One thing about myself is that I am an athlete. I started on my first sports team when I was 5 and play on recreation teams to this day. I have played everything from softball, to lacrosse, to volleyball, basketball, ultimate Frisbee and much more. Team dynamics is something I have never even had to stop and think about, it was just a part of my daily life. Collaborating and bonding with your teammates is the easiest way to have a successful sports team. It wasn’t until my first job in a bookstore that I realized that the people you work with are your teammates too. Moreover, I didn’t realize that not everyone is accustomed to working with others on a team.

On a sports team, similarly to in the office, there is always that one person you can’t stand. You know who I’m talking about. In my experience, this is always going to happen. Even when I was 5 there were kids that I just wasn’t going to get along with. But that’s the thing about being on a team, you put everything else aside to do the best job that you can.

An article written by Forbes titled “How to Deal with Coworkers you can’t Stand” claims that “people conflicts in the office aren’t so much personality clashes as intention collisions.”(1) For example, some people are inclined to be more of an individualist than a collectivist. In other words, some people prefer to work alone and not depend on anyone else. But unfortunately for those people, there will always times in your life when you have to work with others. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing for a team if one person prefers to work alone but, with that being said, that person still has to make an effort to step outside of their comfort zone. Their intentions need to line up with that of the overall goal of the group. If there is no effort being made by one person to be a part of the team, the rest of the team will suffer.

Other values, such as masculinity vs femininity, long term vs short term orientation, and uncertainty avoidance are laid out in Hofstede’s framework for assessing cultures.(2) I believe that just as these dimensions identify differences between cultures, they also identify individual values in everyday situations. The differences in these values are where we see conflicts in the workplace. But just like we teach little kids playing soccer, no matter what reason you have for disliking someone, while you are working together it is in your best interest to try and get past whatever it is.

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(1)- http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2012/09/14/how-to-deal-with-coworkers-you-cant-stand/#60ca02643de7

(2) Langton, N., Robbins, S. P., Judge, T. A. (n.d.). Organizational Behaviour (7th Canadian Edition), pg 82.

Comic- https://s3.amazonaws.com/lowres.cartoonstock.com/industry-pro_active-psychology-group-groups-group_dynamic-cst0141_low.jpg