0.3 Alfred adler and harry stack sullivan  (Page 12/37)

In American society, work is often done by teams . The short definition of a team is two or more individuals, with different roles, who socially interact in order to pursue some common goal. Teams can lead to successful outcomes in a wide variety of settings, such as in software development, Olympic hockey, disease outbreak responses, or the unexpected damage to a spacecraft like Apollo 13 (for two excellent and entertaining movies on teamwork, see Miracle [O’Connor&Guggenheim, 2004] and Apollo 13 [Howard, Broyles, Jr.,&Reinert, 1995]). However, teams can also lead to group failures, such as the international intelligence failures leading up to the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, the Space Shuttle Columbia accident, or the widely reported, storm-related deaths on Mt. Everest in 1997 (Kozlowski&Ilgen, 2006; Marks, 2006; for more on Mt. Everest see Boukreev&DeWalt, 1997; Krakauer, 1997). Given the importance of teamwork, both in personal settings and within organizations, there has been a great deal of research on teams, addressing cognitive, motivational, and behavioral factors, as well as information on effective team design, team training, and team leadership. Despite the wealth of information on both the positive and negative factors involved in teamwork, there is an interesting contradiction in the Western world:

…We school our children as individuals. We hire, train, and reward employees as individuals. And, yet, we have great faith that individuals thrown together into a team with little thought devoted to team composition, training and development, and leadership will be effective and successful. (pg. 115; Kozlowski&Ilgen, 2006)

Discussion Question: Working in teams can turn out good or bad, depending on dynamics of the team and the individuals involved. Are you actively involved in any teamwork? Does your team work well together, or do the dynamics of the team cause problems and interfere with accomplishing your goals?

The Life Tasks - Work, Communal Life, and Love

Based on the three ties described above, our ties to earth, humanity, and the opposite sex, Adler described three life tasks : work , communal life , and love . Work relates to the earth in an evolutionary sense, dating back to when our ancient ancestors were hunter/gatherers dependent on the environment for food and shelter. According to Adler, all of the questions of life can be found within these three tasks, which challenge us continuously throughout our lives. They tasks are not unrelated, since each one depends upon the successful pursuit of the other two. Given this interrelationship, Adler believed that how a person approaches each of these tasks, through their style of life, reveals a great deal about what they view as the meaning of life. It is necessary, of course, for there to be balance. For example, a person in an unhappy marriage might spend a great deal of time at work. This represents a mistaken style of life (Adler, 1931a, 1964). Worse still, is someone who fails to pursue any of the life tasks: