Clarity for Teams #1: The Mirror of Change

Teams talk a lot about collaboration — about communication, roles and workflows. Yet what truly shapes how we work together rarely emerges from these conversations. It emerges from practice. Teams often follow unconscious team rules that form over time while working. These rules, habits and patterns arise almost as a by-product. They may be useful for a while, but they often persist long after the conditions around them have changed: new technologies, new colleagues, new customers, new expectations.

Many of these unconscious team rules no longer serve their original purpose. They continue to operate simply because no one questions them. A small everyday example makes this visible: sifting flour used to be necessary. Today, industrially produced flour is already fine enough. The old rule remains because it was once correct.

The same is true for teams.
To examine such unconscious team rules, we must first be able to see them. And these rules become visible most easily when a team does something unfamiliar: working in a new setting, taking on a different kind of task or stepping into an unexpected workflow. In such contexts, old patterns appear automatically and stand out more clearly.

One example illustrates this well.
In many teams, one person takes on the role of the problem-solver. Not because it was ever decided, but because the pattern emerged over time. In familiar environments, this may seem efficient. In a new context, it suddenly becomes a bottleneck. Everyone waits for this one person to fix several issues at once. The rule becomes unmistakable — and therefore open to reflection.

The value of such situations lies in holding up a mirror to the team.
How do we make decisions?
Who is heard, and who is not?
Who steps back, and who steps in?
Who takes responsibility, and who hands it away?

Once these patterns — and the unconscious team rules behind them — become visible, space for change opens up.
Not through new methods, but through a clearer understanding of how the team actually works.

An overview of all articles in this series can be found here: Stories