A thought about team and team player

Over the years I have heard a lot of “let the team do it”, “let the team decide”, and “the team is autonomous” along with Agile and Scrum. I am always skeptical about the idea until recently I started realizing what that means. I realized that in order to rely on a team like that, the team has to be a “team”, not just a group of people. Since a team is critical component in any project, “team players” becomes a critical and highly desirable feature with a variety of attributes: team players work collaboratively with others; team players listen to and communicate with others rather than only speaking; team players spontaneously speak out loud if they spot anything going wrong rather than stay silent or careless; team players don’t make themselves like heroes and convince others that they are more important than others (***#team-styles: maybe some team styles like heroes ***), etc.

That being said, many organizations just bring resources together that don't make a real team - at least in the sense of an Agile team, especially with those traditional organizations that keep strong hierarchical organization structure and clear lines of management levels (as opposed to flat organizations). For them, going Agile could be a total culture change and an organization restructuring, which is not easy or quickly achievable. However, without an Agile culture, a team can not be considered or used as an Agile team being autonomous and self-managed.

A real team can only come when members have the same desires and are on the same level for those desires. E.g. a naturally-build team (people join a team of their free will) is based on common interests and compassion, and personalities that get along. It is hard for an organization to choose human resources and let them to build a team. So a team-building exercise is commonly adopted, it is intended to convince everybody to believe in a common goal and to boost the level of desire, plus to explore different personalities so that to create a team synergy that works for every team member.