ABSTRACT
The essence of roles is that everyone on the team has a critical part to play if the team is to achieve its mission. The “star mentality” and the “hero myth,” which have become so ingrained in American culture, no longer serve us well. The average person spends over half of his or her waking time, about 90,000 hours, on the job. We want this significant investment of time to matter. As parents, we devote thousands of hours to helping our children become independent, happy, productive, ethical contributors to society. In today’s complex, sophisticated, highly interdependent world, none of us is likely to achieve anything of significance without a tremendous amount of help from others. From the White House to General Electric, we increasingly see top executive teams looking for ways to capitalize on the talents and intelligence of all team members.
