Critical transformation work gets staffed with unbudgeted volunteers, so leaders avoid accountability for the resources and anyone who does not volunteer is tagged as a poor team player.
An example
Twelve million dollars for a new policy administration system was approved by a life insurer's board, and when the program started, the chief operating officer asked for volunteers across the company to staff data cleanup, testing, and training. A senior actuarial analyst with a full workload declined, citing quarter-end reserving. The program office posted a list of change champions on the intranet, and the analyst's name was not on it. Volunteers worked evenings for six months; two of the testing leads burned out and resigned. When the cutover slipped, the chief operating officer told the board it had been largely a volunteer effort. At the analyst's year-end calibration, the manager reported that the program office had raised the team-player question, and the analyst's rating was held flat.
Why it works
Volunteering looks better, because it attaches the person to a leadership-blessed initiative and puts them in front of executives outside their reporting line, at no budget cost. Declining becomes costlier, because non-volunteers are recorded as poor team players, a label that surfaces in calibration and talent reviews and can never be rebutted, since no demand was ever made. Leadership wins either way: volunteers who succeed get praise, and failures are excused as a volunteer effort. It depends on a culture that treats being a team player as a real criterion, on opaque calibration, and on career insecurity that makes peer perception feel decisive.
The thinking behind it
A. Michael Spence Michael Spence's Job Market Signaling (1973) explains that a costly action can reveal what observers cannot see directly. Volunteering unpaid evenings for a program is that kind of costly signal of commitment, and declining sends the opposite one. That is why the team-player label sticks to people who decline, and why naming the backfill, so that taking part costs something less personal, weakens the signal's force.
Robert B. Cialdini Robert Cialdini's Influence (1984) describes commitment and consistency: once people take a public position, they feel pressure to act in line with it. Volunteers whose names are posted as change champions are committed in public, and they keep working evenings partly to stay consistent with that role. The same principle explains the pressure on those who decline, since their refusal is just as visible.
Warning signs
Workstreams in a funded program are staffed entirely by unbudgeted volunteers, and the volunteers' names are tracked and published. The team-player label later surfaces in calibration and talent reviews. No backfill comes with the volunteer work. When the program slips, leadership describes it as a volunteer effort. The most ambitious volunteers burn out, and the principled decliners get labeled.
How to defend yourself
Raise the backfill question publicly: what relief comes with the volunteer work, and which of my current duties will someone else pick up. That turns the call into an ordinary resourcing request that leadership has to own.
If you volunteer, log your hours and ask that they count as compensable time or appear in your objectives. If you decline, put the reason in writing to your manager, with the conflicting work named, so the label has a documented answer when it surfaces in calibration. A senior figure who names the dynamic in public can collapse it, so look for one.
How a leader shuts it down
Budget the people for funded work. When you ask for volunteers, name the backfill and the recognition, and keep participation out of calibration. When a program slips, own the resourcing decision in front of the board. Watch for burnout among the people who always say yes.