iTeam
The New York Times listed a little pub in Baltimore, The Wren, as one of their 50 best restaurants in 2025. The writing on the restaurant’s website implies that it may be difficult to get a table there right now, but let’s say you did. Say you were sitting at a cozy corner table on a cold snowy Baltimore evening, tucking into whatever daily special Chef Will Mester and his team had cooked up.
And let’s say, for the sake of this essay, that the food was terrible. Objectively awful. Amateur execution.
Would you want Chef Mester to feel a little offended? Not fake corporate offended, not “I am sorry the food was not to your liking” offended. But personally offended; he feels upset for a second, not as a business owner but as a human being who cares deeply about his work.
I think you would want that. I would, at least.
Well, whether or not Will Mester would feel offended depends on whether he puts an ‘i’ in “team.”
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I would be shocked if you have not heard this phrase before, but “there is no ‘i’ in team” is the sort of thing that teachers and sports coaches will tell you as you are growing up. Usually they say this because they want you to stop prioritizing yourself and start prioritizing collaboration. That’s the rationale.
Then you get older, and “there is no ‘i’ in team” starts to sound childish, so the people who adopt this mindset change their verbiage. They say things like “check your ego at the door” and “don’t take it personally.” These new phrases sound different but they ultimately have the same result: forget yourself at work.
I think this is totally wrong. By not bringing the ‘i’ to team, I think you are letting the whole team down. Right? Because not bringing the ‘i’ to the team means you are not part of the team. It means you are just watching.
So I put one there. iTeam. Now there’s an ‘i’ in team. Bring yourself and your ego. This has nothing to do with being an asshole. Don’t be an asshole. It is just a reason to be the most effective version of yourself, a version that is aligned to helping both the team and yourself win. That’s why you bring your ego.
The most likely reason people don’t want to put the ‘i’ in team is because it is scary. All of a sudden your ego is attached to this thing you are working on. All of a sudden the outcome reflects not just on this nebulous thing called “the team,” it reflects on you. If you are Will Mester and the hopeful diner does not like your food, that’s a bad look for you. It should make you feel shitty. Not your team. You! You you you. I, I, I. Forget the corporate programming. This is about you, actually, and that is a good thing.
It may even be true that most people do not even have an effective idea of what collaboration means. Instead, they use “collaboration” as a wall to hide behind. A way to avoid being personally responsible. A way to defer work. An excuse for being lazy. They do not want to put the ‘i’ in team, and they do not want to bring their ego, because those things are much harder to do. Leave the ‘i’ tucked into a cozy bed.
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What even is a good teammate, by the way? The status quo would say a good teammate:
- Builds strong relationships with the team
- Participates in team-wide activities
- Loves collaboration
- Checks their ego at the door
- Does not bring the ‘i’ to team
- (et cetera)
Then you have somebody like Michael Jordan, who was the best winner in all of basketball. And guess what? Michael Jordan did not ever, not even one time, have a private dinner with Scottie Pippen, the other all-star player on the team. There was no team-building exercise in Mexico, no icebreaker exercise on Friday lunch, no weekly 1:1 between the two. No, I think Jordan and Pippen just cared about winning. And they did whatever was most effective.
I’m skeptical of this mythology we have developed about what a good teammate is. I’m dubious of the guy who checks his ego at the door, of the woman who delegates, of the ‘coach’ figure who comes in and draws Xs and Os but does not get their hands dirty by doing any of the actual work. [0]
Bring your confidence, I say. Bring your ego. Infuse your work with it. Do a thousand team-building exercises or never talk to anyone except when it’s absolutely necessary, depending on which is a more effective approach. Paint the masterpiece, sing your heart out, build the weird software, make the crazy new invention. Put your whole self into it. Feel bad if it doesn’t go well, and feel great if it does. Please, I’m begging you: put the ‘i’ in team.
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