Competent or Nice?
Every team must decide what it sanctions or confirms. Apart from that, it must choose the focus and the benchmark which is relevant to the decision. Here, one goal conflict which occurs again and again is that between the professional competence and the belonging competence. To put it bluntly: there are cases where someone is functionally a hit and a dropout as a team member, or someone can be the favourite of all, but functionally incompetent. In this case, what is strengthened or made into a problem?
How a team decides to design its interaction patterns is always an important observation point for the team leader and for consultants. From this, useful opportunities, risks for intervention and reasons for their failure or effectiveness can be deduced.
The question “What do you get recognition for in this team?” is, therefore, a standard question for all team-dynamic analyses and preliminary talks about team developments.