“At first, this group dynamics stuff looked interesting, you know, everyone together under a team incentive bonus. It sounded exciting in the seminar, but in real life, this is painful,” Naomi explained. “The worst part, is we’re not getting any work done.”
“So, who is accountable?” I asked.
“I think everyone has to take a small part of the responsibility for the team not cooperating,” Naomi replied.
“No, I don’t mean who is responsible for the mess. I mean, who is accountable for the goal?” I insisted.
“The goal? We’re not even talking about the goal. We are just talking about cooperating better together, as a team.”
“Perhaps, that’s the problem,” I suggested. “You are spending so much time trying to cooperate as a group, that you forgot, we are trying to get some work done around here.
“Is it possible,” I continued, “that you have been misdirected to think more about shared fate and group dynamics than you have about your team. A team is not a group. A group may be bound together by shared fate, but a team is bound together by a goal. Stop thinking about group dynamics and start thinking about the goal. That’s why we are here in the first place.” -TF
This reminded me of one of my favourite quotes. (I had to Google it, though. My memory’s not -that- good!) 😉
“Obstacles are things a person sees when he takes his eyes off his goal.â€
– E. Joseph Cossman
As I read this post the words, “that you have been misdirected to think more about shared fate and group dynamics than you have about your team. A team is not a group. A group may be bound together by shared fate, but a team is bound together by a goal.”
The term “Fate” means that is was bound to happen the group had no other options to do otherwise – determinism – they were fated or determined to be together, what happens and happened to the group could not have been done any other way they are determined, stuck,fated, could not do otherwise.
When I saw you wrote of the :team: being variant I thought of indeterminism – could have done otherwise. This team has the ability to choose to do otherwise. For this happen the team along their path, this goal, whether they achieve this goal or not they must be aware or possibly feel, that they could have done otherwise with choice. The goal when determined, is teams ability to choose a process that enables them to achieve this goal through their choice to do otherwise.
I work for an internet marketing company with team members all around the U.S. We’ve never even met in person, know very little about each other, but somehow we accomplish a lot together. I guess it’s about the quarterbacking, huh. Just a matter of doing the task you’re assigned and letting the quarterback do the coordinating.
I was not going to tell this story, but maybe it will help someone else. I had a class at University of Phoenix online. UP teams everyone up in each of their classes in order to complete the coursework. Your ‘A’ grade becomes dependent on a group you’ve never met (and likely won’t meet) who may be perfectly happy with a ‘C’. Getting a buy in for that situation is quite the challenge. Let’s just say it did not go well at all. Yet the goal was met with astonishing quality. The particular week in discussion was my week to lead. Not having completed a U of P class previously, I was not prepared early on and so details that I added in my week to lead could have been added to the Team Charter the first week of class. I also don’t care to take any more U of P classes. I don’t recall the specifics, but basically, I created a buy in and a vision, etc. and posted it for the team. The goal was not an ‘A’ grade and it was very clear (maybe overkill on that due to the amount of detail included, which I felt was necessary). The basic goal was excellence in our assignment (a paper with a powerpoint presentation). In reaching for excellence, we would achieve a quality we could be proud of.
Working it out among themselves means going to the team for solutions, involving everyone in solving the problems. Everyone in my class knew the situation (including the other team, as ours was not the only one). In my case, the problem was one individual who had a problem with me. There would be no other way to move forward without the help of the other members. There would be no repairing the relationship, as I offended this person when, in her mind, I took over her week to lead. In my mind, I was helping our team by stepping in to lead when it was clear deadline was fast approaching and follow up was not happening so direction was lost. Communication is primarily via internet and the missing leader lived in another country (in the Middle East) and had not posted any new information. I waited as long as safely possible before I took the reins (Saturday afternoon for a Monday deadline). In the real world, this individual and I would never work together as one of us would quit or be fired.
My goal was to do well in this class and take away from it as much as I could in the limited time I had to digest the information provided. Obviously, my goal had to adapt to the group dynamic, which I was not prepared for at all. My issues with my teammate started early on, and I had a couple of weeks to prepare for what I knew was coming, conflict. Hence the very detailed vision, goals, etc. which no one on my team seemed to mind except this one individual. I even posted a commitment to the cause. The goal of achieving excellence in our work came from this pondering of my situation and focusing on what the real goal would be for all of us (that everyone could agree upon). Although some may be okay with a ‘C’ grade, you won’t find many people willing to commit to mediocrity.
My point would be that there was no fluffy group dynamic going on in this situation at all and in our final review from the professor, he said in his 17 years as an instructor he’d never seen so much dissonance among the ranks. Due to this fact, he was very pleasantly surprised by our work. We received an A.