chapter 4

Teamwork vs. Socialwork

Here’s yet another level in which goals and needs get confused. It’s a category of goals we call “social-work.” Socialwork is a perversion of the need to affiliate. In it, affiliation breaks free from the team objective—it is just affiliating for the fun of affiliating.

In the Stone Age, socialwork was when one caveman kept interrupting stalking the woolly mammoth to do the woolly mammoth dance. This drove the other cavemen nuts, because everyone knows you kill the mammoth first, then do your impression of it later, around the fire.

A hundred thousand years later, teams are still afflicted, at every turn, with outbreaks of the mammoth dance.

All too often, the problem isn’t just one “class clown” who can’t stick to the task—it’s a major contingent of fun-lovers who kill the work ethic dead. Two people with lampshades on their heads can kill any serious enterprise.

The stated purpose for a team is to gather people together and collaborate on jointly accomplishing agreed-upon team outcomes; i.e., get things done together. The purpose of socialwork, on the other hand, is to get your personal needs for affiliation met by being involved in a group.

One is work-related, and results in a dead mammoth. The other is a goof, and likely results in no mammoth, or worse, a very undead one.

Here are examples of teamwork attractions that distract members from the true team goal:

the team has some super-attractive members

the team has a charismatic leader

the team gets to travel

the team has an incredible expense account

the team was written up in Fortune

the team gets a great workspace

the team does no lifting

the team goes to Vail every February

This is a mixed list, but what it says is that there are more reasons for joining a team than just the human need to interact or the validity of the stated team goal (“develop a manned flight rocket to travel to the Sun”). Knowing these things about one another, up front, can resolve anxieties and expectations before they drag the team down.

Sometimes the line between teamwork and socialwork gets a bit fuzzy. You can usually tell this is happening when everyone on a team is pissed off. An example of the teamwork/socialwork clash is when Team Member A is working on a task while Team Members B, C, and D are in the next cubicle chatting away about non-work-related things. While A is doing teamwork, B, C, and D are doing socialwork.

It is a uniquely human conflict—work vs. play. While play is natural and normal, it quickly becomes corrosive when play replaces work as the goal for one or more team members. It will not take long for Team Member A to resent the fun the others are having, and their unwillingness to pull their share of the load.

Conversely, Members B, C, and D will feel genuinely indignant and angry that their socializing is not perceived as the vital glue that holds the team together. Hint: If glue isn’t being attached to every team member, it isn’t vital glue.

A survey a few years back suggested that during an average workday, at least one-fourth of the time is occupied by socialwork. The researchers also suggested that this mental break time is a necessary component to staying sane at work (relieving stress). The problems occur when some people on a team are teaming at the same time others on the same team are socializing.

While both teamwork and socialwork are essential to team success, getting the whole team in sync is important.

Plus, some team members have higher needs in one end of the spectrum than the other. Some people never seem to need or want a break, while others don’t appear to be pulling their weight since they’re usually schmoozing.

All work and no play makes you dull. All play and no work makes you unemployed.