A colleague recently began work on a project with someone he hadn’t worked with before. My colleague brought a wealth of experience to this new project and was ready to dive in to help. He volunteered over 10 hours of his very precious time and came away feeling good about the work he had done. But somehow, he had managed to annoy the project leader by making suggestions about possible alternatives to doing the work. Throughout the days he worked, he heard the words, “That’s not how we do it around here,” several times in answer to his suggestions.

He was not invited to return the next week and through others heard that the project leader had decided that he wasn’t a team player. He was accused of being a leader who was unable to work with others.

For the project leader, a team player was someone who simply did what he was told. His expertise was not honored, and his voice was silenced. In a healthy organization, team players and leaders are not mutually exclusive. Project leaders make space for their team members to make meaningful contributions. They listen to alternatives, welcome advice, honor expertise. They worry when they hear themselves saying that they’ve always done it this way as a way of defending themselves.

Being able to recognize new ideas that can help strengthen the work is a mark of leadership. But it can be hard for someone in a long time leadership position to support those ideas, afraid that it will make them look weak as though they failed since they didn’t have the ideas themselves.