‘Giving’, ‘Taking’ and ‘Lurking’: How Can We Better Manage Teams?

Every day, nurses work as team members in wide-ranging settings to achieve diverse outcomes. Some teams are intradisciplinary (e.g., nursing only), others are multidisciplinary (i.e., various professions). Collaboration involves demonstrating mutual respect and trust, acknowledging the diverse but interconnected work of each of the professional groups, and focusing on shared goals (Sangaleti et al. 2017). For teams to function cohesively, clear leadership and team member responsibilities are needed, together with well-defined disciplinary roles and other factors such as effective communication and feedback mechanisms (Wang et al. 2024).

Achieving cohesiveness, however, can be challenging. Such challenges could explain the large body of academic literature discussing the how, when, where and why of teams and teamwork or groups and group dynamics. Topics include the various functions of team members, such as the role of leaders or facilitators, encouragers or motivators, harmonisers or conflict mediators, evaluators or critics and so on. The phenomenon of the social loafer in groups has also been examined. More colloquially, team members are sometimes called ‘givers’, ‘takers’ and ‘lurkers’. This editorial discusses team or group dynamics, focusing on the benefits and challenges of managing the giving, taking and lurking factors at work in some groups. Tips on optimising group cohesion are also provided.