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Team DevelopmentA Team Consultant’s ClientContract Clarification for Team DevelopmentsDescription of Team-Dynamic PatternsLeadership Aspects of NeedsLeadership and the Interaction PatternsAnalysis of Team Guiding ProcessesTeam Development TechniquesWhy have Teams?Analysis of the Processing StructureExpectations of Team WorkGuiding Process Team ReflectionOscillation Processes in TeamsForms of ReflectionReflection RoutinesTeam DynamicsTeam HistoryTeam ConflictsTeam Management
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Team Management

The understanding of the function of team management must, from a metatheory viewpoint, be based upon the defined guiding processes. Current concepts, which unilaterally overload (and with it, over-estimate) team management with directing, managing, motivating and goalsetting are in extensive crisis. Not least for this reason, complaints are often and readily made about the competence of team managers.

If teams are distinguished, due to their own dynamics of interaction patterns, by self-organisation, conflicts around paradox conditions and non-directable complexity, then the receiver of management demands is never only the team manager, but always also the team as a ‘whole’. Management is not a one man show, nor is it a process that can be planned rationally, based upon the clear competences of the ‘leader’.

The management function in teams, therefore, requires an understanding about the interlocking of the guiding processes and of the type of influence which the management function can take from them. Particularly important in this is an understanding of decision-making processes, their inherent dark sides, and a feeling for the dynamics of relationships. Those who see teams only as complex machines have, in principle, already lost and have decided in favour of overload, disappointment, poor results and demotivation of the employees.