Team Building Process and Its Nature - Essay Example

And when the focus is driven to the group and not to the individual, the individual’s interests are subjugated to the group; that is, when the group is treated as the only relevant consideration, individuals no longer possess an interest in achieving its goals because their goals are not the group’s goals. And for this simple reason, team-building exercises must not be aimed at bringing focus to a shared goal, or to a “team mentality”, but must focus on how the individual should align his or her interests to those set by the group as a whole.

Obviously, this makes team-building much more difficult and complex, because it must take into account the vastly different motivations and interests of the individual members, but this different focus will ultimately benefit the group as a whole by affecting its individual constituents. The nature of this entity is accidental; that is, although it is shaped by the function it seeks to fulfill, many aspects of the entity are random. For instance, in a team of six trying to create a budget proposal, the fact that the six are accountants is not random.

But the facts that one person is close to retirement, another is seeking a promotion, and another recently gave birth are accidental. Team-building has to convince these people that objectives are primary—that teams themselves are irrelevant. Individual interests trump team interests because the team has an interest-only insofar as the individuals have interests, and team-building should foster these individual interests.