The Case for a Simplified Team Terminology
This post is a continuation to article, Teamdom — A new term for Team-Friendly Environment. There I laid the groundwork for my team philosophy (groupdom vs teamdom).
Today’s agenda:
- So many “teams”
- Four barriers (to understanding/discussing teams)
- How do we mow this lawn?
So many “teams”
This the dilemma that I suspect many coaches and agilists intuit, but don’t often vocalise. Talking generally about teams based on our experiences is easy, anyone can do it, but talking substantively about teams is difficult. Why? The main reason is that team terminology as a whole is convoluted and overly complicated.
We have tens of words to describe small-scale people units and their maturity degrees. But wait, it gets worse! There are tens more domain- and size-specific terms: release trains, production cells, ensembles, sinfoniettas, panels, fire teams, squads, platoons, battalions, crews, mobs and colonies etc.
This list and the diagram above a diagram only depict a fraction of all team-related terms out there. Please remember that anormal person can keep seven things in their short-term memory at the same time. Maybe we have too many words for teams?
Four barriers
Here are the four barriers to understanding/discussing teams:
Barrier #1: Team Experiences 🧐
First, our team experiences have galvanized a deeply personal schema in our soul about what teamwork is about. Regardless whether these experiences were good, bad, or something in-between, they were capped by those teams. Like a horse with eye-blinders, we cannot see all teams out there and we’re left with an unconscious bias. Maybe some weren’t teams at all but something else?
Barrier #2: Cultural Team 📣
Secondly, culturally we have a tendency to associate any kind of a small group worth being part of as a “team”. How many times have you heard —
- Two average Joes saying: “We’re are a good team”
- Two movie characters saying: “We’re an effective team”
- Politicians insisting: “We are all on the same team here”
I call this phenomenon the cultural team -meme. When two or three people meet, they immediately refer to themselves as a team. Obviously it serves some social-psychological need (bonding, influencing, coping etc) and is professionally useless. This meme dilutes the value of a actual teams. It also silently affects most organizations. Just see for yourself how many managers, political leaders and global influencers rely on a “we are a team”-narrative they may have adopted from a Hollywood movie.
And don’t get me even started with team building, which is like an occult science; it’s never shown realistically in movies or books. Actually, it’s never shown at all, perhaps because sitting around in a circle talking about goals, needs, roles and rituals isn’t sexy enough for Hollywood.
Barrier #3: Team-as-a-Shopping Cart 🛒
Thirdly, professional team terminology is fluffy. Basically a team can mean anything in any given organization. For example: most agile companies try keeping team sizes below ten for a good reason. Guess how big a Navy Seal Team is? It’s 150.
The professional usage of “team” is loaded. It’s like a shopping cart where management loads their unspoken frustrations, expectations and hopium. Example: If management feels that the workforce isn’t happy, they can just redraw the org-chart so that people are now placed in teams. The org chart changed, but interactions didn’t. Why did the management do this? Because they had heard that people in teams are happy.
Barrier #4: Team Development Dogmatism 👨🏽🎓
The academic field of psychology and the coaching profession as a whole are not free of dogma or blind spots. Even if we didn’t have the other three barriers, this fourth would still be a challenging one.
The way how old team development theories still stick is just remarkable. The first time I spoke about teams with an academic, their interest to discuss further stopped after I revealed criticism towards Tuckman’s Stages (Forming etc). Up until that point I had worked in tens of teams, lead and coached a few, where as Tuckman never met the teams he was writing about in his famous 1965 paper - it was literature review. I suspect I’m not the only agilist who sees that however wide the shoulders of the past giants were, there are cracks in the mirror.
How do we mow this lawn?
Tons of questions in the air: Can we, and should we, combat the cultural team -meme? Who can remember and make sense of all team-related terms out there? Is there any hope of exchanging team-experiences across domains? Has the coaching profession become a club of occult priests (and priestesses) who preach latin for the masses? How can we de-occultify team building and -development for the common people?
Has the coaching profession become a club of occult priests (and priestesses) who preach latin for the masses?
I don’t know answer to all these questions. I only know that the status quo pains me. When talking about teams, I sometimes feel like I’m stuck in a wilderness of terms, not knowing what is what and not seeing how teamwork as a social tool might develop in the future. It’s like standing in an overgrown lawn where time stands still.
Even if I wanted to cut it, my figurative lawn mower would choke because the grass strangles the blades. My wish to clean up the yard is capped by the current tools I have at disposal. I would appreciate better tools.
As a coaching profession, we could benefit from a reference point where we could all align with and agree upon “what is what”. A stepping stone where we could look to the past appreciating it and to the future envisioning new social forms and tools.
I’d say the best way forward is to rethink and simplify the terminology. That’s exactly what I’ve done and will present in the next post. 💁🏼♂️
