Last evening, I watched the latest installment of Survivor in China. They’re down to the final 8 and that’s when discussion of team loyalties always seems to come up again.
In the past few seasons, the teams have stuck to their plans to vote along team lines and eliminate people from the team that can’t produce enough votes to block them.
Last night was an exception – the team lines failed and one of the strongest players was voted out. Now that the teams are no longer supporting themselves, it will throw the next few episodes into turmoil. Makes for great television, but certainly not what we would want to have occur at work with our teams.
The second show I saw was “The Office.” One of the subplots dealt with handling people’e birthdays in the office. As the office manager left, he put someone in charge who had a different idea of how to handle the birthdays from the normal way. The idea was met with great discomfort from the office staff, so much so, that the original method was reinstituted.
Now of course, the manner in which this was presented was very funny. But there were a lot of elements of truth underlying it. People do resist changes in routines with which they are comfortable. However, here, the ability to have one’s own birthday recognized, rather than celebrating in a group birthday format was the crux of the matter.
The show made a very interesting point: Group recognition has a time and a place. Providing individual recognition is every bit as important for a manager to do.
Filed under: November 2007, Recognition at work, Teams, Work Place Issues | Tagged: Fun at work, Team Work, Workplace recognition
