Seth Dobbs (he/him): What do you think it means to be a team player? Do you see it as quietly going along with the majority and not making waves? Would you consider someone on your team who asks a disruptive question a good team player or someone that needs to be silent if their thoughts are differing from the rest? Hi, I’m Seth Dobbs,

and this is the Principle Driven Leadership podcast where I share principles of leadership along with examples of how to apply them to help make you be the best leader you can be. These principles are based on my years of experience as an executive leader, in building organizations and teams, and in coaching others to become leaders themselves.

And I believe that not only can anyone develop leadership skills, but that everyone can and should develop leadership skills. I think they’re essential in helping you achieve your best in whatever way you might be trying to make an impact.

And that’s because leadership skills help you better influence others to effectively create durable results.

And leadership is a journey. The step we’re taking today involves developing an understanding that a team player isn’t simply someone that just goes with the flow. And that in fact, some so-called team player mindsets can actually be destructive. So a while back I had an interesting conversation with a leader on my team, Samira. It started with a group trying to resolve an issue with a project. Now the short version of this is that the team was behind schedule and there were a few different paths that could be taken. A small group, including Samira, were convened to discuss and review the project manager’s decision on how to proceed, and shortly after that the team was running with the project manager’s recommendation. However a week or so after the team was in motion down this path, Samira sent me an email informing me how much she actually didn’t like the decision. She told me all the things that were wrong with the approach and what might actually go wrong because of it and how it wasn’t really getting at the root cause of the issue and so forth. So I took some time to meet with her so I could understand better what she was thinking. She laid out a lot more detail of her thoughts along with her frustration that such a bad path had been chosen. And I could see she was pretty upset and to a certain extent, rightfully so. When she laid out the details of her concerns and what she thought should be done,

I felt that what she suggested probably would have been the best path. And so I asked her why she didn’t raise it in the discussion at the appropriate time. And she said she was trying to be a good team player. So through further discussion, it revealed that she saw that being a team player meant not rocking the boat. It meant going along with the rest of the team and the team lead. In other words, the team lead had made a recommendation and she felt she was being a good team player by going along with it.

So here’s the thing.

Samira had a timely opportunity to provide her insights and change the course of the project when she was brought into the discussion. By the time she expressed her concerns to me, a lot of work was already underway and it was going to create new problems to change course. Even if that course was better in a vacuum. That’s because we weren’t in a vacuum.

We were in a dynamic situation where new resources were committed and in flight changing the nature of what Samira and the team were trying to solve for to begin with. In other words, it was mostly a lost opportunity, an opportunity for her to share her experience and insights and to possibly have put us on a better path.

And here’s the thing. She was actually more experienced than most of the people in that conversation yet she remained silent. And so she passed up on an opportunity to show that she’s a deep thinker, that she cares enough to ask questions, to raise concerns, to differ with everyone else. To show that she wants what’s best for the company, for the organization, for the team.

We as leaders need to create more leaders, not drones, not followers. Leaders are of course, part of a team. And in fact, the best team is full of people with leadership skills. And so Samira missed an important aspect of leadership: knowing the balance of when to step back, when to share, and when to push. Now personally, I’m often actually a pretty easy going person on this front.

And I believe in general, that there are typically multiple, nearly equivalent paths forward in any situation. But when I do have concerns, regardless of my position, where I sit in the group, that’s having the discussion. I’ll push to make sure my concerns are at least understood by reminding the team of the vision we’re all working towards and making clear what problems should, and shouldn’t be solved.

In Samira’s case she did bring a solution and too late, creating a new problem. Now there’s a lot of reasons you might stay silent in a situation like Samira’s, you might feel like you’re disrupting the team. You might not want to appear that you’re overriding a group decision. You might not trust people to listen to you uncritically.

You might fear conflict or shy away from difficult conversations. All of which are challenges that are addressable. And many of which I’ve talked about throughout this season. Just don’t excuse your silence as being a team player. This is really the moment to understand leadership as a skillset, as a craft. You don’t have to be in charge of things to lead. I’ve mentioned a few times that the best teams are built from diverse experiences, background skills and knowledge. But those teams only reach their greatness by leveraging those differences, not subordinating those differences into groupthink. So in my mind being a good team player actually means speaking up with your expertise and your insight. Not simply going with the flow.

Being agreeable, isn’t being a team player. Now this doesn’t mean you have to be confrontational or be mean about how you disagree. It means you should lay out what you think is the path to the desired outcomes,

if you think the rest of the team is missing the point. Now getting back to Samira, she told me she took the so-called team player path because she felt she must be the one missing something. That if what she saw was correct, surely someone else would have seen that already. I said, that’s why being a good team player is about speaking up – that she was bringing a unique perspective from experience that no one else had and that she was seeing things that no one else saw. Fortunately in this case it was not actually too late to change.

As I discussed in episode nine of the season, sometimes you have to slow down strategically and make a change to be able to get back on the right path to forward motion. So I coached her in putting together a new plan and the reasoning behind it. And so she went back to the team and after a bit of work, and it was some work, she was able to get them to see what she saw and understand things the way that she understood them. A couple of the team members even privately shared with Samira that they had actually had doubts as well about this path, but also had remained silent. But ultimately because of this, the team got back onto the right track and were able to deliver, achieve forward motion, get the results they needed.

The best laid plans in team sports can be quickly disrupted by changes outside of a team’s control, whether it’s soccer or football, baseball, basketball, whatever it might be. You’ll see that the best teams and the best team players will follow the direction of the coach until they encounter something that doesn’t go to plan. And then they use their expertise to make a decision in the heat of the moment, following all the objectives that they’re trying to reach. And the same goes for our work ideally or whatever effort we’re committing ourselves to.

Most of us are in positions of leading and being led.

You manage and you’re managed, you influence others and you are influenced by others.

You’re involved in all of these relationships in this ecosystem in part, because of what you uniquely bring with your background and your expertise. So as a leader, you need to make sure your team is clear that you expect the same from them. And so you should seek the opportunities to share that, to express that when there’s concerns, when you can bring something to the table, And as a leader, you need to make sure your team is clear that you expect the same from them: to speak up when they disagree, even if it’s with you. If you, as a leader, expect everyone to be a team player,

and by that, you mean to agree and go along with you, you’re squandering an opportunity to be better and probably driving your best people out the door. But if you can get the people you lead to bring their best insights into everything they do, and to everything they help out with and to everything they lead, you’ll have a real winning team.

So I want you to think about what expertise and insights are you holding back so as not to make waves? Do you think the folks on your team are holding back so that they’re perceived as a good team player rather than as a problem team player? And what can you do differently starting today to create a better environment where people feel comfortable sharing their expertise and insights, even when it differs from the majority of the team, or even when it differs from what you’re thinking? Thanks so much for joining me, please subscribe, share with a friend if you liked it. Send thoughts and questions to. contact@pdlpodcast.com and we’ll address a few towards the end of the season. Join me next time, where I talk about leadership and systems of people.