I’ve worked with a guy who wasn’t interested in our team’s goals so much as what was in it for him:

• The contacts he will make
• The brilliant ideas he will be credited with
• The decisions he will make
• The amount of money he will receive

The praise and reward of the team are all his for the taking.  Or so he thought.

Milking a team for personal gain will work for a while, but in the end, it fails.  Ultimately, a team doesn’t exist for the benefit of one person.  A team exists so that a group of people can accomplish a goal that one person can’t do on his own.  All team members benefit from being on the team, not just one.

I’m not saying you should ignore your personal goals when working on a team.   Obviously, you need to get something from the team, whether it be satisfaction, goal completion, or just plain happiness.  But, if you are not at least equally aware of what the team needs, there will be consequences.  If you drain a team’s resources for your best interests, ignoring the team’s interests, teammates will notice and eventually leave you behind.

The team can live without one member, especially one that wants more than his fair share.

So that guy I worked with?  Yeah, he took a lot from many people for a while, but it cost him.   It cost him his reputation on the team.  It will likely cost him opportunities with other teams.  And the worst part (in my opinion) is that he didn’t contribute much to the team goal, so his experience was meaningless.

-Deborah Fike

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