Nowadays, the world of organisations is very diverse, and there are many different ways to manage people. There are organisations where the span of control is very wide, people work quite independently and interact with their manager less often, as well as those where a manager truly has one or two employees and the daily work involves being in close proximity in a good sense.
One thing, however, is clear: the modern approach to organisations and work in general, regardless of the type of organisation, still favours teamwork. The world is simply complex enough and life is fast-paced enough that only a few can cope without the support of a team. Likewise, well-functioning teamwork is more satisfying for most people than working alone, as humans are, after all, a species that seeks the company of others.
Therefore, it can be said that even a manager with one subordinate should ideally form a team with that person. And thus, a new question could be posed: is there a difference between the functioning of two-, three-, four-, and larger teams? Among other things, I would like to mention that "subordinate" is not a very good-sounding word in Estonian; I would rather use – and recommend that everyone else also use – the word "employee", which I will continue to do here, but for now, this term was necessary to clarify the topic.
But returning to the topic, it probably has to be admitted that the number of team members does not significantly change the principles of teamwork – or the manager's role in the team. Yes, management activities certainly change. Likewise, the use of time with a larger number of team members certainly differs from how a two-person team organises its activities over time. However, it is highly unlikely that a situation would arise where, let's assume a manager has two employees, the manager leads them as their team, one day one of them goes on parental leave – a replacement is not found immediately – and the manager is left with the other employee. Then, something changes overnight and drastically, because now the manager is only managing one employee. Clearly, such logic is flawed, and in reality, activities do change, for example, certain work tasks are redistributed, but the principles of management do not.
In order for all this talk to seem more understandable, it is probably necessary to focus a little on what teamwork and team management entail. This topic has been discussed throughout the ages by many different people in various ways, but I would like to offer my own approach here, which is relatively simple and against its background it would be possible to explain the topic posed in the title of this subheading.
Teamwork is not actually a thing in itself, but rather it is a tangible activity. We either have a team spirit or we don't. People may work together, in the same department, in the same room, on the same project, but that feeling is absent. In that case, it is group work, and we do not intend to talk about that at length in this chapter. It would probably be necessary, before delving into teamwork, to explain one more important nuance – the difference between group work and teamwork. In literature, these concepts can often be found used interchangeably, but in the context of this discussion, to precisely emphasise what team management means, it would probably be appropriate to try to bring some clarity to these concepts.
As was already alluded to, the differences between group and teamwork are primarily perceptual. An uninvolved bystander cannot really tell whether a given collection of people constitutes a group or a team. Perhaps one can infer the correct answer by observing the quality of the collective outcome of the people mentioned – teamwork should generally ensure higher results.
So, what are the main differences between a team and a group, what is this mysterious perceptual difference? Broadly and generally speaking, the difference lies in how people perceive two things – the goal and responsibility. At this point, however, it does not matter how many people should perceive these things in the same way; all team members must do so. Perceiving the goal means, above all, embracing it. Undoubtedly, every group also has its own goal – for example, to organise this event, to handle the company's marketing (marketing department), to implement this project (project group). However, group members may have many more important goals to which they actually dedicate themselves, alongside this apparent main activity. Some work because they want to add a line to their CV reflecting certain work experience, some because they have to go to work as that's where the salary comes from, some are waiting for their pension which arrives in three months. Among other things, the required amount of work is still done so that their personal goals are not jeopardised. A large number of departments and so-called teams are actually just groups in real life.
The sense of purpose is directly linked to the sense of responsibility. A phenomenon called shared responsibility begins to operate in a group. In a humorous vein, it is famously understood that shared responsibility means that no one is personally responsible. This means that if we have one leader and one employee, or more employees, and everyone assumes that someone else will take responsibility for the final outcome, we are dealing with a group and not a team. It is possible that many readers have also experienced a situation where, when sending an email with a question to multiple recipients (and not adding the manager to the CC line), the answer comes significantly later than when sending the same question to individuals one by one. It is completely human to feel that someone will surely answer.
Understandably, a work organisation that favours group work is not good management. Regardless of the number of employees, the manager's task is to "sell" the given work to the employees in a good sense, so that they would embrace the goal, even if only a little. Moreover, people's personal goals do not disappear, which is sometimes feared – what will happen to them now. The line on the CV and other previously mentioned desires-dreams-wishes will also remain. Rather, a good manager knows them and takes them into account. But every team member, starting, of course, with the manager, takes ownership of what is being done together. Of course, the priority is that the manager themselves has first thought of it as attractive and then moves on. It is not possible to enthusiastically inspire other people to do something that seems pointless and unnecessary to oneself.
As soon as the goal moves into the heart (or at least somewhere close to it), something automatically happens with the sense of responsibility. An individual and collective responsibility arises; it is a vague concept, but unfortunately, it is difficult to find a better term to describe the situation. This means that each team member is responsible for their contribution towards achieving the goal, within their scope of work, and at the same time keeps an eye on how the whole team is doing and how their work relates to others'. For example, if a presentation is being prepared together, they will put their materials together properly, but will not finalise their part until another person has also added their parts, which will then be reviewed together to remove any contradictions or repetitions and to refine the presentation's style and appearance to be consistent. Because the ultimate goal is not to go to the client with a presentation that looks like it was hastily put together by two people perhaps that very morning, and it seems that their parts have not been discussed and rehearsed for joint delivery.
