Work Team Structure
If one combines the closeness pole, the freedom pole and the belonging pole, teams develop with a work team structure. These are characterised by trust, relatedness, flexibility, joy in collaboration and motivation. The shared enjoyment for the work is just as highly ranked. Therefore, it is not the individual who stands in the foreground, but the team. For many tasks in organisations, such teams are extremely functional.
Thus, for many, this interaction model is considered the ideal for teams. However, this is not supportable, i.e. it is wrong. Such teams have difficulties:
• when they are given work, which could be better accomplished by individual experts rather than through teamwork
• when the organisation has an interest in personnel change and nobody wishes to leave the team or when new members are only accepted with difficulty
• and when everyone has gathered with enthusiasm around a goal or a solution path, or has identified with it, (particularly after team developments!) and then the goal has to be altered, or the organisation does not support the solution.
If such work teams are at the pole extremes, then the exaggerated closeness interferes with the task orientation (“The main thing is, we tried it!”), the exaggerated freedom becomes a lack of orientation (today, this way, tomorrow that way) and the belonging becomes self-serving (“The main thing is, we have had fun!”).