In order for people to find a reason to work as a member of a team, they need a common purpose and a sense of identity. Put a group of people in a lift together and they think and act as individuals. Create a crisis situation such as a breakdown or fire in the lift shaft and the need for survival becomes the common purpose. Instinctively each person assumes a role that they think will help the group survive, for example tactician, comforter, problem solver etc.

In this part, I examine the roles that people play within teams and the factors that may affect their capacity to perform effectively. The role that managers play in promoting effective team-working is also considered.

The British management guru Charles Handy tells a good story of how, when addressing a group of undergraduates, he once described ineffective teams as being like a rowing crew with eight people going backwards without talking to one another, being guided by someone who is too small to see where they were going. He admitted that he got a bit of flak from a rower in the audience who argued that, on the contrary, they were a good example of the perfect team; as they would not have the confidence to pull on the oar so strongly without talking or seeing if they didn’t have complete trust in each other and in the person steering the boat. I like Handy, but in this instance I think the rowers beat him by a canvas.

I’ll leave it to the American car magnate Henry Ford to sum up what this section is all about. He described team formation as ‘Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is a process; working together is success’.