Page 91 - Executive Warfare

Peers

If you are an ambitious person, one
of the most convenient ways for a boss to find fault with you is to decide
that you are not a “team player.” This charge is commonly used in
organizational life in part because it’s so hard to defend yourself against
it. What are you going to say? “Yes, I do love my fellow man” is hardly
convincing. And such an accusation will invariably provoke a head-
shaking “tsk-tsk” reaction in any powerful person who hears such a thing
about you. Never fails!
The incestuous logic is that only team players can be trusted to put the
organization’s interests before their own, so only team players can be
trusted with the big jobs. As a result, if you appear to be openly aggressive
or uncooperative with your peers, it can put the brakes on your career.
But let’s admit, most ambitious people are not naturally team players.
They’re ruthlessly competitive individualists. They’ve been challenging
their peers since they were three years
old, trying to be the one who swings
highest at the playground. In school, in MOST AMBITIOUS
sports, in the office, that’s what has got- PEOPLE ARE NOT
ten them where they are, and they see NATURALLY TEAM
no reason to stop. PLAYERS. THEY’RE
I’ve never witnessed a clearer demon- RUTHLESSLY
stration of most up-and-comers’ atti- COMPETITIVE
tudes toward their peers than when I INDIVIDUALISTS.
was at Citibank in the early 1980s, on a
retreat in the Catskills, of all places—the
Borscht Belt, comedy capital for summering New Yorkers in the 1940s and
1950s, the aging resort where people like Jackie Mason and Rodney Dan-
gerfield had made their names. It didn’t seem to be a particularly appro-
priate choice for Citibank, except that those of us attending the retreat
didn’t get no respect, either.
One of the things that happens to you in any kind of organization as you
rise is that your bosses increasingly see the value of training you, so they are

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