Team Play

I spoke to an upset manager the other day. She founded herbusiness seven years ago on a shoestring and has built it into anorganization with more than $1 million in revenues and 30employees. And in the past year or two, she's noticed that theemployees act less like the tight entrepreneurial team shetreasures. Instead, they're beginning to gripe and grumble andcomplain about their manager.

They want more pay. More of them want to be advanced to officialmanagement positions. They want the founder and president of thecompany to articulate a clearer, more exciting "vision"for them to follow. They want her to spend more time with them andless time on the road drumming up customers, because they feel liketheir concerns are being ignored. They are jealous of oneanother's successes, they complain about the benefits, theydon't like their offices and want to move into a fancierbuilding, they think they should all be able to hire assistants,they don't think the president is working hard enough and thinkthey are working too hard.

You get the idea. For many managers, it's easy to feel thatyour constant efforts are unappreciated by your staff (who mightnothavejobs if it weren't for your entrepreneurialinitiative). And when they start lobbying like the teamsters, youcan easily feel, as the manager I spoke with does, that somethinghas gone wrong with team spirit.

As an entrepreneurial manager, you need a high level ofcollaboration and enthusiasm in your group. You can't affordthe waste of "us vs. them" thinking, with its poorcommunications, resistant attitudes and unreliable quality of work.Yet we must face the fact that labor-management relations have along history of antagonism, and the "old ways" easilyslip into the workplace and can be hard to exorcise when theydo.

Worldwide, employees and managers have an uneasy truce thatpushes their antagonisms beneath the surface much of the time, butleaves the old conflicts there to get in the way whenever extraeffort or true teamwork is required--as it often is inentrepreneurial settings. I think it is safe to say that no greataccomplishments happen in business without the enthusiasticcooperation and help of the people of the business. All the people.So whenever you catch a scent of that old us vs. them thinking inthe air, give it your full management attention. Your instincts areright; it is a problem, and it needs to be identified as such.

What can be done to combat the contamination of us vs. themthinking? First, make sure it doesn't suck you in, too! Are youstarting to complain about "their" attitude or what"they" do or don't say or do? If so, then you need toremind yourself that the employee's attitude is thebusiness's attitude. It's not "them"--it's"us" that has a problem. This subtle shift in view helpsyou feel more in control of the problem and more comfortableworking on it or talking with (not "to") your employeesabout it.

For instance, you could simply open the next staff meeting withthe observation: "We seem to be falling into some negativeattitudes and grumbling about things. It may be a sign of oursuccess that we can afford to let divisiveness into our workplace.But I think that we cannot expect to be successful in the future ifwe let this divisiveness grow. What do you think?"

Few managers have the guts to speak up and share their concernsright away when they first catch the scent of divisiveness in theirteam. Tradition says this subject is taboo and cannot be raisedfreely and frequently in discussions within the workplace. But itis a vital issue and one that everyone has a stake in, so to heckwith tradition. My advice to the manager who mentioned her concernsto me, by the way, was to talk with her employees about it. Idon't work there, so while I can offer friendly advice from adistance, I can't actually solve the problem. Only she and herteam can. And they can only solve it if she challenges them to be ateam--in spirit, not just in name.

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Alex Hiam is the founder and director of Alexander Hiam &Associates, a management consulting firm, and a publisher of toolsfor corporate trainers. He is the author ofMarketing forDummies,Streetwise Motivating & Rewarding Employees,The Vest-Pocket CEOand other popular books, and he hasworked with a variety of high-tech startups and family-ownedbusinesses.