What makes someone a valuable team player in today’s workplace? How can you contribute positively to your colleagues’ work experience without falling into the trap of people-pleasing?
In Impact Players, Liz Wiseman discusses how you can enhance your workplace relationships and create a more positive environment for your team. Based on her research, there are specific strategies that can help you become a more valuable team member while maintaining healthy professional boundaries.
Read on to discover how to support colleagues at work with Wiseman’s practical recommendations.
Supporting Colleagues at Work
Wiseman writes that impact players understand they’re part of a team, not just individuals working alone, so they strive to make work better for everyone. In contrast, low-impact workers often add a burden to their teammates. They may do this unknowingly, by, for example, being overly negative or asking for help but rarely offering it.
When you make work easier for others, you’re seen as a more valuable contributor. Wiseman provides threefold advice on how to support colleagues at work.
1) Be low maintenance. Be easy to work with and avoid getting involved in office drama and other burdensome behaviors like wasting people’s time, complaining, or trying to show off. Wiseman suggests you be selective about your contributions—double check that your ideas are important, unique, and evidence-based ideas before sharing them.
(Shortform note: Be careful that your desire to make work better for everyone and to be low maintenance doesn’t morph into people pleasing. In How Women Rise, Helgesen and Goldsmith say that women tend to focus too much on pleasing others to the detriment of their own needs and careers. This focus can cause them to be over-accommodating—downplaying their emotions, struggling to refuse requests, and failing to find solutions because they’re trying to make everyone happy. They may also hesitate to ask their social networks for help to advance their careers for fear of seeming selfish or manipulative.)
2) Lessen the workload. Be willing to help others when needed, resolve conflicts instead of initiating them, and try to make tasks simpler for others. To do this, Wiseman suggests you learn what your natural strengths are and use them to improve everyone’s work experience. For example, if you have strong communication skills, you can use them to promote open dialogue and collaboration within the team.
(Shortform note: When you help lessen others’ workload, it may be a good idea to also make others aware of how you’re contributing, especially if you’re a woman. In Lean In, Sandberg writes that the contributions of women tend to go more unnoticed than those of their male counterparts—a phenomenon she refers to as the “gender discount problem.” She explains that society expects women to be agreeable and cooperative. Because of this, when women take on extra responsibilities, others are less likely to reciprocate the favor. At the same time, if women appear too busy, others see them as unhelpful and penalize them.)
3) Make things fun. Make the workspace a nice place to be in by using humor and appreciating others. Bringing more positivity to work strengthens the team’s relationships, boosts engagement, and makes people more resilient to challenges.
(Shortform note: One study shows why fun matters in the workplace, finding that employees from every generation consider fun to be the biggest driver of well-being at work. Workers who have fun on the job are 190% to 220% more likely to have higher well-being than those who don’t experience fun in the workplace.)
