How many groups do you know who spend time “team building” but never seem to really make it as a team? Business people spend fortunes each year learning how to become a team, but which of the 5,000 odd team theories is right for your team?

In 1993, an Australian organizational psychologist talking about teams said: “every human motivation is selfish.”

Part of me wanted to argue straight away and, when I did argue, the idea seemed impervious.

Over the years, I have noticed how we look into the world and see ourselves. The eastern saying, “life is a journey of self-discovery” rings true with the modern western saying, “people find themselves and understand themselves through interaction with other people.”

In crowds we notice people similar to ourselves. We naturally tend to like and approve of people who are similar to ourselves because, in short, we are actually approving of ourselves through them. We don’t really care deeply about them. They’re just somehow making us right by being like us.

Nowadays, when I’m training groups of managers, if I pledge their welfare and happiness are more important than mine, they can be confident that I’m lying. Groups tend to accept the logic inherent in the idea when presented this way.

Some parents have struggled with the idea, “every human motivation is selfish,” and argued as I originally did. In one discussion, a parent very honestly said, “even the parent who risks their own life to save their small child knows, at some level, how they couldn’t live with themselves if they stood idly by.”

Nobody argued.

It has often amused me how many team-building sessions will deal with personality types and behavioral types as tools for understanding and motivating people. Even though these tools are being offered for dealing with other people, participants are wondering, “what type am I?”

Smart facilitators know participants will only begin to consider other peoples’ types and needs after they have understood their own personality or behavioral type strengths and opportunities.

So, having honestly accepted our inherent selfishness, we can begin to consider what happens in groups of individuals who wish to become teams.

How do teams satisfy their basic selfishness and become a team? Are successful teams just groups of individuals who all selfishly want the same thing and a willingness to share it?

The ideas of shared missions, visions, values and goals have certainly sold a lot of management text books in the past decade. There are, however, more than 5,000 team-building and leadership texts in print, so there’s no consensus.

The most eloquent statement I have recently heard about individuals

forming teams came from a British management theorist named Daniel Bunn, who said: “everybody wants to be strong and to belong.”

Here are some of my interpretations of Bunn’s statement:

To “be strong” means to truly be yourself. To clearly know who you are, what you want, think and feel.

To “be strong” also means to be authentic and honest with yourself. To have a strong sense of identity and clarity of personal values and beliefs.

Having a high level of self-awareness is about shedding personal delusions and/or limiting beliefs. It’s about overcoming fears and having a powerful sense of personal purpose. In many ways, it’s what successful personal-growth programs achieve.

The idea that “team building starts with self awareness” means you cannot truly join a team until after you have “found” and formed a strong relationship with yourself.

Corporate spending on team-building will be much more rewarding when it follows meaningful investment in personal-development programs.

Personal-development programs do not all have to be firewalking, nude dancing or extreme in nature. Choose a program to best suit yourself and be sure to choose to do something. Ask yourself:

If I was being really selfish and did something meaningful for my personal development, what would I do?

It might be tempting to be “too busy.” Work is a good place to hide from yourself, but it can’t last forever.

You might even be tempted to do a business planning course or another technical type program and hide from yourself behind your own intelligence. Don’t let your education get in the way of your personal growth.

The second part of Bunn’s statement was about wanting “to belong.”

“Everybody wants to be strong and to belong.”

“To belong” means to be part of something greater than yourself without losing yourself.

Once you have found your self-awareness, there’s little chance you’d join a team where you couldn’t be yourself. You can be considerate of others and, at the same time, not be influenced by peer group pressure.

Put bluntly, groups that do not allow your authenticity do not become teams, do not foster synergy, and are just not worth joining.

The most attractive teams are those that encourage you to authentically be yourself AND to be part of the team.

From outside these teams, you can clearly see how team members know themselves well and honestly give of themselves to create the team identity. The formation of the team identity is not at the expense of individual identities.

“Personal development” and “self-awareness” titles for corporate training programs are not as popular as “team building.” No matter what the titles are, be sure you and your team invest in yourselves first.

It’s OK to be selfish first. In fact, it’s perfectly natural.

Deanna Linck is an independent Management Consultant based in North Hollywood