By Javi Hernández (ERNI Spain)
When team identity is unclear, collaboration doesn’t just suffer, it breaks before it begins. Trust is weakened. Decisions are delayed. Performance is at risk. To build resilient, adaptive organisations, we need to rethink what it means to belong to a team and how we design for it.
The invisible misalignment
In a recent leadership workshop, I asked a room of healthcare leaders a question I thought was straightforward: “Who is your team?”
Out of 40 participants, only one said “my direct reports.” Most mentioned their peers. Nearly half pointed to their bosses.
It sounds like a harmless misunderstanding until you consider the implications.
If a leader doesn’t see their direct reportsas part of their team…
- Who are they leading?
- Who shares their goals?
- Who are they building trust with?
This isn’t just semantic: it’s structural and it’s blocking performance from the inside of our organisations.
Identity assumed, not built
We often assume that shared context creates alignment, but working in the same area doesn’t make us a team, nor does sharing a backlog.
Even cooperating doesn’t guarantee trust or shared responsibility.
Without a clear sense of team identity, groups:
- Prioritise individual output over shared outcomes
- Break down when one person leaves or disengages
- Rely on management to coordinate instead of self-organising
In these situations, we default to blaming attitude: “They don’t collaborate”, “They’re not aligned” or “They lack ownership”.
But what if the problem isn’t individual? What if the system is creating confusion from the start?
Fix the system, not the people
Most organisations reach for the usual tools: a team-building offsite, 1:1 feedback conversations, A ‘collaboration’ training module… They try to fix the people.
We do not realise that this is like treating symptoms, but not the disease. If your team doesn’t act like a team, it’s likely not designed like one.
We need to stop asking, “Why don’t they act like a team? And start asking, “What in our system makes them feel like they’re not one?”
As leaders, we need to design everything around our teams that signals what matters, what they’re allowed to own, and how they can learn from both success and failure.
A team is not a list of names
Let’s be clear: A team exists when a group of people identifies with a purpose and assumes the responsibility to achieve it.
Not when they share a manager. Not when they sit near each other. Not when they report on the same dashboard.
This is why so many initiatives stall; there is no shared ownership because there’s no shared identity. We’ve confused organisational charts with team and organisational design.
When leaders don’t define or reinforce this identity, it gets filled in by habit, convenience or silence.
What shared ownership looks like
Ownership isn’t a mindset; it’s a design outcome.
When teams aren’t exposed to the consequences of their work, they don’t feel responsible for it. If feedback is filtered, if decisions are centralised, if customer insights are withheld, teams can’t truly grow.
But when people are involved in discovery, feedback, delivery and iteration, they learn. They adjust. They care. Ownership becomes real because it’s built into the way they work.
There is no ownership without consequences. And without ownership, there is no team.
Systems create identity
Teams don’t collaborate just because they’re asked to.
They collaborate when the system requires and supports them to do so: when responsibility is shared, goals are aligned, and success is evaluated collectively.
This doesn’t happen by accident. It happens through deliberate design:
- Shared goals across roles
- Aligned incentives and visibility
- Room to self-organise and improve
With the right system, even loosely connected individuals can become a high-functioning team. Without it, even skilled professionals will default to silos.
Collaboration doesn’t scale through goodwill. It scales through design.
So… Who is your team?
As leaders, we need to reflect on:
- Who do you truly share purpose with?
- Who owns outcomes with us?
- And what system are we creating for them to act like a team, not just look like one?
Because the team we define is the system in which you make decisions.
How we work at ERNI
At ERNI, we don’t assume alignment; we build it. We design teams based on shared goals, clarity of purpose, and distributed ownership. We help our clients move beyond task execution and towards collaboration that scales, even in the face of complexity. Because sustainable delivery doesn’t come from heroic individuals – it comes from systems that turn groups into teams.
