Learning team FAQs

What is a team?
There are six types of team, defined mainly by the stability of their membership and the stability or nature of their task. All of them have the same common characteristic - a group of people, who work together to achieve a shared purpose.

What is a learning team?
A learning team differs from an ordinary team in that its members assume responsibility not only from achieving the task, but for their own and other team members' learning. Learning teams are essential in creating a learning organisation.

Are team roles helpful?
On their own, the most commonly used systems of team role identification tend to focus attention on task, at the expense of learning. Learning teams have a set of balancing roles, which ensure that learning continues even under greater pressure to get things done.

Does team building promote team learning?
In the short term, team building exercises can help people understand themselves and their colleagues better. The paradox is that the more effective team building is, the less learning takes place subsequently. The closer people who have been on the team building event grow together, the less likely they are to question and confront the way things are done. Moreover, newcomers to the team find it difficult to break in to the inner core, and turnover among them increases, sometimes to higher levels than before the team building event. Acquiring the skills of a learning team helps overcome these problems.

How are individual learning and team learning linked?
Individuals increasingly have Personal Development Plans. Business units have Business Development Plans. A Team Development Plan provides the link between these. It integrates individual learning needs with broader developmental goals and identifies where and how each team member can help the others to learn.