Is Self-Motivation the New Teamwork?

For as long as I can remember, the most coveted and sought-after attribute for companies evaluating new recruits was teamwork. It was always in the top three requirements for a company looking to fill a role. The thinking was that potential candidates would be intellectually capable of learning the required skill-set and subsequently delivering the required work. This was a forgone conclusion. However, what truly made an interviewee stand out was their ability to be a team player: getting along with other employees, building strong interpersonal relationships with colleagues, clients and other stakeholders and contributing to a positive and harmonious corporate culture.

Besides the need to create a strong corporate culture, teamwork has been a top requirement because it enables a company’s B players to flourish. In building teams and recruiting people, the result is often a mixed bag of A players and B players. Both are essential. A players are self-motivated, curious and hardworking, while B players are dependent, steady performers who will get the job done, but rarely go above and beyond. This is not to say that B players are less capable or intelligent, but that they enact their intelligence with different temperament. In the absence of a shared physical environment, what happens to these dynamics? Can such teamwork be translated virtually?

 In a time when employees are, and will continue to, work remotely, managing tasks using technologies such as Asana or Slack, sitting in virtual meetings on Zoom or WebEx and sharing updates via online messaging platforms, traditional practices of teamwork are losing traction. Whereas the flexibility of working from home is allowing the self-motivated A-player to thrive, this means fewer opportunities to be uplifted by the team for the B players, translating to lower overall productivity from the group for employers. Additionally, as work and home become one and the same, the time and space for personal conversations, “extracurricular” activities, water cooler, lunch or coffee breaks become limited, impeding a team’s ability to bond, brainstorm and better understand each other. Broadly, these new dynamics may be hindering employees’ abilities to engage in real, meaningful, teamwork.

Therefore, when recruiting today, a question worth asking is: what is the new ‘teamwork’? As companies build out teams, the focus is no longer solely about whether or not a candidate can work well in a team. The new focus is whether or not this candidate can work well in a virtual team, and that translates into an ability to think independently and be self-disciplined, self-motivated and reliable. Typically, these attributes are a given when hiring A players. For the B players, this turns out to be more challenging as they can no longer be lifted by their A counterparts and are less likely to demonstrate pro-activity and autonomy.

In parallel, it also becomes important for employers to evaluate the potential of technology in fostering meaningful and productive A and B player collaboration. Is Asana for Remote Teams, or the likes, capable and enough to elevate and motivate the more reserved members of a given team? Is it fruitful and sufficient to host weekly Zoom “happy hours” outside of regular working hours? It is also worth examining the ways in which a B player’s temperament can be leveraged to the benefit of the business. There are other skills B-players possess that recruiters require in this virtual environment – for example, time management, organizational and effective communication skills. According to the Harvard Business Review's "Let's Hear it For B-Players", these employees’ individual strengths can be an asset for companies especially in times of crisis as they inherently prefer stability over risk, and balance over insecurity. As such, they are more prepared to return to “business-as-usual” or at least, provide a sense of consistency and constancy in their respective teams.

It is without a doubt that this pandemic is catalyzing a paradigm shift across a number of business processes and prompting companies to envision new criteria for hiring and retaining talent. Across businesses and sectors, this has been a period of deep reflection. While thinking in retrospect and introspect is, and remains, a fundamental exercise, it is the act of pivoting, adapting and adjusting that ultimately determines who will come out of this crisis winning – self-motivation, persistence and perseverance are skills that will be imperative to success in this new normal.