Young professionals are finding it increasingly difficult to survive the endless challenges the fast-paced business world presents, let alone advance beyond their current position. Many can attest that providing excellent results consistently hardly guarantees a corner office, or even space resembling an office. So what measures can you employ to ensure you’re not left behind in the rat race?

Companies look highly on employees who engage in social activities with fellow colleagues beyond the padded cubicles. Believe it or not, these activities can serve as vehicles to the fast lane in career advancement. There are a variety of opportunities for businesses to sponsor social events such as:

 
• athletic competitions against other organizations
• noncompetitive gatherings such as picnics or parties
• volunteer work
• team building workshops either onsite or at a remote, tropical location (you may want to inform your boss that Hawaii has several workshop organizations).

There are infinite possibilities throughout the country that foster corporate entertainment. Human Resources, a social committee, and coworkers are the best sources of information of how to get involved. No matter what functions your place of employment has planned, all are meant to inspire employee socialization and enjoyment. I know it may not seem like it, but they really are intended to be fun . . . really.

Out of your Comfort Zone

When whiteboards and meeting agendas are replaced with bowling balls and zip lines, individuals are removed from their comfort zone and forced to interact with peers in a different manner. Initially, the idea of discussing topics unrelated to work for an extended period of time may seem uncomfortable, but eventually this will become easier.

This allows coworkers to move from the superficial layer of office speak, i.e., how was your weekend, to more personal and meaningful information. Dont worry, no one is asking you to reveal all those skeletons in your closet. You are building on the peer-to-peer relationships by divulging only carefully chosen, nonwork-related information.

Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylors’ idea of Social Penetration theorizes that the closeness of relationships directly relates to the amount of personal information disclosed. As individuals reveal more about themselves over a gradual timeframe, their counterparts are likely to reciprocate. This process highlights characteristics in others to which we can relate, thereby strengthening our bond. Often times, people are pigeon-holed based on their job position and not considered in alternate views. Conversing with fellow employees outside the office rectifies the judgments we have of each other.

Once back at work, Samantha no longer will be just a security specialist who runs large contracts for the Government. Instead, you’ll know she paints in her spare time, mostly with acrylics, and dreams of returning to art school. Ultimately, when you comprehend what drives those around you, the communication and collaboration processes will result in higher levels of productivity and, most importantly, job satisfaction.

Why It Matters:

Getting noticed, Impressing, and Building relationships . . . with your boss!

In addition to making an impact on your coworkers, the relationship with your boss also correlates to your attendance at functions. One immediate advantage is he or she will notice your commitment to the company and effort to interact with others on a higher level. Corporate events also facilitate the opportunity to emphasize talents stifled in the workplace. For example, taking charge of t-shirt orders for the basketball team or overseeing the logistics of a public speaking presentation will cause your immediate supervisor to notice your leadership skills and proactive attitude. This could lead to increased responsibilities at work and enhance his or her impression of you.

Perception, Perception, Perception

The perception your boss holds of you will most likely be relayed to his or her superior, basically your super boss, for lack of a better term. Whether good or bad, true or false, the information passed through the chain of command will determine how upper management considers you.

Some employees have little or no social interaction with their super boss but see him or her frequently. This can change by striking up conversation during social hour. Attempt to find out more about your superior’s family and interests. Should you discover he’s a Giants football fan and you live and breathe Philadelphia green and white, you’ll be able to joke with him after his team takes a beating. This small topic can be the catalyst to building a stronger rapport with the person, especially a guy, as you can then move onto other topics when comfortable. By building this relationship, you are making a positive name for yourself and possibly opening doors.

The structure of your office environment will predetermine whether or not partaking in the corporate festivities will influence your relationship with the head of the company. When I started my job, our personnel totaled 500. The chief sat down the hall from me, and we spoke frequently. After being acquired by a major corporation, our staff jumped to 44,000. Now what I know of the man in charge rests solely on a brief, monthly memo and an accompanying picture . . . but keep in mind it’s a really great picture.

