ABSTRACT
Much of medical education and management education share the principles upon which the Chinese proverb is based, and common to both is a need to understand working in teams. All doctors are familiar with the idea of working in teams, and participation in teams is part of the training process to develop clinical and interpersonal skills relevant to the doctor's role and patients' needs. The familiarity with the clinical team role can prove to be both a help and a hindrance when it comes to operating within management teams. This is particularly true in the case of clinical directorate teams; the primary task is not the management of individual patients but the management of limited resources to meet patient needs through the contracting process. Teams become involved in the need to understand different types of behaviour as a consequence of the need to work together.
