Shared goals are anathema in business. The ultimate individual sport: raises, rankings, promotions, every person for themselves.

Today’s post is by Larry Coval, author of the forthcoming book Misled: Why (Almost) Everything You Learned About Leadership Is Wrong and How to Fix It (Girl Friday Productions, September 2026).

I remember thinking how wrong he was. My boss had just finished an emotionally charged speech about how the team (him, me, my peers) could achieve the bigger goal. “Come on, team! We can do this if we all pull together!” So we’re clear, the bigger goal was his sales target for the quarter. Whether he made or missed his goal had no impact on us. We were all paid on our own performance against individual, quantifiable objectives.

There was a corporate-wide contest for the top 20 salespeople and I was determined to be among that group. Deep down, because we were competing for cash awards, I was kind of hoping that my “teammates” didn’t outperform me. I actually hoped they had some struggles, making my path to the top a bit easier.

Now, I generally liked my peers. But calling us a team? That was not the case at all. In fact, it couldn’t have been further from the truth. And everyone knew it.

Unfortunately, our boss always led that way. Team goals, team development, team performance. As a result, he never gave us any individualized coaching, development or career planning, so it should come as no surprise that people on his “team” struggled, some more than others. His ‘rah rah’ motivational speeches had zero impact on our performance. His egregious error was mischaracterizing what our collective really was. We were more like independent contractors than a team. A group of people who just happened to report to the same person and shared a Wi-Fi password.

So what actually makes a team a team? First, you must have a common goal. For instance, when your local fire department is called to go tackle a house fire, they have one goal. Put out the fire as quickly as possible with minimal loss of life and property. Nothing competes with it. Nothing distracts from it. Simple, clear, unifying. Try finding that kind of clarity in a Tuesday staff meeting.

Another defining characteristic of a team is the interdependency of the work and how each role must be performed successfully so that the other roles can do the same. The best examples of that come from sports. In football, each play has players in distinct roles performing unique functions and, for that play to be successful, each must execute their function adroitly. Even one player’s failure to do what is expected of them, run the wrong route, block the wrong player, deliver the ball late, can cause catastrophe. That’s interdependency. And it’s also another workplace fairy tale. A story leaders tell so you’ll see their goals as though they’re your own.

Maybe the most difficult thing about real teams to replicate in business is the idea of personal sacrifice for the greater good. My brain always goes to the men and women who wear the uniforms of our armed forces. Specifically, those specialized units like SEALs, Rangers, Delta Force. These people go on the most dangerous missions in the most daunting circumstances, and each one of them is prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice to ensure the mission’s success.

These distinctive things that we attribute exclusively to teams weren’t present in any of the business environments that I was exposed to. In almost four decades working at several companies in different roles and levels, I never saw it.

Shared goals are anathema in business. The ultimate individual sport: raises, rankings, promotions, every person for themselves. Interdependency? My success never depended on anyone else’s. It depended on me. Personal sacrifice for a common goal never came up. Not once. Not in a single meeting I ever sat in.

Just admit it. TEAMS DON’T EXIST IN BUSINESS.

And yet, everyone keeps saying we work in teams. It’s deception. Worse still, all the popular business leadership books have been written about teams. Their wisdom, their dysfunctions. The same goes for coaching programs, keynotes, and everything else the Leadership Industrial Complex has been selling for the last 30 years. Using the wrong unit of analysis has only set leaders up for failure.

So, it’s no wonder that the current state of the global workplace is so disheartening. And it certainly helps explain why the workplace survey data is as damning as it is. Gallup’s most recent data puts the global cost of disengagement at $10 trillion. DDI found only 29% of employees trust their manager. It’s because we’ve been taught to broadly lead the collective instead of focusing on each individual, enabling them to reach their performance ceiling. Yes, it’s more difficult. Yes, it means seeing each group member for who they are and what they can accomplish. And yes, it requires a reset on what makes a capable, effective leader. But it also has the benefit of being the right way to lead.

Leaders who coach and develop individuals well don’t get people quietly competing in a vacuum. Their people push each other’s performance bar higher, and real collaboration surfaces exactly when it’s needed, not because they’re told to be. That’s not a team. It’s something sturdier, and far more productive.

But the authors and keynote carnies know that style sells better than substance. So, it’s easy to see why the romanticized idea of ‘teams’ drowns out the fact that we actually work in groups. The word “team” evokes visions of the ‘Miracle on Ice’ or a ‘Band of Brothers (and Sisters).’ Saying “Go Team!” sounds better than “Go Group!” The word “team” just feels better. And even though they know it’s wrong, the Leadership Industrial Complex continues to sell emotionally theatrical words and platitudes instead of the hard, gritty words and skills that business leaders need in the modern workplace.

So maybe “group” doesn’t roll off the tongue like the other word or conjure up visions of your high school sports glory days. So what? When we use the right words and do the right things for our people, they’re significantly more successful. And so is the group. As leaders, what’s more important than that?

Larry Coval is a veteran executive with nearly four decades of experience leading organizations ranging from startups to billion-dollar operations across companies including AT&T, Global Crossing, and Cox Business. Throughout his career, he has transformed underperforming organizations, developed high-performing leaders, and built a reputation for challenging conventional leadership wisdom. He is the author of the forthcoming book Misled: Why (Almost) Everything You Learned About Leadership Is Wrong and How to Fix It (Girl Friday Productions, September 2026).

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