What is a team?
There are many ways to approach this topic. Here we will look at it from a number of psychological and philosophical angles.
Loosely speaking, a team is a group of individuals working towards a common goal. A team normally has complimentary skills and interdependent tasks. This is compared to a group, which does not necessarily have a common goal, nor are people combining their efforts to attain that goal.
Aside from a common goal, effective “stable” teams usually have clear decision making processes (or governance). They have individuals with different strengths to facilitate attaining the goal, clear/understood processes, roles and responsibilities, and tools and resources at their disposal.
A way of thinking about this holistically is to consider the following domains:
Organisation means that a team has a clear goal and vision, that decision making processes and governance are clear (such as accountability, rules, control etc).
People refers to understanding the skills and strengths within a team. This includes the “hidden” skills and aptitudes that can be awakened through proper development of people. It also implies good interpersonal relations and developing psychological safety so that people can safely speak up and bring innovation.
Processes refers to making sure there is the “right” level of processes available for people to follow to ensure a consistent approach. Too few processes equals chaos and confusion. Too many processes equals rigidity and lack of innovation. Having clear roles and responsibilities is especially important for new teams that do no know each other well. Teams who have a very strong understanding of each others strengths and weaknesses can operate with fewer prescriptive processes once they have attained a certain level of “collective mastery”. If a team is trying to achieve a certain goal, or produce a certain outcome, then clear knowledge of the inputs or outputs helps to give transparency and understanding. For example, a team that is making herbal medicines takes certain herbs, ingredients, bottles, knowledge etc as inputs, and then “outputs” bottles of herbal medicines. By contrast, a team providing a psychological support service, is taking a person in need of psychological care as an input, and the output is a person who is in a safer place (as a result of the psychological care).
Data refers to the information that we need in order to achieve our goal. For example data relating to the materials we are using such as the quality or safety, or perhaps information that assists our decision making such as how long a problem has gone on for, and what has been tried already. Data is usually related to the content, product or service of what we are trying to achieve.
Tools refers to tools and resources we need to achieve our goal. This can be software tools, machinery, finances, other organisations etc.
By mapping out these different domains, we can understand how well organised our team is. This is a very structured approach to setting up a team. But what about psychological safety? It’s a little less concrete to implement. Watch Skip Bowman from Global Mindset describing the basics of psychological safety in teams.
We have been focusing on stable teams, but not all teams are actually stable. With increased Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity (VUCA) in the world, many teams have to learn to quickly adapt to new problems. Watch the following Ted Talk by Amy Edmonson on “Teaming”.
Culture also forms a significant part of a team. Amy Edmonson looks specifically at the kind of culture that allows a team to come together to allow for fast innovation. If culture is “the way we do things around here”, then numerous other factors also play into a team culture… from not only the psychological safety we facilitate, but also the collective psychology we operate within. For example, it is often said that people in the West tend to have a very individualistic mentality, and the people in the East have a more collective psychology. In their worst expression, too much individualism can be selfish and harm the collective, and too much collectivism can suppress innovation and ideas. Therefore it is important to strike a “wise” balance between the individual and the collective.
Following is an excerpt from Indian Mystic and Philosopher P.R. Sarkar on “Human History and Collective Psychology” from 11 August, 1984. It touches upon this idea of the individual and the collective, by recognising that every individual has something to contribute to the collective, whether utilitarian or not. Rather than moving forward collectively in a way that alienates others, we must search out the potentiality in all living beings (and the inanimate) in order to solve tomorrow’s problems.
Human history is made by the collective urge or collective psychology. In the past the popular concept of history was that a certain king or queen ruled for a certain period and fought a few battles; some they won, others they lost; and they killed others or they were killed themselves. But the modern concept of history is quite different. History these days is not merely the history of monarchs. History also comprises all kinds of people and their psychic urges and psychic movements.
In primitive society men and women enjoyed equal freedom. Subsequently women had greater importance and a social order emerged which can be called both matriarchal and matrilineal. In a later period the importance of physical strength became more important than any other attribute. Obviously, the males having greater physical strength, became more important than the females. This gave rise to the social order which can be called patriarchal and patrilineal. But in this modern age people are experiencing that physical strength is becoming less important than intellectual power. Previously people would apply great physical stamina to operate a hammer, but today the electric hammer is one hundred times more powerful than an iron hammer – an electric hammer operates by turning a simple electric button. This illustrates that the importance of intellect is increasing.
Well, there is now the question of how the awakening of women will take place. Let me say a few words about the future. The awakening of women will bring about equal rights between the sexes. Nobody will be considered superior or inferior. What will be given utmost importance is keenness of intellect and that keen intellect will not necessarily be the exclusive quality of men alone or women alone. Whoever will have keen intellect will gain pre-eminence in society. Of course, in this regard all persons will not be equal.
History is made by collective psychology. The days of the monarchy are gone – in those days the queen or king was the focal point of history, and history was the history of monarchs. In later times history was the history of ministers. Soon a period will come when history will move around common people.
In the days of the monarchy one could hardly think that history could be written excluding kings and queens. Even now, where there is no monarchy, the government houses are called “Rajbhavan” or “royal house”, and people cannot keep themselves free from the illusion of the word “rája”. In one town I noticed a signboard which was “Rájánukúl Háspátál” meaning “Royal Hospital”. In former days, in the Deyani Khan, monarchs and nobles were prominent, but now government employees are prominent, which gave rise to the term “secretariat”. Similarly, among the common people a new awakening will come, a keen intellect and wisdom will emerge, and a new pattern of history will be the result. In fact, a new pattern of history has already started to emerge, and in the future this development will undergo further change.
You should remember that in human society nobody is insignificant, nobody is negligible. Even the life of a 100-year-old lady is valuable. In the universal society she is an important member – she is not to be excluded. We may not be able to make a correct appraisal of her importance and we may wrongly think that she is a burden to society, but this sort of defective thinking displays our ignorance. There is a historical necessity for everything, but we do not bother finding that historical necessity out. Had we bothered, we could ascertain the historical necessity behind every incident, behind every trough and crest of this universe.
If we think deeply and try to trace the significance of different events we shall find that nothing in this universe is useless. Everything is happening with a definite message for the future, with a great potentiality for the future. Nothing in this universe is insignificant, nothing is to be belittled. Atoms and molecules were once considered very small and insignificant, but after the invention of atom bombs people started dreading the same atoms. No one really knows how much potentiality this or that object has. One can get an exact idea of the potentiality of something only after a thorough investigation. In this world everything comes to fulfill a historical necessity.
–Source: P.R. Sarkar, Human History and Collective Psychology, Published in: A Few Problems Solved Part 7, Release: Electronic edition version 9.0.15
