Teamwork

A sense of belonging presents as a very strong need for the participants from the police, military and emergency services. During basic training and/or academy training and the reinforcement of activities in service, they are institutionalised into a group mentality with a collective goal (Bergman et al., 2014; Cooper et al., 2018; Godfrey et al., 2012). Whilst any team potentially has a collective goal, the descriptions by the participants indicate that being part of this group is more for them. Participants consider their teammates and the mateship and relationships formed as amongst their fondest memories. Charles explains that the ‘…highlight of my military was being a team leader in Afghanistan’. The repeated activities that cause the individual to be immersed in the environment, rather than tasked with single outcomes, and the collective goal in these organisations becomes less an outcome and more a code of practice. This means that it is a way of life that infiltrates their personal existence as much as it does their work life. The focus on these goals and being part of this team is often socially isolating as much of the activity cannot be shared with the world outside of the police, military and emergency services, and if it is, it can be misunderstood. Camaraderie in these services arises from collective goals rather than social relations (King, 2006). The individuals come to rely upon their work colleagues not just for back up in the working space, but also support in the rest of their life. Many of the participants revealed broken relationships that were a result of the social isolation and demands of being part of an exclusive team, rendering them more reliant on those who have working activities in common. The participants describe this camaraderie as one of the single most powerful effects of working in the service organisation. 

Being part of a team, and the camaraderie they develop and rely upon, was summarised by Barry, who stated ‘You almost get to the stage where it’s like well, these are the people that only really understand what you go through. And how you think’ and the same sentiment was repeated by most participants. William explained that it was ‘a sense of being with like-minded people…’ and Kyle elaborated ‘…I’m a bit of a loner at the best of times but you’ve got to work as a team.’ There was a strong common ground between each of the participants from each service, and the same common ground across all three service groups. For example, from the military, Paul stated ‘I always use the term we…’, from the emergency services Walter declared ‘in summary, probably just the mateship…’, and from the police, Matthew stated ‘it was like a brotherhood’. Supporting King’s (2006) definition of camaraderie as a group collective with a specific goal, it is significant to note that there was no indication, however, of camaraderie between the individuals from the different services. As a collection of first responders from three service groups they did not see themselves as a team. Except for a single participant who grouped police with emergency services, at no time did they refer to themselves as first responders across all three groups (police, military and emergency services), or law enforcement or border control across two services (police and military), or similar. They described their service only, which is understandable given individual experience, but was a reference point for where the team environment and camaraderie started and finished. It is service specific and not sector specific.  

For the few participants who had been employed with more than one of the services, they confirmed that the teamwork and camaraderie in one service was stronger. Henry explained that this may be due to the fact: 

of the Navy is they’re actually living with each other and you’re actually socialising with each other as well as working, and you have no other choice really, where police is different dynamics and different personalities, same with the military, but you don’t have that, oh that kinship.  

This supports the notion that camaraderie is developed through living together as part of their employment. For the military, this was a definite contributing factor. Henry described the environment as: 

I can’t compare with fire or ambulance and all that, but I think, I think the dynamics based on the 24/7 together and you’re relying on each other every single day, especially when you’re out bush with the Army or on a warship, is probably why that is.   

Emergency services also spend periods of time together that equate to living with each other, when working a four on/four off shift rotation, which is two night shifts and two day shifts. On the night shift they have sleeping quarters and share meals and many of the usual home-like experiences. However, emergency services participants describe their camaraderie as based on friendships and kinships more than necessity, and do not specifically reference living in close quarters as a contributing factor.  

Contributing to this difference between military and emergency services is the isolation from usual social contacts that occurs for the military service personnel but does not occur for either police or emergency services. As an example, when deployed to sea, navy employees have no social media and limited email contact. Lucy explained that they can come back after three months and have no idea what has happened in the country, in the world, or even with their own families. She continued to explain that they can spend three months wanting to get away from their colleagues, and then as soon as they hit land, they are missing them. This push/pull of interaction and interdependence signals a higher level of identity engagement. As Tom explained earlier, for the military, working together as a team is crucial. 

