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Anna meets with the product team. She gives each person a separate scope and result. Later, the team moves work between people to make sure the overall outcome is delivered.
— Everyone has their own scope and their own result. Clear?
— If everyone only does their own part, the whole thing will fall apart — Helena later tells the team.
The final outcome is good, but the individual task lists no longer match who actually completed each part.
How does Empatyzer reconcile individual and team goals?
Empatyzer helps you see that individual goals provide clear accountability, but can hinder collective outcomes. It also helps see how to reconcile both levels.
Features that can help:
- You vs. the team: Shows how your profile compares to the team in areas such as individual goals, interdependence, and collective outcome, helping to place the "Five Goals, One Task" situation in the broader context of the group.
- Talk to Em about your team: Allows you to discuss the "Five Goals, One Task" problem with Em in the context of the entire team and establish a shared rule that prevents similar misunderstandings in the future.
- Organisational culture: Shows the preferred and actual organisational culture, which helps check whether the "Five Goals, One Task" situation is related to the dominant norm of the company or team, and not solely to the character of the individuals.
What really happened
Anna gives each person an individual scope and result because she wants accountability to be visible. Helena’s team, however, does highly interdependent work: when one part is delayed or needs more resources, people move tasks around to protect the overall result. At the end, the shared outcome is strong, but the individual lists no longer reflect how the work actually happened. Anna sees a risk that accountability will become blurred. The team sees a risk that rigid individual goals will damage the collaboration required to deliver.
What the research says
Teams vary in how interdependent people’s work is. The more strongly tasks and outcomes depend on one another, the more important coordination and shared effectiveness become (interdependence; Courtright et al., 2015). A meta-analysis of group goal setting found that specific team goals improve performance, while individual goals focused only on one person’s output can be harmful when people are highly interdependent. Individual goals worked better when framed as a contribution to the group outcome (Kleingeld, van Mierlo & Arends, 2011). This does not make individual accountability wrong. It means the accountability system has to fit the way the work is actually designed.
How to handle it
Keep two levels visible at the same time. The team has one shared outcome, while each person has a clearly defined area of ownership and contribution — but work can still move when the whole requires it. After the project, evaluate both the team result and the specific decisions and contributions made by individuals. The general rule is: in interdependent work, accountability does not have to mean “everyone only does their own part”; it can mean “we know who owns what even while we help one another deliver the shared result”.
How Empatyzer and Em can help
Empatyzer can help Anna see that individual accountability and collective delivery are not opposites. Assessment data and role information can show who needs clearer ownership and who naturally shifts effort to wherever it best supports the whole. Em can suggest a model in which every result has an owner, while help and handoffs remain visible and legitimate. Anna keeps the accountability she needs; Helena’s team does not have to defend artificial task boundaries at the expense of the shared outcome. Team-level data is particularly useful here because it shows collaboration patterns across the group, not just between two people. Micro-lessons reinforce the principle that clear ownership should organize collaboration, not block it.
Sources
- Stephen H. Courtright; Gary R. Thurgood; Greg L. Stewart; Abigail J. Pierotti (2015). Structural interdependence in teams: An integrative framework and meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(6), 1825-1846. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000027 10.1037/apl0000027
- Ad Kleingeld; Heleen van Mierlo; Lidia Arends (2011). The effect of goal setting on group performance: a meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(6), 1289-1304. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0024315 10.1037/a0024315
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