Vision on Team Development
Apart from the quality and the structure of the management, the quality of teams is one of the crucial elements of a high performing organization. A good team is much more than a group of colleagues. The interaction and the mutual stimulating effect of colleagues, can have a dynamic impact on team members.
A team can stimulate members to achieve and create things that they would never manage by themselves. An effective team is mature. It has a clear power structure, the targets and the boundaries of behaviour are known, there is social safety and clarity in each role and contribution. Maturity also means that each member experiences that he has a valuable place in the group, that there is mutual support and respect for each contribution. Whenever a team is producing less than could be expected considering the quality of the members of that team, if there is a lot of gossip among each other, if there is a long term splitting in several subgroups or if one of the members is accused regularly of not fitting in the team, team development might be an option to create more value.
The development of teams is a natural process, but there are situations in which the team leader wants to enhance this development process, e.g. because the throughput time of an activity is short, the task is risky and needs a high level of tuning among the members, or the importance of a team effort is extremely high. Sometimes teams can feel stuck in a negative vicious circle, in which the team members almost feel trapped in a turmoil of ineffective behaviour, despite good intentions of each of the members. A helping hand for outside the team can them be of great help.