Comparatively, Walter explained for emergency services: 

You know the guys you know you work with, the social side of the fire brigade, the working side of it, even the lifestyle of it, you know but I think it’s just you know it’s just really good mates, guys that are you know like to have a laugh but you know when the job is on, the job is on…  

The emergency services participants are more light-hearted about their teamwork and the importance of being part of a team, focusing on friendship. Walter explained  

we used to have a saying where they would say you know this job is a joke and we used to say well you know well actually fire brigade you know this joke is a job. And that was, that was sort of much how we sort of look at it….   

However, when the questioning was targeted together with their experiences in subsequent employment, or their high-trauma experiences in the service employment, they were quick to confirm that relying on their ‘mates’ in the team environment was crucial. 

The former police participants never refer to themselves as being in any close quarters with their team members and have no common live-in environment. Yet, in many roles within policing, they have extensive periods of time together as a result of rostered shift work. Night shifts, for seven days in a row, would equate to more time spent together than the two night shifts that the emergency services workers have. Natalie describes ‘…working in general duties and being on a car crew…driving around at three o’clock in the morning…’. It does not seem to have the same impact with the police participants, and questioning revealed that this is because their shifts do not replicate any normal living conditions. Unlike the emergency services participants (Vanessa) they do not have kitchen facilities to cook meals together and they do not sleep in the same location. Instead, they will grab food whilst between jobs and are not permitted to sleep during a night shift. This creates a different dynamic for the police when compared to both the emergency services and military participants.  

But the reasons for interacting within their teams are different only at a superficial level. In terms of social interaction and replicating daily life, the differences between the services are apparent. However, team camaraderie is still present. Despite these differences, and except for the combined police/military participants, there is still an enhanced feeling of camaraderie amongst the individuals in each of the services that is not replicated, by their own reports, in any other employment that these individuals have been exposed to. 

Tom described the teamwork as:

that’s the biggest thing, it’s no, it’s very, very rarely that you work autonomously, it’s not that sort of environment. You have to, even if you don’t like the person you’re next to or working in a team with, you have to get on with them.   

Natalie echoed this sentiment, stating ‘Yeah, just knowing that someone always had your back, you were in it together, no matter how good or bad things got, there was always someone there that understood and would support you’. Barry summarised it succinctly, explaining ‘So, you do become part of a special group, I suppose. And you do form some very close bonds’, but, of great significance for this group, Barry went on to further explain: 

But as to how close and how strong those bonds would become and, you know, through the things that I’ve been subjected to and seen, no, I didn’t, realise how deep the roots would go, for sure.  

This draws a distinction between being part of a team and belonging to a team and is the point at which the participants refer to their role activities as teamwork, but their team relationships as camaraderie. It stems from teamwork theory that identifies the characteristics of a successful team as those that rely upon interdependence and contain members who can interpret the needs of other team members (Baker et al., 2006). In particular, Baker et al. (2006) identify how extreme hierarchical differentiation in a team demands a great deal of cohesiveness. This is seen in high-reliability organisations such as health care (Baker et al., 2006), and is transferable to other service organisations.  

Establishing that sense of belonging is threefold and occurs at different times in service. The first is the initial recruit training, where teamwork is demanded and set as an expectation for all the service period going forward. It is at this point that the commonality between individuals is set, even if they do not like each other, and the habits of backing each other up are established. Paul said ‘… when you face danger and challenges with other people, you develop a relationship…’. The second, is the attendance at traumatic and unique incidents that most members of the community never confront. This creates a common experience amongst team members that is often not even replicated with individual spouses, family and friends. Donald explained ‘… and you do share those…terrible times that you have at your workplace… the tragic moments and I suppose you lean on each other and…it’s a support network as well.’ The third is present across all services but unique to each and is the ‘us and them’ divide. That is, the police have a common conflict with members of the community that creates an ‘us and them’ mentality. Members of the public become a source of potential confrontation and police band together to, one, enforce the law, and two, protect each other from any conflict that arises from enforcing the law. Kyle shared ‘…it’s got to be a team effort, you just can’t know enough and you can’t do enough on your own.’ For the military, it is most commonly associated with deployment, where they are together 24/7 for extended periods of time which results in them relying on each other not just in times of conflict and confrontation, but in daily happenings that would normally be shared with family and friends. Tom explained 

when you do sort of on a ship when you’re miles from anywhere, we do what we call damage control exercises where we simulate fire, floods and things like that and you have to be able to work as a team…  

