Multiple team membership
Many people contribute to several teams at the same time. Each team brings its own meetings, deadlines, working relationships, and expectations. Experience from one team can help in another, yet the same arrangement can divide attention and leave priorities unresolved.
The strain depends on how the memberships fit together. A person with a clear home team and protected blocks of time faces a different week from someone who switches between teams throughout the day, even when both belong to the same number of teams. The MTM Portfolio Navigator helps people map that arrangement, see which parts create pressure, preserve what is useful, and choose a small work-design change to test.
Built from Joost van de Brake’s research on working across teams.
Protect longer focus blocks
Frequent switches are breaking the week into small pieces.
The basic idea
Multiple team membership means working in two or more teams during the same period. It appears in healthcare, public services, logistics, factories, education, project work, and many other settings.
The daily experience depends on how those memberships are arranged. One person may have a clear home team and long blocks of focused work. Another may move between teams throughout the day. The Navigator helps both people describe their situation and choose a workable change.
A practical tool for modern teamwork
Your team portfolio is the full set of teams you work in during the same period. The Navigator makes the shape of that portfolio visible.
Free interactive Navigator
Describe how your time is divided and how often you move between teams. The Navigator turns your answers into a clear portfolio map. Each suggestion explains why it appeared and opens the research behind it.
How it works
Answer short questions about your teams and the way work moves between them.
See your portfolio and the five work patterns that shape it.
Use the explanation to decide which pattern needs attention first.
Choose the people involved and what you will watch. Set a review date, then save or print the plan.
For educators
Each case includes a learner handout and a separate instructor guide. The stories use everyday work settings and explain the research in plain language.
Status and team re-entry
Maya returns to her regular team after six weeks in a temporary improvement team. People listened to her more in that team than they usually do in Atlas. Students decide how her leader can use Maya’s new idea and Ruben’s local knowledge to solve a real handover problem.
Work design and switching
Ruben and Aisha each work in four teams at a distribution centre. Ruben has a clear home team and protected work blocks. Aisha changes team context throughout the day. Students compare their working weeks and redesign the more fragmented arrangement.
A third case in the Teamwork course
These public cases complement a longer case used in Joost van de Brake’s Teamwork course. The three cases help students move from mapping a team portfolio to making leadership and work-design decisions.
Research behind the Navigator
The Navigator turns a programme of multiple-team research into questions people can answer about their own work. These four published papers provide the main foundation. The tool shows additional current studies wherever they inform a suggestion.
Time and switching
The study separates team count from time allocation, switching, a clear home team, and teammate familiarity.
Journal of Applied Psychology, 2024Roles across teams
The study examines how differences in a person’s roles across teams relate to role ambiguity and team performance.
Personnel Psychology, 2023Organisational experience
The associations differed between newer and longer-serving employees, both in how they experienced the work and in their later performance.
Journal of Management Studies, 2020Benefits and demands
Working across teams can open access to resources across the organisation while also creating additional demands.
Journal of Applied Psychology, 2022Each case explains the evidence behind it and how far that evidence can be used. The fictional story turns the research question into a decision students can discuss.
The study follows 692 occasions when football players returned to their club after national-team duty. Larger differences in relative standing across the teams were associated with more chances created for club teammates.
Current research by Joost van de Brake on status differences across team memberships.
View Joost’s researchThe study compares several ways of describing work across teams. It shows how time distribution, switching, a clear home team, and prior familiarity shape a given arrangement.
Van de Brake, Van der Vegt, and Essens (2024), Journal of Applied Psychology.
Read the published paperShare your experience
If you use the Navigator or one of the cases, send me a short note. Experiences from workplaces and classrooms help me improve the next resource.