When work is done as a team – and I stress again that this is a feeling people have – then the situation described above should not arise. In general, it can be said that a leader is actually a leader of feelings, they lead people's emotions (motivation, for example, is just one specific type of multifaceted feeling that makes a person move), no matter how many employees are in their team. Of course, it is clear that the fewer people, the better they can do this. However, the leader's attention span and the number of hours available are always limited, so a logical conclusion can be drawn from this: in order for us to have a team, the number of team members must be considered, and some teams may need to be divided into several, so that they do not become a "just a group."
We have groups anyway. All teams are also groups, but at the same time, not all groups are teams. The entire organisation is not one team either (although colloquially we may sometimes refer to the organisation as "our team"), it is, first of all, too large. An organisation should primarily be a team of teams, where the goals of all teams are aligned with the overall goals of the organisation. However, the latter is the responsibility of top management.
If the reader now starts to think about their own team... or wait... which one is it actually, then it often seems that some of our people belong to the team and then for a couple of places, one cannot say. No joke, such a situation can be described as, for example, a seven-member group with a five-member team within it. And sometimes it can turn out that in a department there are a certain number of people who really work as a team among themselves and a couple of individuals who somehow do not fit in, but are pursuing their own agenda, or not doing much at all. In itself, in such a situation, one cannot immediately start blaming a specific leader and their management mistakes; sometimes it can also be a matter of choosing the wrong people, which even the best leader cannot mitigate if the mistake has already been made. In the given situation, the best solution would probably be to reassign people. In addition, some work may also be very individual, which is mostly done alone. Although even in such a case, they may feel that they belong to the team with others, they simply have less interaction with each other, but the team spirit is there. Because a team does not mean being constantly in each other's faces and sitting at one computer or even desk. It is still a feeling; team members may sometimes be located all over the world, but it is still a team.
Returning to the question of whether a leader truly manages people's emotions, it became clear a couple of decades ago that this is unfortunately the case. The area of the brain that deals with emotions is faster than the area that deals with thoughts – recall a situation where you are on holiday, your phone rings, and you see a work number on the screen. Did a feeling arise? Some people probably act on that feeling (it might not have been the happiest one) and ignore the call – I was on holiday and therefore away from the phone. Another person answers the call with a trembling hand and finds out that a colleague cannot find a phone number and asks for just one minute of your time, and there is no real threat (having to cut the holiday short, some emergency, etc.). If a person were rational, they would listen to the content first and only then get angry or happy. But since human behaviour is primarily driven by emotions, the feeling arises even before the matter is actually addressed.
The same feeling is triggered in an employee, i.e., in all employees, when the leader enters their office. And it is the leader's task to trigger such emotions in people that they would want to cooperate with them. Group work is also done without this emotion; as explained previously, a certain sense of duty and self-preservation instinct exists in group members as well. However, if a leader wants dedication and teamwork, they should consider what feelings they evoke in their people, i.e., where they are directing their employees' emotions.
Emotion management is, in turn, a long sub-topic in itself, but at this point, a reference can be made to emotional intelligence, which means understanding one's own emotions, the ability to manage them, and then sensing the emotions of others and the ability to direct them to a certain extent – directly managing others' emotions is not possible. The competencies of emotional intelligence are divided into five – from simplest to most complex: self-awareness, self-regulation, self-motivation, empathy, and social skills. Notably, the ability to work in a team is listed as a sub-competency within the list of emotional competencies and belongs to the fifth block, social skills. This same block also contains other essential skills for a leader, such as communication, conflict resolution, and charisma – which in turn support the teamwork competency.
We have now explained how teamwork is actually one of the highest-level emotional competencies and requires good self-management from the leader, followed by the ability to direct the emotions of their team members – no matter how many members there are. It is time to return to activities within the team. Let's look at the role a leader should take within the team and whether there might be any differences depending on how many employees they have.
In a true team, an interesting process takes place where the leader's role rotates – what could this mean? It must be said that this is indeed one of those activities that fall under emotional leadership and can ultimately lead to the creation of that true team spirit. Unfortunately, a person can only be responsible in their heart for what they have been involved in deciding – or at least close to. On paper, of course, people can be made responsible for all sorts of things, but we are not talking about that here. The responsibility required for team spirit presupposes that a person has had a say in matters, again, the number of people in the team is not important – the main thing is that it is small enough for everyone to grasp what is happening. This is one of the reasons why a whole large organisation cannot be one team, because not everyone can be involved in planning all activities. And they don't have to be; it is quite enough if they are involved in their team's decision-making process and their team's goals align with the organisation's overall goals.
