Here’s why we need to drop our current concept of “Teamwork”
When I discuss with others the idea of partnering and what it means , the most immediate response is "Ah, you mean teamwork!" Well, not exactly... And indeed, it has probably become one of my most counterintuitive learnings over the years that we may need to let go of our concept of teamwork to allow new and different possibilities of collaboration to emerge.
Teamwork is indeed the most recognised and longest established way of organising collaboration in a professional context. Nevertheless, I think it's time to let it go - here's why:
Firstly, the concept of teamwork dates back to the industrial age, when it was used to divide a defined task among several people for its efficient, tangible completion. It was introduced as a coordination mechanism, not necessarily for problem solving, knowledge generation or collective thinking in a rapidly changing world.
Secondly, it no longer reflects the post-pandemic collaborative reality of our more fluid, hybrid, diverse and fragmented workplaces. Having everyone in a fixed team in the same place at the same time has become the exception, not the rule.
Finally (and perhaps most importantly in my view), holding on to the outdated, traditional concept of teamwork actually limits our ability and capacity to explore, learn, create and embrace new possibilities and ideas of collaborative approaches that better suit the times we live in.
When it comes to teamwork, most of us probably still associate the term with a buddy sports crew who give each other a high-five after reaching a goal together. We imagine it as our home “nest” of longstanding relationships with more or less the same people. The kind of relationships we have built up over years and that we trust in, thrive in and feel a sense of belonging towards, because we know each other personally and see each other every day – like a big family.
Although I do love this picture we can conjure in our imaginations, I learned it’s only one concept of how people collaborate thrivingly together. Unfortunately, in today's fast-paced world, it is a very limiting one, because by following this traditional concept of teamwork, we risk basing our decisions on two outdated assumptions:
The success of good teamwork lies in the people. Consequently, we pay most attention to hiring or firing the “right” people. And,
People need to get to know each other personally, and well, in order to collaborate effectively. This often leads to restrictions in home office hours as well as mandatory social office events.
However, when we look at collaboration research - and that was among my most surprising learnings - the most important success factor is not the people per se (as we mostly assume) but a positively perceived social interaction process among the people.
For example, Harvard Professor collaboration researcher Richard Hackman has impressively shown that teams with mixed “mediocre skills” were able to outperform groups with highly intelligent individual experts in problem solving. Why? Because their social interaction process was of higher perceived positive quality.
(I suspect that this insight is also at work when we observe the phenomenon of a mediocre regional football team "against the odds" suddenly beating a professional league club, which on paper had everything it needed for a supposedly "sure" win: the skills, resources, training, support and more).
It shows that it is the quality of the interaction (not the people per se) that can bring out the best in the individual and is responsible for the growth of both the individual and the collective.
Moreover, I learned that this positive perceived social quality is not tied to a direct face-to-face interaction, as we mostly think. Otherwise, any kind of collective collaboration, such as open source collaboration, where most people do not even know each other, would not be able to survive. Instead, we can observe that it delivers highly productive, collective results, such as e.g. the Linux operating system, without relying on the concept of "teamwork".
What I mean by this is that people don't need to know each other, or even necessarily have a dedicated leader, to work together effectively today. Instead, by implementing a set of social rules and principles designed to enable the experience of a positive mutual social interaction process, safety and trust, limitless forms of collaboration with individual and collective benefits become possible.
At the end of the day, I believe that once we drop our traditional thinking when it comes to teamwork, new forms of collaboration have a chance to emerge. But what should we call them instead? Some of the current suggested alternatives are “agile teams”, “tribes” or “circles”. After a decade of research and consultancy around collaboration, my suggestion is to talk about “partnering” instead of “teamwork”. It reflects the open and dynamic relatedness of our networked world and is the shortest description of the feeling that comes along with a mutually positive experience of social interaction.
But whatever we call these new forms of collaboration across boundaries, it's clear that they need to be anchored in a strong shared purpose. In an increasingly fragmented, hybrid, part-time world, where structures, goals, strategies and people change in organizations at high speed, I learned that a shared purpose is probably THE most powerful and perhaps the only alignment mechanism we have to make collaboration across boundaries ultimately work in a meaningful and effective way.
As provocative as it may sound, abandoning the concept of teamwork means abandoning the idea of traditional team building. What's needed instead is to learn how to discover, reinvent and reinvigorate a shared purpose that bridges diverse interests, allows us to join forces and binds us together in networks across space and time.*
My conclusion so far is that mastering 'shared purpose' is probably - or will become - the number one leadership challenge and should definitely be part of any management development curriculum to make collaboration work in our 21st century.
*) For those interested in getting inspiration on how to inspire shared purpose discussions, Partnering Leadership Academy offers a 3 hrs Workshop-Kit “Finding Shared Purpose”.
Thanks to Chris Barbali for the photo provided on unsplash