If all you know from your CEO is that he lives on Park Ave, chances are you playing broomball isn’t really going to change his idea of you dramatically, if your existence is even known. What may act as an impression are the relationships you develop with others, which may ripple in his direction by word of mouth.

According to Pete Eshelman, the director of operations for Wilderness Adventure at Eagle Landing, a team building retreat in New Castle, Virginia, those at his organization “see a lot of people come out of their shell. Lisa starts off as shy and introverted and after [team building] we can’t shut her up!”

He believes that the self-confidence gained from building relationships with coworkers outside of the office serves one exponentially in the office. These types of interaction “give employees a global perspective of the organization instead of a tunnel vision focused on them. They see where they fit now and what they can do in the future.”

The Big Picture

No matter with whom you interact, what’s important to remember is that the social events outside the office transform the group dynamics in the office. How a person carries herself plays a significant role in the way others respond. When planning on making an appearance, always remember to be positive, supportive, friendly, open-minded, and personable. Funny doesn’t hurt either. The last thing you want is to negatively impact your coworkers and stall any growth in your professional life.

To make the most of each situation, set a goal, such as discovering one new fact about each person or talking to as many people as possible. This not only will make you proactive during the occasion but also provides you with a sense of accomplishment afterwards. However, I understand not everyone has a flair for starting a conversation from thin air. What serves as an immediate remedy to this conundrum is to inquire about kids, grandkids, animals, and hobbies, all topics people love to gush over. You won’t have to say much and by listening attentively and asking thoughtful questions, your coworkers will find you engaging.

One last thing to consider is companies appreciate employees who volunteer in the community. Building a house with Habitat for Humanity not only looks good for the organization but creates a strong feeling of accomplishment and fulfillment in each person. Many businesswomen would love to support volunteer agencies on a regular basis, but lack the time due to a second job, children, or long hours at work. Considering the limited amount of time available, those of you who fall under these categories can participate in annual fundraisers, like the Multiple Sclerosis Walk, or donate old clothes and goods to the needy when possible. Even efforts such as these count as performing your civic duty.

Breaking out the bocce set at the annual company bonfire may not appeal very much to everyone . . . or anyone, for that matter. Yet those who pick up the ball, and do it with a smile, allow for more chances to chat with influential people and change their career paths. Ok, maybe you’d prefer badminton. Either way, what’s important is your presence at work socials and their impact on your future.

Lucky for my short attention span, I recently stumbled across a 20-question online quiz from J.T. O’Donnell Career Insight Company, which focused on work styles, with a special emphasis on how people interact in groups. According to this quiz, I am an “Energizer” (and here I was calling myself lazy . . .), someone who thrives on competition and likes to see the big picture. Unfortunately, this can also cause me to come across as self-centered and pushy. As much as I hate to admit it, when working in groups, I do tend to be a bit over-zealous. When I’m excited about an idea—when that proverbial light bulb goes off and I think I have a solution to the task at hand—I’m sure I can come across as a bit of a know-it-all. And that is where my fear of teamwork stems from: I want to be liked, and I want to succeed. But I have no idea how to combine these two desires successfully.

I don’t think I’m alone in my consternation over teamwork. The workplace team can be a source of stress for many young women. “It’s just like high school in that there is always the slacker, the over achiever, the gossip who wants to just hang out instead of doing their job,” says Lila, 27. “The right group makes all the difference. Depending on who gets assigned to one of my projects, I either really look forward to working on it or I dread it. It’s just like picking teams in gym class.”

Gee, thanks, Lila. I was always picked last in gym class.

“Teaming” with possibilities
If you’re more of a lone wolf than a team player, take heed: learning to work effectively in a team is of vital importance for career success. Managers love teams, as a good group can achieve far more than an individual, thanks to a healthy combination of personalities and strengths. In a 2001 article for Kansas City Business Journal, consultant Quarterman Lee explains, “We only have to remember the feelings of playing with a winning sports team to recognize a power that mobilizes the best of talents and effort. Teamwork appeals to the higher and more effective motivators . . . (and) help(s) satisfy the individual’s craving for social interaction, and esteem and self-actualization.”