For the emergency services, it is the time spent with each other, both before and after incidents, that is less about conflict and confrontation as seen with police and military, and more about trauma. The exposure to events that can rarely be shared with non-serving family and friends. Paul and Donald explained they share these incidents with comrades more than family. 

Given that all participants expressed similar experiences around being part of team, further direct and indirect questioning was conducted around this theme. This was done with a focus on understanding the way in which the participants narrated the relationship between teamwork and camaraderie. Camaraderie is strong in service because it must be. The masculine characteristics are reinforced in these service organisations using team drills that place individuals in competition against each other with a view to ultimately uniting them within the group for the collective goal. This is the point at which the ‘us and them’ mentality is further developed and the individuals start to associate themselves as part of this group to the exclusion of others not in the group. Those others, over the long term, become the civilians. Foucault’s (1977) work argues that group mentality is one of the key components of the detachment of the individual from the actual nature of the activities and from non-members of the group (Godfrey et al., 2012). This is essential in organisations that train individuals in tasks which include lethal force and for situations that engage them in life threatening activities, and it is a point at which the individual forms an identity connection with the service role.  

This institutionalisation is what creates the environment in which the individual is no longer being but is now doing (Woodward & Jenkings, 2011). The participant narration in this study supports the suggestion that the rituals of the activities in the institutional environment are transformational in nature (Woodward & Jenkings, 2011), and the technical skills are the act with which the individual identifies, and with repeated immersion in these behaviours, the identity with the act is reinforced. The individuals then start thinking as a group and no longer as individuals. It is the social cohesion of these groups that creates commitment to the collective goals (King, 2006), and the repetitive training stops any individual from deviating from the goal.  

Teamwork in the Masculine Space

Examining this level of camaraderie inside a hegemonic masculine space offers further explanation as to its impact. When considering Godfrey et al.’s (2012) work on the military body, combined with Higate’s (2001) work on identity forming in the masculine space, and Woodward and Jenkings (2011) and King’s (2006) work on the masculine characteristics of the activities that are performed and repeated inside the service roles, it becomes easier to understand why the loss of camaraderie has such an impact on the individuals. The membership to this group and collective goal is dependent upon the skills of the individual and the way in which they are acknowledged in the masculine space. The narration of the participants indicates that becoming a member of this group was a recognition of their skills in the activities and their ability to belong. The desire to stay in that group then motivates repeated behaviours that demonstrate these masculine characteristics and validate their continued membership. Movement into specialist groups reinforces the collective goal and masculine characteristics further, and achieving higher ranks is an external recognition of the individuals who are exceeding the requirements and deemed better in the group then even their direct counterparts. This means that, for these participants, the constant reinforcement through activities combined with group collective goals and a rank hierarchy, fosters an identity connection that replaces their pre-service identity. The literature addresses this issue for the military, acknowledging the group thinking within the masculine space that is targeted on collective goals. This study, however, has seen similar thinking and practices in all three service groups, not just the military. There are shared practices in the training of new service members that have a focus on the collective goal and instil this thinking within the masculine space. So, whilst the literature would indicate that this is a military-based practice only, it is seen in police and emergency services too. 

This group training is in line with organisational identity work that is designed to align employees with the needs of the organisation and ensure longevity of the employees’ working lives (Godfrey et al., 2012). For example, a higher level of engagement of fire fighters with their workplace resulted in higher performance levels (Rich et al., 2010). In this context, how these participants feel connected to the organisation and committed to the collective goals of the organisation influences the roles played by individuals (Ashforth et al., 2008; Ashforth et al., 2016). They confirm that immersion into the organisation is powerful and that individuals rarely have the opportunity to stop and realise that they ‘have become what they are doing’ (Ashforth et al., 2008).