ABSTRACT
The Social Work team meets weekly. Their meetings are about such matters as the allocation of new clients to team members, progress, and problems that have arisen. Some team members are unhappy with the level of collaboration and the decision-making process within the team. The team leader intervenes too little and does not have the courage to cut through logjams or tackle people about their responsibilities. The monthly case discussion produces insufficient insight because the meeting is too non-committal. People are not critical enough of each other’s working methods. The criticism made by some team members is that a number of their colleagues should work harder and more efficiently because otherwise the collaboration cannot be effective. Group performance in the North team is markedly better than that in the South team. The performance of the group as a collaborative unit is generally lower than the sum of the maximum performances of the group members individually.
