To Be the Best Teammate, Do Your Best Work
Photo: Brooke Lark/Unsplash
In a world focused on self-improvement, being a great teammate is a radical concept. Early on in your professional career, you will feel pulled in a hundred different directions. In light of this barrage, you may find yourself turning inward, focusing your efforts on how you can manage to survive this season. This isn’t wrong, but it is missing the mark on how you can maximize the value of the early years of your working experience.
These years are prime opportunities for you to develop the fundamental skills of being a great teammate. You may not realize it now, but as you get older, you only get busier. You gain more responsibility both professionally and personally, and your time gets more pinched into narrow margins of focusing on that which is essential. It’s hard to learn to be a great teammate in your 40s. It’s better to start learning those skills now.
Culture might try to convince you that being a great teammate will deter your opportunities and hinder your successes. However, this could not be further from the truth. There is a reason why the lone-wolf is lonely. There is a reason why no one makes it to the top by themselves. Learning to become a great teammate is not a downgrade to your future prospects, but actually might just be the best decision you’ll ever make.
Here’s why that’s true.
No One Gets Better By Being Average
When most people think of what it means to be a great teammate, they think of someone who sacrifices their individual potential for the good and growth of the team. For those who are ambitious or achievers by nature, this can sound like a death sentence.
The error in this line of thinking is in associating the sacrifice of individual potential with the consequent necessity of average work. It is easy to jump to the conclusion that says: “If I can’t do it my way, which I would be best at, then I must do it their way, which I will be average at.” I believe that not only is this a false conclusion, but that to be a great teammate, you must learn to break this connection as you still rise to your full potential.
No one gets better by being average. No good team truly wants its members to sit in mediocrity. The goal of great teams is to have the best possible people functioning towards one collective goal. If you believe this, you will strive to see both realities realized. It is possible to sublimate some of your individual desires while still doing your best possible work. When you reach that crossroads, you are ready to truly become the best possible teammate.
At my organization, we often say that a rising tide lifts all boats. If you, through your excellence and high-level of performance, provide a rising tide to your team, everyone will win.
The Root of Excellence
Excellence, as it relates to teamwork, can be a tricky ideal to define. Many young professionals aspiring to be leaders fixate on excellence as a vehicle for their own personal growth and advancement. I call this excellence rooted in egotism.
Whatever your excellence is rooted in will eventually demonstrate itself in the fruit of your work. If your excellence is rooted in your self-interest, you may advance rapidly and gain more responsibility, but you will likely reach your peak with few to no people by your side.
However, if you agree that the pursuit of excellence is important, but you would rather summit the mountains ahead alongside your peers and friends, you may want to practice what I call excellence rooted in empathy.
Empathy driven excellence understands the tension of doing your best work while not marginalizing the people who helped you accomplish your vision along the way. It is a collaborative and cohesive pursuit.
A great teammate is excellent at their craft while practicing empathy for those around them. Because the truth is, greatness doesn’t have to lead to isolation.
Challenge Directly, Care Personally
In her book, Radical Candor, author and coach Kim Scott defined a maxim for great leaders that I believe applies just as equally to great teammates. She said that if you want to be the best professional you can be, you must learn to “challenge directly and care personally.”
You may be tempted to think that doing your best work doesn’t align with the core tenets of teamwork. Thoughts like “no one likes a show-off” and “there’s no I in team” may come to mind. But what often goes unspoken is this truth: when you do your best work, you challenge the capacity of all those around you. You performing at your best calls up and creates an opportunity for your teammates to perform at higher and more excellent levels themselves.
People error when they forget that Kim Scott’s maxim has two distinct parts. If you only ever challenge directly, your excellence begins to sour as it seems more and more like showboating. But if you adopt the second half of the maxim and care personally and challenge directly, you now have a winning formula for being the best possible teammate. When you push yourself to be excellent, your teammates will no longer see it as a selfish demonstration, but because they know you care for them, they will see it as the most intentional and helpful action you can take.
Conclusion
As you continue to practice becoming a great teammate, don’t be duped into thinking that you have to limit your abilities and talents, becoming average for the team’s sake. Instead, do your best work, but do it in a way that shows your teammates that you care personally, and because of that caring foundation, you are willing to challenge them directly, calling them up to higher and higher heights.
As a young professional, learning to become a great teammate is one of the most important skills you can foster. Learning to be a great teammate will forever affect both the way you lead and the way you follow others. It is only by becoming a great teammate that you can truly ever become a great leader.