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The team is dead... long live the virtual team
The team I grew up in - a traditional team
The project team in which I learnt about teams was formed in 1972. The key members of the team stayed together as a team from 1972 to 1979. We undertook numerous projects and we learned together from each project. We also shared many workshops on building better inter-personal and team processes as well as the usual technical skill education.
We learnt, through a combination of often bitter experience and external facilitation, how to accept the weaknesses of each team member and how to best use their strengths. It was a difficult and long journey but finally we had a real team where the whole was more than the sum of the parts.
Our team was built on the "soft glue" of:
- loyalty to the team;
- trust between team members;
- friendship between team members;
- shared experience;
- shared vision; and
- shared belief systems;
and, most importantly, our team became more effective and efficient as we learnt how to become a team. It was a traditional team, a project team and it exhibited the Unified Commitment identified by Larson and LaFasto.
In addition, we had all the Belbin leadership roles covered by various
team members and, as in all great teams, leadership shifted between team members in
response to the particular issue facing our team.