Page 28 - Develop your leadership skills- John Adair. -- 2nd ed

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What you need to do ■ 19

Task need

Work groups and organisations come into being because there
is a task to be done that is too big for one person. You can
climb a hill or small mountain by yourself, but you cannot
climb Mount Everest on your own – you need a team for that.

Why call it a need? Because pressure builds up a head of steam
to accomplish the common task. People can feel very frustrated
if they are prevented from doing so.

Team maintenance need

This is not so easy to perceive as the task need; as with an
iceberg, much of the life of any group lies below the surface.
The distinction that the task need concerns things and the team
maintenance need involves people does not help much.

Again, it is best to think of groups that are threatened from
without by forces aimed at their disintegration or from within
by disruptive people or ideas. We can then see how they give
priority to maintaining themselves against these external or
internal pressures, sometimes showing great ingenuity in the
process. Many of the written or unwritten rules of the group
are designed to promote this unity and to maintain cohesive-
ness at all costs. Those who rock the boat or infringe group
standards and corporate balance may expect reactions varying
from friendly indulgence to downright anger. Instinctively a
common feeling exists that ‘United we stand, divided we fall’,
that good relationships, desirable in themselves, are also an
essential means towards the shared end. This need to create