Team Work, Free Riders, Parasites and Leeches

The most overused phrase in corporate world is team work and team play. All organizations look for team players and only they are considered a good fit in an organization. Personally speaking I also believed in this concept till a certain extent because this allows proper work distribution and all that. I should say that this belief of mine was shaped by the people I worked with as a team in my corporate career. I had not worked with different kind of people till now who behave totally arbitrarily and are very interesting and simultaneously very irritating in their behavior.  

 An MBA teaches you many things, some explicit and some implicit. Learning from people and learning about people comes under the implicit part. 90% of tasks and assignments and tasks in MBA are group tasks which are supposed to teach you how to work as a team and cooperate. I don’t know if the primary objective behind these group tasks is to learn team play or to learn how to tackle non-contributing and negatively contributing team members and use this learning in your career. Before going ahead, let me explain the psyche of these two species in some more details and introduce one more category. 

Free Riders: Non contributing members who are a liability on the remaining team members are affectionately called free riders. Quite an apt description I must say. These are people who believe in the theory of symbiotic living but only partially. They will stick on with you, contribute nothing, take the benefit and move ahead. Their focus is solely on how not to come in limelight and how to hide their incompetency. They do not show any sense of self consciousness or shame in blatantly copying other’s work. They believe that it’s the duty of others to feed them as they themselves are so much incompetent. A true believer of social theory of justice they are: Distribute not in proportion of competency but of need.  

Parasites: Good thing about free riders is that if they don’t contribute, they don’t either disrupt other team members from working (incompetency is the reason), hence others can work and feed them considering them necessary baggage. Now imagine a case where some people don’t contribute and simultaneously spread negative energy in the group. These can be people who will work as well but will make sure that the team never works as a team. They try to show that others are wicked and shrewd and want to steal the credit which only they deserve. Everyone else in the team is a predator for them waiting for any opportunity to eat their hard work as if they are the only one who can contribute. Contributions made by others are insignificant and irrelevant for them. 

Leeches: The third kind of people you come across are those who are a combination of free riders and parasites. They dont work but keep on lamenting about what others are doing or have done. These act as critics to your work without knowing a bit about it. They try to show off about their knowledge but from the sidehelm only. They never enter the arena but try to make the rules of the games. Very interesting characters infact!!

Now why am I writing about people and their psychology is a question which can be asked. Reason: 2 months into an MBA and I have met and worked with all kinds of people. Sometimes it becomes so much irritating when you work and others either screw up your work (as a team evaluation) or others take credit for whatever you have done. I am not saying that everyone knows everything and ignorant and non-knowledgeable people should be ousted totally. What is more important is the will to learn and contribute in whatever way one can contribute to the team task, how much ever insignificant it may be. We all are here to learn and no one is perfect, what matters is how much are we willing to learn and add our bit to the team. Why should 3 people carry the burden of 3 other almost dead people on their shoulders when all 6 of them are equal and have same pressure to perform? Why shouldn’t they shrug and throw these people without caring for them? The reason can be only one, their own social life and attitude towards others. I don’t believe in social responsibility of carrying dead weight over my shoulders, but still I do it. I am ready to feed poor and helpless beggars who cannot do anything but not rats and cats who will tomorrow bite me if need be. Either they should publically declare that they are incompetent and need social help in order to survive or they should try to behave like respectable students at par with others.  

This might be a controversial topic to delve into but meritocracy and hard work is what I believe in. If all are considered equal, they should earn this status and not take this for granted. If they don’t, others have all the rights to consider them inferior and try to dominate them. Respect cannot be enforced; it can only be earned by your behavior and deeds. So try to earn your own self-respect and the world will respect you.