Not a Team Player

During my professional career, I have often been met with the accusation of not being a team player by my male colleagues and men in positions of authority over me. It is an especially insidious criticism leveled at women who are in positions of authority and leadership. 

It is used to minimize them and hobble their ability to lead.  Additionally, we lose the great ideas, challenges, and warnings that can help our organization when we allow this type of gender bias to go unchecked.  I know I am new here and this is your working relationship.  But I find being able to put language to these types of gender biases can help combat them, both personally and then more broadly as we seek to help other women in the workplace.  So, what I offer you are some articles that I think can start to provide that language or add to the language and thoughts you already have.  Additionally, some of my own thoughts and interpretations of the issue at hand.  I hope it helps and that you find ways to use what works for you to empower you moving forward.

Using Google keyword search “team player + women + work + gender bias” I found several articles discussing the issues of gender bias experienced by women in leadership positions.  Specifically, where there were accused of or assumed to be not team players.  I am providing links to these three because I think they describe the underlying issues well (i.e., descriptive role bias vs prescriptive role bias) and provide links to some of the peer-reviewed journal articles that they reference as well as other articles.

·      https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2020/09/28/implicit-bias-affects-us-all/

·      https://hbr.org/2017/04/how-gender-bias-corrupts-performance-reviews-and-what-to-do-about-it

·      https://www.fastcompany.com/3031101/the-new-subtle-sexism-toward-women-in-the-workplace

In short, this criticism of not being a team player that I and so many of my women friends and colleagues have also had levied at them in STEM industries, government, and the military is grounded in biases attached to how people react to women in roles of leadership and what those roles require, i.e., assertiveness, decisiveness, disagreeing with people.  The “not a team player” accusation attached to women comes from women stepping outside of the societally comfortable descriptive role of caregiver and supporter.  This is where the implicit/unconscious gender bias can come in (although it can just be regular explicit and totally conscious gender bias too).  And it also can come from both men and women.  So, a man accusing a woman of not being a “team player” may justify this criticism as valid by adding on the qualifying statement that another woman also agreed or told him “she wasn’t a team player.”  Thereby believing to have inoculated himself from any counter accusations of gender bias.  Or it may be a woman in a position of leadership that is accusing another woman of not being a team player or just repeating the criticisms of that woman’s male colleagues without questioning them, as was the case with one of my friends.  That can feel like a special kind of betrayal when one woman “not a team player’s” another woman.   The point is that both men and women exhibit this descriptive/prescriptive role bias towards women.  Attaching a woman’s cosign to the biased critique reeks of the same logical fallacies trotted out by people claiming not to be racist because they have black friends or that an argument isn’t racist because a black person or person of color agreed with it.  It’s another form of the “female relationship resume” that men use to insulate themselves from accusations of bad or biased behavior.  “I could never do what you are accusing me of doing.  I have a wife/daughter(s)/sister(s).  Here is a list of all the women I know who say I never did it to them.”  It’s gaslighting.

Oxford defines a team player as “a person who plays or works well as a member of a team or group.”   However, Merriam-Webster defines a team player as “someone who cares more about helping a group or team to succeed than about his or her individual success.”  I prefer the Merriam-Webster definition.  By that definition, a reasonable person could argue that a person is in fact being a team player when they are pointing out how some people are doing things incorrectly and creating not only fragility in the team but breeding feelings of unfairness which leads to a lack of team cohesiveness and a breakdown of good order and discipline.  Since she is putting the needs of the team/group ahead of any immediate and personal needs/success of making sure everyone “likes” her.  It seems like people like to conflate “not a team player” with “I don’t like what she said” or “she is inconveniencing me.”  But because they are either not self-aware of their biases or purposefully weaponizing the gender biases women still face in society and the workplace specifically; they use the accusation of “not a team player.”  Then it is left to the person being accused to have a sufficient understanding of these same gender biases (which they may or may not) and process their own very real feelings of confusion, anger, and hurt before countering that accusation.  Upon countering the accusations of “not a team player” they will be most often met with further gaslighting.  It is at this point that frustration can set in and we start to lose great leaders as they shutdown.  Either we lose them because they stop leading and making the team better or we lose them to another organization or company that will hopefully celebrate them.  For me, addressing these concerns in written rather than verbal form is often easier.  I have time to gather my thoughts and provide an argument uninterrupted by the gaslighting.  It also can provide a record of my concerns, should I need to refer to them later.

The other reason I like the Merriam-Webster definition of “team player” is because it closely aligns with the ethos of leadership in the military, where I started my professional career.  In the Navy, I was taught as an officer that when someone above you in your chain of command is doing something or giving an order that is wrong/bad/illegal (an example would be unintentionally ordering the ship to turn into shoal water thereby running the ship aground) it is your duty as a Naval officer and a leader to tell that senior officer “no.”  Not to obey that order and to tell the senior officer why this is a bad order.  Even if he or she yells at you.  Even if he or she is threatening you.  It is your job to say no.  Fear of reprisals is not an excuse not to protect your ship and shipmates.  Not to be a leader in that moment.  It is your job to stand tall and not waiver.  It is a testament to your character as a leader.