You read it in the job adverts. It appears in the qualities necessary for the post and it’s often an interview question: are you a team player? The honest answer would be no, but you say yes. You’re good at what you do. You have a track record to back it up.

‘The star player may resent others for being ineffective, lacking imagination and having limited abilities’

You’re a leader, you’re decisive, determined, persuasive, creative and industrious. When you are in charge the team delivers. Trouble is when your not in charge. In the structure you both lead a team and are a member of a team. You are the service head but you are a member of the senior management team. The qualities that got you the senior management post were your outstanding individual talent, but your chief executive and your colleagues expect you to be a team player.

The individual who is not a team player is the one who doesn’t do their fair share; you need a member of the senior management team to open and close the conference – they’re too busy unless it directly relates to their service. Yu need a member of the team to represent the department on a corporate working group – they don’t think it’s relevant to them. You ask a member of the team to speak at the service users’ forum – they don’t think it’s the best use of their time. And then there is the special pleading around the budget cuts.

Flying solo

What’s best for the individual manager and their services may not be best for the rest of the organisation. The star player may resent others for being ineffective, lacking imagination and having limited abilities. But it’s a team and you can’t just do your own thing.

The team puts up with this behaviour because they recognise the talent, they admire the ability and they also bask in some reflected glory. That is until things go wrong. That’s when team spirit is most needed, but when those lacking it are most likely to disassociate themselves. Seeking to protect their own reputations, they move to a better team – assuming they have not already been shown the door.

Senior managers are by nature not good team players, but they recognise that on occasions they need to do their bit. Perhaps a better analogy is a choir, and every successful choir needs a few soloists.

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