10
Team Support
False friendship, like the ivy, decays and ruins the walls it embraces; but true friendship gives new life and animation to the object it supports. (Richard Burton)
Key Learning Points
- The importance of emotions in understanding teams
- The four social dimensions of team working
- The four types of social support and how they affect team members
- How teams can support members’ growth and development
- How to build a positive social climate
The fundamental human drive and pervasive motivation to form and maintain lasting, positive and significant relationships helps us to understand the functioning of teams at work, and in particular the emotions manifested in work groups. Satisfying this need to belong, according to Baumeister and Leary (1995), requires that all our important relationships (including those in our primary work teams) are characterized by:
- frequent interaction
- a sense of stability and continuity
- mutual support and concern
- freedom from chronic conflict.
Most current research and theories about the functioning of teams fail to take account of the solid evolutionary basis of our tendency to form strong attachments and by extension to live and work in groups. Human beings work and live in groups because groups enable survival and reproduction. By living and working in groups early humans could share food, easily find mates, and care for infants. They could hunt more effectively and defend themselves against their enemies. Individuals who did not ...
