Introduction
Teams exist in almost every organisation and most people will work as part of a team at some point during their working life. Teams can be defined in different ways, but in psychological terms they are an interdependent collection of individuals working towards a common goal, who share responsibility for specific outcomes (Sundstrom, De Meuse and Futrell, 1990). Human beings have always existed within groups, so in many ways existing in teams is in our DNA. This would suggest that teams have a distinct advantage over operating as an individual.
The term ‘high impact team’ is becoming more frequently used in organisations and amongst consultants. It has slightly different definitions depending on who is using it, but it tends
to describe teams who are highly focused and outperform in anticipated productivity. It is sometimes used to describe teams where the members also have high skill sets. However, with such a term comes the implicit recognition that not all teams are high impact. What is true is
that most teams have the potential to have high impact and all teams have the potential to perform better. This potential can be enhanced by knowing how to optimise team functioning which comes through an understanding of why teams do and do not function well. This white paper will explore the team within a performance and research context and lightly touch on how Insights solutions can be used to transform an underperforming team into a high
impact one.