This may be true, but human nature and the current fragile employment climate can make teamwork a scary experience for some. Maneuvering through the spider web of personalities and egos can be difficult, especially for younger, newer members of a company. It’s easy to feel bullied by overbearing or bossy coworkers, or resentful of the slackers. You may be wary of taking too much of a leadership role due to your relative inexperience, or feel like you’re unfairly being handed the grunt work.

There is hope, however. By figuring out your ideal role in the group, and discovering ways to handle difficult personalities, you can turn conflict into an asset. Says Lee, “We often mistake an absence of overt conflict for effective teamwork. But conflict is natural, even desirable. If conflict is not visible, either people are thinking alike, or they are suppressing it. Neither situation promotes teamwork. Effective teams gain much of their power from divergent thinking, attitudes and experience. Without this variety, conflict is lessened, but the resulting decisions and actions are less effective.”

My first tip? Go take that quickie personality test. You’ll have a better idea where you fit in the grand scheme of things.

Back already? See, I told you it was quick. Now that we know where we stand, let’s look at some common issues that arise in a team environment.

Should you leave your ego at the coat check . . . or hang it on your chair?
It’s a common refrain: you’re on a team where one person gets all the credit, and that person also happens to be the member with the most trying personality. It’s like high school – the most popular girl was usually not the nicest, right? Sadly, that pattern is mimicked in the workplace. Certain personalities have a way of delegating all the hard work and taking all the credit. But if we’re getting real here, the egomaniac’s minions have to take some responsibility for the situation. There is a certain safety in allowing dominant personalities to stay dominant; by remaining in our comfort zones and grumbling about the inequity of the situation, we don’t have to own up to our personal shortcomings or insecurities.

Ego is an inherent part of the workplace. Think about popular success icons, like Donald Trump or Bill Gates. Neither of those guys is known for his docile personality or sweet disposition. Still, it’s hard to know if this is a chicken-or-egg situation—did they possess such domineering personalities from the get-go, or are they a result of extreme success? More importantly, how do you define success? Is being liked and respected of equal or greater importance to you as being financially or professionally successful—or could you care less about what people think? If you’re the type of person who doesn’t care about squashing people under your stiletto as you claw your way to the top, then more power to you. Ego doesn’t need to be a bad thing, and you have every right to operate in a way that feels appropriate to you. However, within a team environment, this type of behavior can backfire.

“I was working in a five-person team, and there was this one woman who treated us all like her slaves. It was supposed to be a peer-managed team, with no designated leader, and yet she came into the first meeting with a written agenda and assignments without consulting any of us. She wouldn’t take no for an answer, so we all went to our manager and asked for her to be removed from the team. I somehow doubt that this will help her come review time,” says Jess, a 30-year-old junior consultant.

The teammate in question sounds like what Rhoberta Shaler, PhD, calls a “rhino” in her book, Wrestling Rhinos: Conquering Conflict in the Wilds of Work. Rhinos “live in the ‘it-must-be-my-way’ camp and they behave from an ‘I’ll run you over if you get in my way’ philosophy,” she explains in an article for Hodu.com. According to Shaler, rhinos can be “tamed” but only by those who refrain from whining or making excuses. Instead, beat the rhino at her own game. Shaler recommends confronting the behavior without emotion, since bullying rhinos feed on any perceived weakness: “Learn to speak up at the first sign of wayward behavior. It takes strength to do so. Do it with no emotional taglines. Simply the facts.”

There are a ton of theories out there on how to best handle bullies in the workplace, but a common thread runs through them all—and that is to not let them get the best of you. Do this by staying calm in heated discussions and honing your acting skills. Like my mom always says, kill ‘em with kindness—and a healthy dose of condescension doesn’t hurt either.

