Team players

So last night I was playing World of Warcraft and we had some items drop at the end of an instance. The instance run was informal, so it was just a random roll off for the loot and pretty much everybody rolled on one of the items. This item was one that every person in the group could use.

But...a few people passed, even though they could technically use the item. It is just that the item would have been a larger upgrade for others or the person who passed was on an alt, and passed to a 'main character' (meaning he runs instances on his 'main' character more than any of his other 'alternate' characters).

Without exception, the officers of the guild all passed. Others in the group chose not to pass, and were instead grabbing the upgrade.

Now, to be fair, it isn't in the loot rules to pass on this item. Every person in that run contributed to that run's success and every person had rights to the loot. Just that some people chose to think of the team first, and others didn't bother.

It was interesting to me that all of the officers passed. It brought to mind a question: Were those folks more 'team oriented' because they were in positions of responsibility, or were they chosen for that responsibility because they were 'team oriented'?

Now, I didn't pick any of the officers, so I can't really speculate on why each person was chosen, but it seems to me that people in my guild are selected as officers because they exhibit a great deal of skill at their position, generally have demonstrated some maturity, and have some degree of tenure with the guild (I think I may be an exception to the latter considering I was still fairly new'ish to the guild when I was asked to step up).

My suspicion is that the 'team oriented' aspect was always there prior to getting an officer nod, but I really see it demonstrated more from those folks than I do others (though it certainly isn't restricted to just officers by any means)

The question is...why? Do you become more of a team player by being given responsibility? Does one lead to the other? Are my perceptions skewed due to being an officer? Do I just 'notice' that people are being more team oriented because those are the most visible people in the guild? Am I actually more team oriented because I am an officer?

There are many articles on the interwebz that postulate that responsibility does bring about responsible people, but I wonder if that is true for everyone? Can you take a completely irresponsible non-team player, make him an officer, and magically turn him into a team player?

Does that also work in life? Could I take a total screwup kid and put him in charge of a company and thereby make him a more responsible person?

I'm not sure that is true, at least not in the extreme. Certainly some people would take that challenge and excel, but I have a feeling more of those companies would sink than the norm.

It would be interesting to see if it worked in WoW. Take the most screwed up person you can think of and put them in charge of running a few raids. Would they rise to the challenge and start to look at the game from a new lens? Would it lead to an increased feeling of a 'team' atmosphere? Would a loot whore turn over a new leaf if given that opportunity?

Or would the raid he led just be the worst experience ever? I guess the risk of worst case would mean I couldn't it just to conduct an experiment. I couldn't do it to the team. I guess that makes me a team player. Or something.