Promoting the Emergence of Team Flow in Organizations

An important question in the field of team research is how teams can optimize their collaboration to maximize their performance. When team members who are collaborating towards a common purpose experience flow together, the team, as a performing unit, improves its performance and delivers individual happiness to its members. From a practical point of view, it is relevant to know how team flow experiences arise within professional organizations. The aim of this study is therefore to get more insight into the how the elements of team flow emerge. We conducted interviews with team members, business leaders, and team experts, and in addition a survey with team members. The results provide confirmation of the existing research on team dynamics, flow, group and team flow and indicate that a collective ambition, professional autonomy, and open communication must be deliberately and carefully cultivated to set the stage for the other team flow prerequisites and thence for team flow to emerge.