HR people and hiring managers, what do you reeeeally mean by "team player"
In sports, being a team player would mean something like you don’t play football as if its all a one man show. But at work isn’t this kind of independence a desirable thing? Like salespeople who have to carry their own weight at all times? At this point, looking at all these job ads is giving me the impression that what it really means is “submissive and obedient”.
Interestingly, I’ve been reading the book “Quiet” by Susan Cain recently, and I do find her explanation on how traits like “team player” and communication/collaboration became so engrained in the corporate world - even in jobs and settings where such social interactions aren’t essential - quite plausible. She calls this as an obsession with the “extraversion ideal”, and how this could become a problem in the working world.
Sounds interesting. Reminds me a lot on how oil & gas industry used to emphasise “leadership traits” a lot during interviews. In the end all they get are engineers who can just talk well but outsource the actual work to outside companies.
It’s a very interesting read for sure - her book is on the topic of introversion (vs extraversion) in particular, and she has a TED talk on this topic from which you can get an idea of what she talks about in the book if you’re interested. In fact your example of the engineers is one of the problems she pointed out in the book - in how the world often falls into the trap of prioritising traits, like how well a person can talk/present/sell themselves or how good one works in a group, over the actual substance of a person.
At least to me, team player means someone who is able to get along well with their team mates in a professional setting. On a personal setting, I don’t care if they are friends or not, but it does help. Someone who is willing to help and contribute to the greater team objective. Doesn’t think or work in a silo mindset or be super calculative on ‘I did this and you did that’.
This does not mean I expect the person to just take on whatever extra work his teammates can not.
Honestly it just really depends on your boss and what kind of environment they were brought up in.
However I do see some counterproductive trend that make life difficult for people who care for their colleagues. A big one is obsession with quota/KPI. Some companies even purposely drive people apart and try to stir rivalry between them to “encourage competition”.
It’s just a cliché, don’t worry about it. They have to write something, and as it’s hard to write a good job description, they write stupid things like this.
Add comment