When I joined ThoughtWorks, a common scene I witnessed in the evenings were playing games. Age of Empires was the most commonly played one and the gamers were very fanatical about it.  When I wanted to play, I was given a chance to take part but when the fellow gamers found out I was a rookie, no one wanted me in their teams. They forced me to be at some level so that I can play along with them and be part of their teams, I was made to train myself in the weekends and then get back to playing with them. Same for other games like Cricket. If there was some level of seriousness, then better be prepared.

There was also a music band, I had practiced playing movie songs on a computer keyboard and some software for a very long time, may be around 8-10 years. So I thought I had a hang of music when I expressed interest to join the band. I could readily see that I was moved out of singing, drumming and keyboard to merely being an MC for the event as I lacked skills that were good enough for an office band. One of the band members made me join a music school and after about two years of practice I was finally taken back into the team. I have seen this among other disciplines of art, people are not ready to take you into the team if you cannot match up to their expectations.

Workplace is different, because it is does not have an easy way to measure productivity or understand expectations. Basic expectations of being a good team member is understood well, but when people don’t see those behaviours generally it is tolerated or seen as the job of the manager to interfere there. There could be many reasons to this one, one of them is work is seen as a job description to be fulfilled for a salary; not something that is done because you want to do and you are compensated for it. Workplaces won’t be difficult to run if people know what to expect from their team members and be very strict with the outcomes just like gamers, musicians and artists.