team first or me first?

In a Rutgers and University of Connecticut poll, 58% of workers believe most top executives put their own self-interest ahead of the company’s, while 67% don’t believe their bosses have the team’s best interests at heart. The only realistic way to turn those numbers toward better team dynamics is if we believe that by putting the team’s needs first, both we and the team will ultimately be better as a result.

And before anyone would buy a more we-centered approach to work, we need to ask an ironic question; what’s in it for me? The ironic answer is that the less we focus on our individual needs first, the more likely our needs will be met. Let’s explore the idea.

Imagine for a moment you’re a salesperson for IBM (or any company). In a high-performance culture, the pressure is on. Like every salesperson, you have a monthly quota. Hitting your quota could mean many things: commission, promotion, reputation, college tuition, weddings, house payments, retirement, and so on. With that pressure, you have a sales presentation to make on a several-hundred-thousand-dollar proposal. If you walk into that meeting and begin making your presentation with your focus first and foremost on your needs—to hit your numbers and get your commission—are you more or less likely to make the sale? The answer is less likely.

But why?

As soon as the client senses a me-first intent from you, that intent taints the interaction on both sides. You may oversell product features, rush through a technical explanation, mistake understanding for agreement and enthusiasm, smooth over objections, or push too hard for the close. As the client feels your me-then-we intent, they grow suspicious of what you say, become guarded about what they say, and don’t give you access to information or people they otherwise would. In turn, their trust in you goes down, you lose the sale and your company loses the revenue.

In fact, maybe you have a better product than your competitors, and the client loses the economic benefit of not getting the best solution. Everybody loses.In sales, the more important it is to meet your numbers, the more important it is to forget about your numbers and help clients meet their numbers. In other words, the more important it is for you and your company to progress, the more important it is for you to suspend the focus on that progress and devote yourself to the progress of your clients first.

The irony is that in suspending your own needs, the more likely you are to meet your client’s needs, which in turn advances the progress of your company, and therefore more likely to meet your needs.

If progress is truly our primary motivation, we won’t let individual passion and commitment to a project or idea drift into a me- or us-first, client- or company-second view. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t passionately make our case for our needs or ideas, but we should be guided by what’s best for the business and our clients, not just our own territory.

But let’s consider a tough situation outside of sales: your company is on the ropes and “downsizing” is on the horizon. Is “we, then me” unrealistic if you’re vying for a limited number of jobs? Is that a legitimate out for taking a me-first, “survival of the fittest” approach? Even though that’s a typical response, it would be exactly the wrong approach. In good times, a company needs contribution from people, and people want to keep their jobs. But do company or employee needs change in difficult times? The answer is no.

The needs for both increase when times are hard—companies need more contribution and people need job security. If “we, then me” is effective when times are good, it’s no less effective when times are bad. The irony of a survival of the fittest mentality is that as pressure for survival increases, so does the temptation to adopt a “me, then we” attitude—to be defensive about our ideas, treat colleagues as competitors, occupy time showcasing our “you can’t live without me” brilliance, and seek the acceptance of those who can send
us to the unemployment line. By definition, that decline puts us one step closer to the exit.

The more we focus on self-survival, the less likely we are to survive. “We, then me” is the most direct strategy and incentive for survival as well as moving to the next level of performance—on both sides of the equation.

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