One of the most frequently used definitions of a team suggests that its main characteristics are the shared commitment to “a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which [the team members] hold themselves... [ view full abstract ]
One of the most frequently used definitions of a team suggests that its main characteristics are the shared commitment to “a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which [the team members] hold themselves mutually accountable” (Katzenbach & Smith, 1993, p. 112). While teamwork is ubiquitous both in workplaces and in education and research on teamwork is now abundant, little attention has been paid to how exactly such a common purpose, approach or goals are developed between team members who are often chosen to reflect both functional and cultural diversity.
In order to explore how a shared worldview, common ground and ultimately a common purpose might be established, data from a 9 month-long case study of a diverse team working on a series of MBA projects was collected. Team meetings were observed and recorded and interviews were conducted with members at the beginning and end of the teamwork.
While the team engaged in different interactional activities that contributed to the development of common ground, one of the most notable activities was ‘troubles talk’. Troubles talk, a term first coined by Tannen (1990), refers to talk about negative issues, frequently featuring indirect complaints (Boxer, 1983). The analysis firstly demonstrates how the team used troubles talk in order to make sense of and develop a shared outlook on the circumstances surrounding them. Through jointly-constructed accounts of issues and struggles they positioned themselves as a ‘team’ independent of tasks they had to complete, thereby arriving at justifications and shared understandings of their approaches and priorities. In a second analytical step, by drawing on Harré’s (2012) work on positioning theory, the complexities involved in doing troubles talk will be outlined in respect of how participants positioned the self vis-a-vis the troubles and the team. The presentation concludes by highlighting how, despite these complexities, team members irrespective of background and language proficiency, seemed to be able to engage with and contribute to the troubles talk successfully, giving it a unique position within the case presented.
