“What must every member of the team sacrifice in order to become one team?”

Systemic leader Barbara Hoogenboom:

“This question is asked in many organisations, often from the desire for more connection, unity or strength. But before looking at the answer to that question, it makes sense to reflect on another question: what is the added value of being one team? What does that look like? And what is the extra strength it provides?

Because if you are, say, a team of internal consultants all doing their internal consulting in other departments, why do they need to be one team? You might just want them to share their learning and inspiration with each other, but beyond that, you do not necessarily want to say that they need to invest time in really being one team and getting to know each other from ear to ear.

So first of all, as far as I am concerned, the question is: what does it offer? What is the added value of being one team? And what do you do and what do you not do?

But imagine the feeling is: we are not really a team, while it is useful to be a team together, because you can, for instance, more easily take care of things for each other and can quickly and easily use each other’s expertise. Then there is indeed the question: what do you have to give up in order to become more of a team?

If we say: we have to speak with the same voice or act from the same perspective, or we have to present ourselves unified to the outside world, it means that you have to withhold something of yourself. Something of your ideas or something of your qualities. And that it takes you more time as well, to have to coordinate with each other, to convey that uniformity.

It is often the case that what you have to give up is a form of autonomy. A form of freedom you give up for the good of the whole, a form of flexibility, of stubbornness. It therefore takes some adjustment to become one team.

And so, for that reason, that it requires all of this, you can genuinely sincerely ask: is it necessary to be one team? Or is it also okay for us to be a group of fantastic and finely collaborating professionals, who know how to find each other when needed and inspire each other, or occasionally attend a training course together or organise a session together to share exchanges of our expertise, but where we do not have to spend more time and effort to be a unified team?”

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