From Wildlife to Work Life: What Animals Can Teach Us About Team Success

Symbiotic relationships between animals provide valuable insights into team dynamics, which are crucial to team success

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Yaroslav Danylchenko/Stocksy

Long-term interactions between two team members can benefit both. When species team up to help each other, that’s known as symbiosis. In every relationship, one side always benefits while the other may benefit, feel no effect, or be harmed.

Animal symbiotic relationships offer intriguing parallels to the dynamics within a professional team. Team success depends on how members interact with each other.

Explore how the three types of animal relationships impact team dynamics and discover an assessment tool to improve collaboration.

What Animal Relationships Can Teach Us About Teamwork

There are only three kinds of symbiotic relationships in the animal kingdom.

The first is commensalism. A classic example is fish finding hiding spots in coral reefs. The fish benefits from the coral, but life for the coral doesn’t change. The second type of symbiotic relationship is mut…