Case in point: when President Obama was running for his first senate seat, he had a habit of calling his most threatening opponent by his first name. He’d address everyone formally—Mr. this, Congressman that—but with this particular fellow, he’d just call him “Blair.” I noticed that he used the same tactic recently in a verbal spat with a journalist. It’s extremely subtle, and extremely effective. He doesn’t get visibly angry; he stays calm; and yet he manages to put his opponent in his/her place. You can use a similar tactic with an overbearing or difficult teammate—the calmer you act, the better you’ll look, and the more ridiculous his behavior will seem.

Don’t get me wrong, though; not all ego-maniacs are bullies. In fact, a bossy, driven coworker can be your best asset on a team. Myra White, a Harvard professor and Strategic Talent Management Consultant, urges us to look at the silver lining of a potentially difficult personality in an article for Management-Issues.com: “ . . . Fellow team members need to see the value of outspoken, high intensity team members. Such team members can be real engines for team success. Often they are willing to do more work than others. Team members also should realize that on great teams everyone is a coach, which means that they must learn how to manage their fellow team members’ behavior and be willing to listen to members who challenge the status quo.”

And then there is the flip side…what if you are the one with the ego? It’s all about using your strong sense of self worth for good rather than evil. In their book, Egonomics: What Makes Ego Our Greatest Asset (Or Most Expensive Liability), authors David Marcum and Steven Smith define a healthy ego as a potent combination of humility, curiosity and veracity. According to Marcum and Smith, the problems start when you are out for notoriety or acceptance rather than the greater good of the organization. To escape the trap of becoming too self-obsessed, try seeing the team as an extension of yourself—the better your group performs, the better it will reflect on you in the long run.

Subscribing to the “group ego” theory can help you relate to other members of your team, says Kathryn, an HR specialist in her late 30s: “My best advice for a positive team experience? Focus on how others are reacting to you, rather than how you are reacting to them.”

Finding your place
May, 34, loves teamwork so much that she focused on group dynamics when getting her Masters in Social Work. “Basically the idea is that when you are part of a group, consciously or subconsciously, everyone takes on a distinctive role,” she explains. “Some are natural leaders, whereas others fit themselves in to the needs of the group dynamic. But the great thing is, each role is actually necessary for the group to function. If everyone were a leader, conflict would arise and there would be little to no progress made. When people fulfill the diverse roles however, the dynamic formed allows the group to move forward and do work.”

The other advantage (or problem, as the case may be) with group dynamics is that your role can shift depending on the situation at hand. In your personal life, you might tend towards a dominant personality, but in a work setting, you could fall into a more subservient role due to the corporate hierarchy. And yet, in the same environment, a year later, you might end up being the leader. The people you’re partnered with affect your role as well—if they all happen to be slackers, you might end up taking on a more involved role than if you are grouped with a bunch of overachievers. This can be a positive thing, helping you figure out which role fits you best, and pushing you to strengthen unused abilities. Teams are a living, breathing social microcosm; a tiny version of high school, but with far more leeway in terms of your ability to change your social status.

Once you’ve worked in a variety of teams, you may discover that you are most comfortable in a specific role, which can be a double-edged sword. It’s wonderful to know your strengths, but in the working world, we don’t always get to choose our teammates. You might be a great leader, but what if you get paired with two other “leader” types? This situation can easily become an ineffectual power struggle, which leads us back to the ego question. This would be the time when leaving that ego at the coat check would be a good idea. Remember, you can still use the same qualities that make you a leader—drive, attitude, energy, inspiring—without being the actual leader.

In that same vein, it’s important to remember that every role on the team is important—yes, even the slacker (not that you should strive to be one, of course). Says May, “Everyone thinks the slacker of the group is a bad thing, but without the slacker, without the workhorse, no leader would need to emerge. The roles depend on one another to allow the group to function and progress.”

