Paradox of Influence
The team members have, in the first place, an interest in pursuing their own goals in the team. There, they want to set change impulses where this seems necessary to them. Thus, they furnish the team with new goals. Now the paradox arises:
• on the one hand, each individual has the interest that their own (new) goals are included in those of the team
• on the other hand, everyone has an interest in fending off the goals of others, which contradict their own.
Everyone, therefore, wishes to have influence whilst, at the same time, preventing the influence of others. Thus, any influence on the group goals inevitably creates a dynamic between progressive and conservative. The result of this dynamic is a continuing new setting or new confirmation of the team goals. Any stability in the team can only be understood dynamically. Every team varies, selects and retains its goals in an evolutionary process. One must learn to like this if one works in teams. And no organisation can rely upon everything in the team remaining with the old but must always reckon with continuing, often conflicting processes.