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Team SizeGroup-Dynamic AuthorsGuiding Process Interaction PatternsGuiding Process Team ParametersTeam or Group?Tobias Brocher

Team Size

Teams cannot grow at will. There are two reasons why this is so:

• If a team relies upon working on tasks together, then the ‘demands’ to be passive grow too large, both in action (“I want to do it now!”) and in communication (“I want to say something, as well!”). In groups of more than twelve to fifteen people the waiting times then become too long and a loss of motivation, a tendency to leave, formation of sub-groups and unfavourable competition are created.

• The development, maintenance and change of interaction patterns rests upon interactive perception. In meetings or working contexts, in which the group is too large to keep an overview on how other group members react to one’s own behaviour, contemporaneous perception is no longer possible. Then, either sub-groups are created, and the group disintegrates into a ‘conglomerate’ or organisational structures form.