Square peg, meet round hole: getting stuck in a role that doesn’t fit you
Sexist as it may be, women are often pigeonholed into the “mediator” or “peacemaker” role. Penelope Trunk, The Brazen Careerist (who, incidentally, is also an Energizer—she’s the one who led me to the aforementioned quiz) speaks to this in one of her fabulous blog posts, where she describes a book she had read in college:

“(The book was) about how in the history of English literature, men related to each other through women . . . I remember thinking to myself that this is such a lame way to function and that only lame women would put up with this position in life. But look, here I am. And actually, it does not feel lame so much as useful,” she muses. “I can see that I have had this position at work a lot. Men who are getting along at work can talk about football and go to strip clubs together. But men who are not getting along at work do well to put a woman in between them. Women seem to be natural mediators.”

Mediators are certainly helpful in team situations, but when you’re trying to make a name for yourself in your organization, this can be a frustrating role—especially when “mediator” isn’t the type of personality you actually are. But then again, when you’re on a team that isn’t functioning, playing peacemaker can be the only way to save your collective butts. Mary, a 25-year-old marketing executive in Chicago, recently found herself in this tricky spot. “I actually see myself as a group leader. I tend to be very driven and dominant in my personal life . . . I was president of my sorority and always led the way in school teams. But here I am in my first job, where I am the youngest person on my team, and I find myself keeping my mouth shut while my older, male teammates act like idiots. They’re all so busy trying to one-up each other that all I can do is try and keep everybody on track, “ she laments. “I’m not comfortable in this role at all, but what can I do? There’s a hierarchy here, and I’m just not sure how to fight it. No one is going to take me seriously as a leader, so the only thing I can do is try to pick up the slack so we all don’t get fired.”

Unfortunately, there seems to be something inherently “male” about group dynamics, explains Megan McArdle on TheAtlantic.com. “There is a competitive male dynamic to groups that is completely different from the way female groups act,” she writes.

“ . . . Unless the group is overwhelmingly female, the dynamic of any mixed group always defaults to male, with women fading back into supporting conversational roles . . . men in groups are focused on their role within the group. Women in groups are focused on the group. Men gain status by standing out from the group; women gain status by submerging themselves into it—by strengthening the group, often at the expense of themselves.”

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; if women are better at conflict resolution, then they might be a dysfunctional team’s saving grace. Merrick Rosenberg, President & Chief Learning Officer of Team Builders Plus, a New Jersey-based leadership development and team building firm, says that while most people (understandably) avoid workplace conflict, those who can “help others to accept differences and better understand each other” play a key role in the health of an organization.

“Everything you do either adds to the workplace or takes away from it,” she explains. “It’s easy to step back and shy away from conflict or avoid difficult conversations, but in the end, you’ll be working in a culture filled with negativity and stress. People who step up and take personal responsibility for creating a positive and productive environment are the superstars that rise to the top of their organization.”

Keeping score: fragile ego 0, strong ego 1
Taking that proverbial step up can be treacherous when your ego is too fragile—a common problem for young women. Dr. Myra S. White, author of Follow the Yellow Brick Road: A Harvard Psychologist’s Guide to Becoming a Superstar, reasons that “men consider conflict a natural workplace event—part of the human condition. As a result they don’t take it personally and easily shrug it off. Male senior executives frequently like employees who stand up and fight for their ideas with their peers—though note that I say peers and not necessarily with (the executives themselves). Otherwise they question whether an employee believes in what they are advocating. Generally, playing the role of a peacemaker tends to label you as a passive player and not a winner. What women need to strive for is being respected which is different from being liked. It is the people who are respected that employers tend to promote.”

The subject of gender and age stereotypes in the workplace is fodder for another article, so for now, let’s leave it at this: if you naturally fall into a mediator or facilitator role, you can rest assured that your efforts won’t go unnoticed. You don’t necessarily need to be the loudest or most aggressive member of the team to get your way—like Gloria Steinem once said, “We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons . . . but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.”

However—I am a strong believer that we are all individuals, gender theories and group dynamics be darned. If you find yourself stuck in a role due to your youth or gender, and that role feels awkward to you, don’t sit idly by. We are certainly affected by others’ perceptions of us, but it’s within our power to change those perceptions. Let’s put it this way—egos are like coats. When working in the heated environment of teams, it’s usually best to leave them at the door. But if things get chilly, feel free to keep that ego at the ready.