Publish at May 21 2025 Updated May 21 2025
Individual performances aren't the most important thing. You win or lose as a team
Zinedine Zidane
Shared values, a favorable context and managerial consistency are key elements of team performance (Weideman et al 2018), but what about team stability?
Since 2020, the topic of team stability has been revisited in light of the upheavals caused by the pandemic, the widespread use of hybrid working and the rise of so-called "learning" organizations.
Contrary to a static conception that equates stability with fixity - same members, same tasks, same culture - recent research has shown that true stability is a dynamic, relational and functional phenomenon, rather than a structural one. It lies in the ability of collectives to maintain identity markers, adaptive routines and fruitful interactions, even in an uncertain context. In other words, a team is stable not because it is immobile, but because it is regulated, reflexive and resilient.
One of the major findings highlighted in the synthesis by Mathieu et al. (2021) concerns the notion of transactive memory, derived from the work of Wegner. This collective memory refers to the way in which team members know who has what type of expertise and how to mobilize this knowledge in coordinated actions. It constitutes a form of distributed cognitive stability, independent of the individuals themselves.
A team can lose a key member without totally disrupting its operations if roles, expectations and areas of expertise are sufficiently shared and documented. This implies a culture of knowledge traceability and reflexivity about processes rather than people.
This idea is reinforced by the contributions of Salas and Rosen (2021), who insist on the quality of socio-emotional regulation as a central factor of stability. In a high-pressure context, teams capable of verbalizing tensions, recognizing collective emotions and adjusting the way they interact are more robust. It's not just a question of regulating tasks, but of creating a climate of psychological safety (Edmondson, 2019) that allows for trial, error and continuous learning. From this perspective, stability is enabled by the group's ability to remain coherent while navigating complexity.
Another essential dimension concerns the logics of power and autonomy in contemporary teams. Stability is less the result of formal governance than of the ability of players to continually negotiate the rules, standards and goals of joint work. This ongoing negotiation would produce a form of reflexive stability: individuals know what they can count on, not because everything is written down, but because relationships enable real-time adjustment. In this way, stability becomes a shared competence, rooted in dialogue, trust and mutual commitment.
This vision is particularly put to the test in innovation collectives, medical teams in critical contexts, or project groups in uncertain environments. Lee, Edmondson and Thomke (2021) show that these teams need to develop so-called "dynamic" skills:
They maintain a form of perceived stability because they know how to make roles explicit, update commitments and synchronize expectations, even when the structure evolves. The role of leadership is profoundly transformed: it is no longer a matter of steering the team, but of supporting its capacity for self-organization and learning.
At the crossroads of these approaches lies a renewed understanding of stability: it is relational (based on the quality of links), narrative (dependent on shared narratives and the continuity of meaning), and ecological (influenced by environmental conditions). This mesological approach, which Augustin Berque extends from a philosophical perspective, invites us to consider teams as living environments, not fixed entities. A team's environment is not its organizational chart, but the texture of its interactions, the density of its exchanges, the rhythm of its actions.
From the point of view of facilitation, this research calls for a transformation of the role traditionally assigned to the facilitator. If the stability of teams depends on their ability to self-regulate and intelligently recompose themselves, then the facilitator becomes a guarantor of the adaptation process rather than a guarantor of order. He makes implicit routines visible, supports the emergence of shared narratives and reinforces collective feedback loops. He acts on transactive memory by encouraging the clarification of distributed knowledge, on emotional regulation by creating spaces for expression and listening, and on the robustness of the system by facilitating cross-learning and role adjustments.
In a changing context, the facilitator is less a referee than a gardener of the team environment: he or she ensures the quality of the relational soil, the exposure of meaning to the light, and the circulation of the water of learning.
His role is to activate the group's dynamic stability, not through rigid procedures, but through a keen eye for weak signals, attention to commitment thresholds and the ability to orchestrate transitions. It is in this sense that facilitation becomes a critical lever for the future of work collectives: not a method, but an ecology of attention applied to the life of the group.
Sources
* Edmondson, A. C. (2019). The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation, and growth. Wiley.
* Lee, M. Y., Edmondson, A. C., & Thomke, S. (2021). Building dynamic team capabilities to innovate under pressure. California Management Review, 63(3), 5-25.
* Mathieu, J. E., Maynard, M. T., Rapp, T. L., & Gilson, L. L. (2021). Team effectiveness 1997-2017: A review of recent advancements and a glimpse into the future. Journal of Management, 47(1), 204-243.
* Salas, E., & Rosen, M. A. (2021). Building high-reliability teams: Progress and some reflections on teamwork training. Human Factors, 63(4), 587-594.
* Weidmann, J., Gonin, F., Konishi, M., & Agassiz, I. (2018). The impact of staff performance management at the collective on team cohesion in the medico-social sector (No. CONFERENCE). August 27-29, 2018.
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