ABSTRACT
Teams are ubiquitous in caregiving organizations, as elsewhere. There are teaching teams in grade levels, surgical teams in operating rooms, ministry teams for community projects, childcare worker teams, task forces for developing strategy and evaluating practices. Such teams complete tasks too complex for individuals. Properly designed, real teams are integrating mechanisms that draw people together and point them toward specific, unifying goals. Improperly designed, they are groups masquerading as teams. Their structures, tasks, goals, measures, and coordinating mechanisms place individuals at odds. Such groups are troubled by typical dilemmas: communication failures, struggles for power and influence, unequal or ineffective participation, and decision-making difficulties. Ineffective group processes are often sustained by organizational fictions asserting that particular groups, departments, or units are teams when in reality they are so in name only.
