“The words from my teammates are the ones I have appreciated most.”

「チームメートからの言葉は一番ありがたい」前田健太, MLB pitcher

“The words from my teammates are the ones I have appreciated most.” – Maeda Kenta, MLB pitcher

Maeda made this comment yesterday during the broadcast of game 4 of the National League Championship Series between the Dodgers and the Mets. Maeda was reflecting on how valuable the support he got from his teammates on the Dodgers was when he first transitioned to the Majors. Several veterans took him aside and spent time with him to help him adjust to the challenges awaiting him in his new role.

Maeda had already proven himself to be a top performer in Japanese professional baseball, so one could be forgiven for assuming that his confidence in his record and abilities should have been enough to get him through the transition to the Majors, but this is not how he remembers things.

If you pay attention to the wording, you see that he implies that he assigned more value to the comments and support of his teammates than to those of his coaches or management.

He also noted that when he joined the Dodgers they had a lot of player-only meetings in which they came together to consider how things were going and what they could do to be even more successful as a team. Later, when he joined other clubs, he found that these player-only meetings weren’t common in every organization. It depended on the culture of the club. The Dodgers are famous for having great management, and one of the clearest signs may be the collegiality and “inter-dependability” of the players. At least according to Maeda, they proactively go out of their way to be there for each other and the club.

Companies invest a lot of money in developing managers who are capable of keeping their people engaged and productive, but employees are often more attuned to the opinions, experiences and advice of their peers than to those of their managers, executives and owners.

Of course, everyone would love to have a great manager, but the reality is that managers’ accountability for driving (extracting) performance can make it very difficult for them to build deep, trusting bonds with their people. The (unicorn?) managers who accomplish this feat are an amazing asset to both their teams and the company, but it’s a lot to ask of a normal human being to balance focus on performance demands with focus on people’s needs. These are literally two totally different “modes” of being with other people – each with it’s own cognitive, emotional and physiological patterns. Alternating back and forth between these two modes can be exhausting even for great managers.

This is exactly why it is so important for employees to build up strong collegial ties with their teammates and peers. Even when the manager’s mind is overwhelmed with the stress of extracting results from the team, it is still possible for teammates and colleagues to see, hear and be there for each other.

There is no replacement for the strong collegial ties that provide us with the experience of “inter-dependability.”

© Dana Cogan, 2024, all rights reserved.

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