I don’t wan this blog to be dominated by news about sports
teams, as they are only one type of team and are not representative of most of
the teams that are in the work world. However recent news events from the
sports world do periodically provide great opportunities for us to reflect on
teams in general, what makes them work, what we expect of team leaders, etc.
Just this past week there has been a flurry of information
about hazing in the American National Football League (NFL). For those of you
who haven’t followed the story; Jonathan Martin, a player for the Miami
Dolphins, threw down his tray in the team cafeteria and left the team practices
without speaking to anyone after being the butt end of what some on the team
describe as a series of pranks. These “pranks” reportedly ranged from the use
of racial slurs and epithets (Martin is black), a staged event where multiple
white team members got up and left the table as soon as Martin sat down, and a
series of text messages from one team member in particular (Richie Incognito)
that included a variety of threats to Martin and his family.
On the sports radio channels, there have been a lot of
people calling in and giving their opinions on whether or not the actions by
Incognito and other team members or the reactions by Martin are appropriate
given this particular context and the “macho” culture of an NFL team. While many people (and radio hosts) condemn
the actions of Incognito in particular; others also condemn the reactions of Martin,
stating that he should just accept this as a natural part of the “hazing” that
occurs in this type of culture, and that these types of actions are designed to
test the “mental toughness” of new players.
I have never played professional football, so I won’t try to
speak with authority on the culture within an NFL team, what is or is not
appropriate language, etc. I will however talk about the use and function of
“hazing” rituals within teams, as these rituals happen in all sorts of
different organizations.
Hazing rituals play a valuable role in organizations. They
communicate important information about group norms and expectations, establish
and enforce status hierarchies, and reinforce key values. But most importantly,
these rituals establish a sense of community. In an organization where
people enter as a cohort group (for example a fraternity or sorority, or a
military boot camp), the hazing rituals help to establish bonds between the
members of the cohort as they all go through the experience together. In other organizations where members enter
one at a time, these rituals reinforce that the individual is a junior member
of the team; and that while senior members of the team will engage in this
hazing of the junior member, they will also protect that junior member of the
team from significant threats coming from outside the team.
These rituals are not intended to test the “mental
toughness” of team members; and there is an important reason for that. The
actions of Incognito and others served to isolate Martin, which does
indeed “test” one’s mental toughness. Isolation is used as an interrogation
tactic by police, military and intelligence units as a way to break down an
individual. In order to build a team, however, you do not want your team
members to feel isolated. You want them instead to always believe that they can
always count on their team members for help and support. This way, they
become more comfortable engaging in risky behavior (for example, putting one’s
body in front of multiple 270 pound defensive ends) and committing themselves
to the goals of the team, knowing that in turn the other members of the team
will protect them.
Sigmund Freud, the founder of modern psychology, made a very
interesting point about the importance of feeling like you are a part of a
larger unit. In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, Freud
commented that most military leaders felt that the perception of panic within a
military unit led to the dissolution of the unit, and that therefore one must
act directly to reassure the members of the unit that they would be successful.
Freud however noted that this thinking was backwards. It isn’t that panic leads
to the dissolution of the unit. Instead, it is that the realization that we are
not in fact a single unit that leads to the perception of panic. From the
beginning of human history, one of our biggest advantages against predators
that were larger, stronger and faster than us was that we were able to
coordinate our collective efforts to act as a single unit, a team if you will.
When we act as a team, we become bigger and stronger, and better able to deal
with a variety of external threats.
Therefore from the perspective of the Miami Dolphins, the
biggest problem with this incident is not that there may be one individual
player who is treating others badly, or even that there may be problems with
racism within the team. The biggest problem is that there are behaviors going
on that are designed to isolate individual players, preventing them from
integrating with the team. And when that happens, you are always going to be
playing at least one man short.
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