ABSTRACT
Narrative enables us to zoom into a particular aspect of this problem. In a productive collaboration, individual expertise pools so the potential of the group can exceed the capabilities of its individuals. Together, the team members contribute relevant knowledge to build a shared story, one that is specifically geared towards a communal goal. An unproductive team lacks this inner coherence and instead comes to be dominated by factors that are non-intrinsic to its goal, such as peer or societal status (Cohen and Lotan, 2014). This is not a productive foundation for a project-not only
does it fail to harness the innovative potential of a group but at a more basic level, “status-driven hierarchical processes undermine analysis and problem-solving activities in teams” (Feiger and Schmidt as discussed in Page, 2004, p. 342). Instead, the members of a team need to recast their knowledge towards a common target, a process that requires the facilitation of individual expertise into a new communal arrangement.
