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Sports Teams Are NOT Work Teams

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Organization Development    Team Building

I am not a sports fan, and when I am leading team building & leadership retreats for Corporate Teams the topic comes up.

I have lead programs with professional and college level sports teams, and learned a great deal about the similarities and differences.

When someone tells me how Football or Baseball or Hockey or choose your sport are great example of organizations and team-work. They make interesting points and I politely listen, and still don’t really care about sports.

When I tell them I am not really a sports fan, the response is generally, What do you enjoy doing? My lame response, Reading books and writing about Team Development & Leadership, plus philosophy. Plus the whole idea of Fandom freaks me out.

While these sports teams are True Teams they all work together to achieve a common goal they are not Managerial-Accountability-Hierarchies.

More examples;

  • They are NOT built up of manager-subordinate role relationships.
  • They are collectives of individuals working with a coach – and with professional athletes, they are collectives of entrepreneurs on contract fee for service and not on salary in a working organization with managers and subordinates.
  • For the team to work well in the field, they have to be able to sustain a cooperative team-work mode.

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