[Article] Why do we work in teams?

I’ve been thinking a lot about teams and why we need to work in teams. It’s a common feature of most workplaces, that each person has a role and also belongs to a team. Sometimes we refer to all the people who report to one manager as being a team, even if their work doesn’t overlap. However, most teams involve working together to some extent.

I’ve previously defined leadership as

“Uniting people in service of a common goal”

It would follow logically then, to say,

“A team is a group of people united in service of a common goal”

The assumption is that achieving the goal is too big a task for one person and a team can succeed where an individual can’t. That may be true most of the time, but if time is not limited, one person working alone can achieve a great deal.

There is a principle in project management that adding more people to a team will invariably slow down progress! This is because of the time it takes for people to agree goals and objectives, to allocate tasks and to communicate with each other about progress. And that’s just when it’s going well! If there are problems, the more people involved the more unwieldy it becomes because there are more people to consult and to convince.

So why do we work in teams?

I believe that it’s partly because we think the job requires it, and partly because human beings are social creatures and do most things more effectively with other people around.

For a start, it gets lonely and dull if you work alone all the time (remember lockdown?). Secondly, everyone experiences an ebb and flow of energy and motivation. When you work in a team you can be uplifted by someone else’s energy and carried along on the wave of a colleague’s enthusiasm. Some of us hate the idea of letting other people down, so we sustain our motivation by focusing on supporting others or simply keeping our promises.

Some people enjoy working alone some of the time, but everyone needs to bring their work to other people at some point. A very small interaction between two people can provide the impetus for large volumes of work…

…or it can set things back for days!

The real value of working as a team is often seen in teams that have a diverse make-up. Teams of people with similar skills, attitudes and approaches aren’t always the most productive. Teams where there is a variety of skills and attitudes may initially find it harder to figure out how to get along, but when they succeed in communicating across the divide of difference styles, they become much more successful.

Let’s take a simple example. Imagine a team working on a new project. It’s something the team hasn’t done before, but they have run projects together before. The team is likely to have tried-and-tested methods and best practices they can use. But this is something completely new. Does it call for a new approach?

Within the team there may be a majority of people who are keen to stick with what they know and to get started so they can quickly show some progress.

What if there is a lone voice who advocates exploring a new approach to this new project?

The chances are, the lone voice will be drowned out and the team will do what the team usually does.

A more aware team, one where people have spent time getting to know each other’s strengths, might come to different conclusion. The majority might turn to the one person who advocates something new. Why? Because everyone knows that this person’s strength is in breaking new ground, exploring possibilities and experimenting with different options. They take the lead when something fresh is required. They take a back seat when it’s a case of following established processes.

Essentially, the value of a team is that nobody has to be good at everything. Each person is allowed their strengths and can rely on others to pick up the responsibility for everything else. It does mean that a successful team will cover all bases, but that’s a question for another day.

In summary, here’s why I think we work in teams: