to their team until he or she has proven they belong there and the first two stages (forming and storming) have adequately been worked through. Leaders can do some things to speed this process up and help acclimate the new member to the team.
With so much focus on winning at all costs in business and life in general, this video was refreshing. It says to me that most people are fundamentally good when it is all said and done. That there are more important things than the trophy and winning at all costs.
In an old and wonderful Aesop fairy tale, the only thing that stood between a house full of mice and their complete happiness was the cat. The mice got together one evening and came up with various plans to deal with the danger of the cat. They all voted on one brilliant idea; they would hang a bell around the cat’s neck. Then wherever it went, the bell would warn them of danger if it got closer. All of the mice jumped and clapped at the idea. The only problem was getting volunteers to hang the bell around the cat’s neck!
Organizations might consider a recent McKinsey Quarterly survey. Three “noncash motivators” were discovered to be just as effective and in some cases more effective than money.
There has to be a point in which teamwork can’t exist because individual agendas interfere. But there also has to be a point in which team incentives are so great you have to put aside your own agenda for the good of the team. Maybe there is no balance; it’s one or the other?
