Some time ago, I wrote an article about Survivor, the juggernaut TV reality show that strands a group of strangers on a desert island and challenges them to “outwit”, “outplay” and “outlast” their fellow contestants for a chance at a million-dollar prize.  In that article, I argued that Survivor was the best teambuilding show on television, at least for half of its 14-week running length.  For the first eight weeks or so, participants live in groups (or tribes), working together both to feed and shelter each other as well as to win competitions against the other tribes.  Then everything changes.  The tribes are merged, and the final few weeks are about everyone competing against everyone else, as individuals, jockeying for a chance to be in “the final two”, with a chance at the big money.

Survivor is undoubtedly my greatest guilty pleasure.  I’ve faithfully watched every Survivor season to date, enjoying the way tribes attempt to leverage their strengths and weaknesses, both to win competitions as well as to survive a month and a half on the beach with minimal provisions.  Some tribe members cook, others fish; some swim fast, others solve puzzles at the challenges. Along with the leveraging of diversity,  I also appreciate the process of “culture-building”, as tribes invent a kind of meritocracy, placing the highest value either on hard work around camp, athletic prowess in the challenges, or social skills and affability around the campfire.  Every Survivor season is different; teams either pull it together in a common vision, or devolve in a morass of personality struggles and multiple agendas.

And okay, sure, I’ll admit it: I get a kick out of the soap-opera element, as well – who’s fighting with whom, which muscled stud is gonna hook up with which lithesome beach babe, that kind of thing.  Heck, this is entertainment after all!

What intrigued me the most about the recently-completed season of Survivor was the emergence of betrayal as a galvanizing force for increasing team unity and performance.  It all happened on episode eight. The Aitu team had six remaining tribe members, the Raro team had eight.  In a stunning twist, host Jeff Probst offered each participant a chance to mutiny from their current tribe, to jump ship and pledge allegiance to the competition, “the enemy” tribe.  To the shock of their Aitu tribemates, Med-student Candice Woodcock and actor/writer Jonathan Penner seized the opportunity, stepping forward and swearing allegiance to Raro, essentially putting their former team in a huge bind.  Aitu’s four team members would now have to go up in the challenges against Raro’s eight, a daunting task. Even more dire was the Aitu tribe’s prospects in the event of a merge when, theoretically, the Raro tribe should be able to methodically vote them off the island by force of numbers. By all rights, Aitu should have been sunk, but something miraculous happened.  Against the odds, the out-matched Aitu tribe started winning …and winning…and winning.  In all, they won four consecutive challenges; clearly they had taken the mutiny personally – as a sign of betrayal – and there was simply no way the betrayers were going to beat  them!

Aitu had more going for it, of course, than simply its feelings of righteous indignation.  They were clearly a little older than Raro, a little more mature. Moreover, Aitu was quite unified in their values, agreeing unanimously on the priority of hard work and honest communication. (By contrast, Raro was struggling with infighting, factionalism, and a split between those who valued work and those who preferred to laze around, letting the others provide for them while they enjoyed an island vacation.)  Perhaps most importantly, Aitu had really learned to identify and leverage its diversity.  Its remaining team members after the mutiny included:

• The Jock:  Oscar "Ozzy" Lusth – perhaps the best athlete (and fisherman) Survivor has ever seen.
• The Heart:  Sundra Oakley – the tribe’s big sister, skillful at keeping the team emotionally unified.
• The Brains:  Yul Kwon & Rebekah "Becky" Lee – lawyers both, dynamic both at solving the puzzle challenges and also at working the inner game of Survivor alliance-building.  (Eventual million-dollar-winner, Yul, may have been the most strategic person to have ever played the game.  His ability to pull Jonathan back into the Aitu fold, at crucial moment, was pure genius.)

Thus the Aitus were strong, smart and synchronized – a winning combination on any team.

Still, I keep coming back to “the big betrayal”.  When Jonathan and Candice bailed out of their tribe, the effect on the remaining Aitu teammates was palpable.  You could almost hear them saying, “We’ll show them, those rats!”  Suddenly Aitu was the maligned underdog, with a gigantic chip on its shoulder.  And up went their performance level.  Quite simply, from then on this was a team that would not be denied!  And even after the merge, when the pull often gets stronger for individuals to break alliances in search of the best deal, the Aitus stayed together.  In the end, they knocked off all eight of the former Raro tribemates, going into the final four undaunted, as a unified team. 

So, am I saying that, in order to raise our work teams’ performance, we need to give them a common enemy, someone to hate, someone to vanquish?   Not precisely, although I won’t deny that people are driven strongly by emotion.  What teams do, require, I think, is a sense of “meaning”, something that makes them feel that their work product is larger than themselves.  I would always prefer that this “meaning” be positive and affirming – helping to make the world a better place in some fashion – rather than negative and destructive. In the short term, rallying against a common villain can release a lot of accessible energy, but such negative emotion can often come back to bite you, especially when, as so often happens in business, you find yourself suddenly needing to collaborate with that other team.  TV’s Survivor is a zero-sum game, with winners and losers, heroes and villains.  It’s designed for drama and conflict, and hence exceedingly entertaining for a mass audience.  But how many of us want to actually be in such charged, "dramatic" situations in our workplaces!

I invite you to consider how we can invoke positive emotions and meaning when rallying our teams.  The effect of constructive (vs. destructive) emotions is much longer lasting than tearing others down, and a lot more enjoyable to be around as well.  In the end, our goal should be create an environment where everyone’s the survivor.