Your value as a member of a community will be a measure of your success

My dear students,

Your student life leads to a paradox. You are conditioned to succeed individually. You achieve your goals by focussing on yourself. You decide what your goals are; you decide how you will go about achieving your goals; and you decide how much you will push yourself. When you come to think of it, this is not something very complicated. Schools and universities have a set of goals identified for you already: ace exams, win debates, write prize winning essays, etc. You decide which of these goals works for you and then you develop a personal plan for it based on your interests and motivations. All good so far, except that in the real world you almost never pursue individual goals.

In real life, you are faced with a different problem requiring a different set of skills: how to succeed collectively. By collective success, I mean that your life flourishes if the team you are in flourishes. Being a grown up means being part of a team with responsibilities: a mother, an office colleague, a member of the resident welfare association, a cricket team; the possibilities are endless.

When you start working, you will have a different set of decisions to make. You will need to figure out what you can do for your team, not yourself. This is not because the world rewards altruism but because the world is wired in a way that the precondition for your success is the success of the team of which you are a member.

Members of an orchestra succeed when the orchestra performs well in unison. The conductor and the players work with each other to produce an ensemble production that, if done well, enhances the success of everyone working on the production. The contribution you need to make to the team will not always be clear and it will be your job to chart your vision for your team. To realise what your team needs, you will need some understanding of your team members and some appreciation of the larger organisation and ecosystem in which your team is operating.

But this is only part of the problem that you will contend with. There is an even bigger issue, and this will arise more frequently as you take on leadership roles. You will need to convince your team that what you can do for the team is what the team actually needs. I assume that you will be genuinely convinced that what you can bring to your team is required by the team but, very often your team will also need convincing. If they are not convinced, they won’t work with you to make your vision work. This is a problem of interpersonal communication. No one teaches you this when you are a student.

But even this is not the end of the matter, and we are coming to the most difficult part of your working life. You might have understood your team role and convinced your team that your contribution brings value to the team. However, in addition, you must demonstrate to your team that what you did for the team was because you believed in the success of the team and not for yourself. Suppose they think you are in it for yourself, they will have no emotional connection with you at all. You are just another cog in the machine for them, and they have nothing to lose by discarding you when times are tough. On the other hand, if they believe that you are a team player, they will value your role in the team. Collegiality is earned, not demanded. I have laid some stress on demonstration here because once again this is an issue of communication, but of a different sort.

The earlier problem of communication was analytical: articulating better your contribution to the team. This problem of communication is more emotional. You are not shouting out your value as a team player but showing your contribution in various quiet and subtle ways. Bringing coffee to your team members or manning the phones when one of them is busy are important indicators of what you are prepared to do for the team even if there are no immediate individual payoffs.

Are there any lessons from the real world for your student life? Try if you can to get into circumstances that will help you become a good team player. Join organising committees; it could be any committee relating to college life: sports, debating, clubs, fests, quizzes. The problem with student committees is that the slackers don’t face any downsides for slacking, unlike in real life.

But at least you can nurture your team player skills in these committees, even if others are not taking their roles seriously.

Your student life makes you believe that individual brilliance and talent will take you far. On the contrary, it is your value as a member of your various communities that will be a measure of your success.