A rotating leadership role, however, means that every team member must be able to take the reins of decision-making at a certain point and have an opinion on matters concerning their competencies. This, of course, also presupposes an approach where the leader is not the smartest and most knowledgeable person in the team, who therefore has to decide everything themselves. In real life, this is simply a relatively unlikely situation where the leader knows everything and also has time to decide everything. In such a case, the question arises why such a smart leader has not managed to choose a smarter team with whom to share tasks, as the leader also wants to rest and take a breather sometimes. In fact, this is also extremely important, because only in those moments does the leader have the opportunity to deal with important leadership tasks, observe the big picture, and consider strategic issues. A leader who is constantly bustling around, handling matters and making decisions for their team, cannot possibly fulfil important leadership tasks, which will be discussed in slightly more detail in the next two paragraphs.
A rotating or moving leadership role figuratively means that if a team has specialists from different fields, they discuss things amongst themselves and generally allow the strongest specialist in the field to have the final say. If, for example, we are dealing with a newspaper editorial office and a marketing expert is convinced that a small gift could accompany the newspaper sold on the street in the summer – and a decision needs to be made about what it should be, then how should this matter be investigated? The newspaper boy selling newspapers on the street in the summer probably knows best who buys newspapers from the street, whether it's mostly men, mostly women (or equally), young or old. And once the target group is identified, it's the marketing guru's turn again to say what kind of gift might be attractive to such a target group. Then the finance genius calculates the costs and expected revenues, and the team leader approves the new project – as it fits the company's strategy and can be afforded in the current situation, the risk of failure is small.
Now the question remains, when exactly should the leader speak up? Is he even needed at all? Perhaps in the example described above, the matter could end with the financier's assessment of whether the marketing project is likely to be profitable or not, and whether to give it the green or red light? It turns out that we started with the differences between team and individual leadership and we end up with the conclusion that a team doesn't need a leader at all? Of course, that's not the case; a leader is a very important person to every employee and also binds the team together as a whole. Again, this is primarily an emotional activity; practically, no one is tied down anywhere, it happens on an emotional level. The leader sets the direction and creates the prevailing mood, and also manages to bring all activities under one umbrella, which is then called the vision or general goals, or whatever one wishes to call it. Leading the vision and strategy is definitely the leader's duty, although it doesn't mean that they shouldn't listen to the advice of wise team members in these activities.
Even in a two-person team, the leader's task is to keep their tiny team on track, inform their only employee about the processes and new directions within the organisation, which the leader probably hears about first, and to listen to the employee's doubts and concerns, should they arise. The leader is, on the one hand, the driver of the team and, on the other hand, its supporter. They must also know what their employee excels at and trust their competence. They must certainly also let the employee know that they trust them and acknowledge their contribution. But this is exactly how it happens with a larger number of employees as well; it simply requires more attention from the leader and takes more time.
Since every person is an individual, with their own feelings, their own personality, and life experiences, we can say that even in a team, the leader still leads individuals – the team, unfortunately, consists of them. The leader leads each individual separately and at the same time must ensure that their actions do not harm the interests of other individuals, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say – the emotions of other employees. For example, the leader must certainly justify their positions and assessments even more, so that all team members understand why the leader prefers one course of action or situation over another. This makes managing a multi-person team more complex and, I emphasize again, primarily more time-consuming than being a leader of an individual, but all sorts of misunderstandings and blunders can occur in the same way when managing a single person.
The larger the team grows, the more disagreements arise within the team; let's call them conflicts. My first thought was "may arise," but for accuracy, one should face the truth and state that conflicts do arise, they arise anyway. This should certainly not be feared; rather, the occurrence of disagreements is a sign of a good team and it is a natural course of events that they are sometimes debated more or less heatedly. Communication skills are unfortunately one of the fundamental tools of teamwork (they are also listed side-by-side with emotional competencies, at the highest level), and for teamwork to succeed, both the team leader and the team members must master them. Otherwise, the spread of true team spirit among the team will not happen if communication is problematic or insufficient.
If the team members are emotionally intelligent – and they should be – they can resolve their mutual disagreements and misunderstandings among themselves. However, situations may arise where the team leader must intervene in the resolution of one issue or another that has arisen between team members. This is indeed one difference that occurs more in the management of more than one employee, but this too is more of a technical than a substantive difference. Nor is it impossible for misunderstandings to arise between a leader and their sole employee, and both parties, the leader and the employee, must actively deal with resolving them.
Perhaps it would be worth returning to the topic briefly mentioned at the beginning of the story and further reflecting on whether there is a difference between managing a large and a small team? Where is the line drawn, is there a difference between managing a team of four and a team of twelve? There are certainly differences in daily activities, for example, opinions can be sought from a larger group of people. Team decision-making will probably take a little longer. More misunderstandings arise because there are more viewpoints. But in the end, I believe that everything still comes down to interpersonal communication, which happens equally in large and small groups. Therefore, the more emotional competencies a leader possesses, the better communicator they are, the less they have to worry about the number of members in their team, and the more they can focus on moving towards the goals.