# What you owe your team, and what your team owes you [Home](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en) › [Study](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study) › [Articles](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study/articles) author: [Axel Jedlitschka](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/about) published: 2026-10-08 updated: 2026-10-08 language: en reading time: 5 min topic: Personal source booklet: [Your Code](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/your-code) Your responsibility to your team should match the responsibility you demand from it. When it only flows one way, something breaks. What you owe your team and what your team owes you should weigh the same. According to the source, that is the test of any group: when you demand responsibility from someone and give none back, a break is coming, and it usually comes quietly. ## Responsibility that runs both ways The source here is a **code**, meaning a set of lines a person decides on in advance. The code in this chapter is written for a member of a group: what someone who works with others owes them, and what they owe him. And it is a test you can run on any business, including a small one. It starts by asking who succeeds in a group. Its answer: the person whose own actions come close to the ideal, the ethic and the reasoning of the whole group. Right after that comes the clause at the heart of the chapter. The individual's responsibility to the group, it says, “should not be less than the responsibility of the group for the individual.” Notice that the source does not say the employee owes the business, and it does not say the business owes the employee. It is a **symmetry**: both directions carry the same weight. Suppose a shop expects its staff to be available in the evenings and gives nothing back in the mornings. Within a year two people leave, and both say it was not about the money. They are right. It was about responsibility that only flowed one way. Now the opposite. An owner insists that an employee come in, and the following month gives her a day off when her child is sick. The employee stays three years. The same holds between partners. A partner who asks for full loyalty but never shares the numbers finds that the partnership nearly breaks, and over information, not money. ## Contributing is a right, not only a duty The clause that surprises most readers is about contribution. According to the source, a member of a real group has a right to contribute to it, and must actually use that right. In the same breath, he has to insist on the group's right to contribute to him. So contributing shows up here as a **right**, and in both directions. A person who is not allowed to contribute turns into an employee who only carries out orders. A group that is not allowed to contribute to a person turns into a place he shows up to and gets paid. In a small business, this is the real difference between someone who feels like a partner and someone who feels like hired help. And it is almost never a question of percentages. Suppose an employee suggests a better way to run a process three times, and each time hears that the owner will deal with it. The fourth time, she does not suggest anything. Or an owner who refuses to pay for an employee's course because, in his view, she will leave anyway. She leaves, and says that was exactly the reason. A year later, the same owner pays for a new hire's course in his second month. That employee stays four years. ## A conflict on time is a meeting, not a fight Another clause covers what happens before people collide. A group member should line up what he starts with the goals of the group, and make his plans and intentions known early, so that every conflict comes up ahead of time. What is interesting here is that the difference between the two conflicts is not what they are about. It is only when they come up. Raised early, it is a conversation around a table. Raised late, it is already a dispute. Suppose an owner announces a price change one day before it takes effect. Her staff hears about it from customers, and the collision happens in front of a client. The same shop, once it decides that every price change goes up for discussion two weeks ahead, finds two problems in a meeting instead of on the phone with a customer. ## When everyone pays for one person There is also a clause nearly every business owner recognizes. The source says a group member should not allow rules that limit everyone, just because one or two people failed. It happens in every business that grows. One person takes advantage of some flexibility, and the answer is a **procedure**, a written rule that applies to everyone. On the day it is written, it looks sensible. The price arrives months after that: nine people are now paying for the mistake of one, and the one who made it has already left. Suppose a studio owner cancels working from home for the entire team after one employee abused it. Within a year, her two best designers are gone. The next time something like that comes up, she handles it directly with the person involved and writes no procedure at all. Nobody else on the team even knows there was an incident. ## What the booklet has on this The chapter this article is based on includes two exercises: the symmetry, and the rule. It also has a self-check, and it belongs to a booklet that helps you write your own code in five to ten lines. If someone good left you recently and said it was not about the money, it is worth asking one question: what did I demand from them, and what did I give back in the same direction? - [Your Code](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/your-code): Five lines, a clear separation between what applies to you and what applies to the business, and one test that checks whether they hold. --- [עברית](https://theonlyaxelj.com/he/study/articles/what-you-and-your-team-owe-each-other) · [Español](https://theonlyaxelj.com/es/study/articles/what-you-and-your-team-owe-each-other)