The Use of Systems Thinking in Teamwork

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present a method of planning and managing work in inter-disciplinary teams. Based on a rational problem-solving process, the salient features of the method will not be unfamiliar to managers and administrators. But for people in the helping professions its basic ideas may at first seem alien to the kind of uncertain and irrational human environments in which they work. It is not only patients who are so unpredictable and hard to understand. Colleagues too, appear on occasion to be seized by irrational forces which seriously impair working relationships, and hence the efficacy of the inter-disciplinary team. It is, therefore, not surprising if psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, social workers and people in allied disciplines tend to seek an understanding of group behavior primarily in the study of unconscious forces governing group dynamics and be sceptical of any theoretical framework that appeals to rationality, order and the wish to illicit and clarify what is in the conscious rather than unconscious minds of team colleagues.