The leader functions as the spokesperson for the people, while his ideas and support are always derived from the masses. The last point refers to the fact that one often finds more than one team in an organization, working on different, sometimes overlapping, issues. This provides a good opportunity to learn from and coordinate with the other teams. Team learning also involves dealing effectively with the forces opposing productive dialogue and discussion in working teams. There is an important distinction between dialogue and discussion that one should be aware of.
Dialogue is a truly open, free flow of ideas, a brainstorming, where everybody's ideas are heard.
Discussion is a kind of competition where one side tries to convince the other side of his point of view. The word dialogue stems from the Greek dialogos, which means a free-flowing of meaning through a group and the group's capacity to suspend assumption and to enter into joint thinking in order to discover insights not attainable by individuals. Discussion has its roots in 'percussion' and 'concussion' and literally means a heaving of ideas, back and forth. It is more of a win or take all competition. Thus, in teamwork people should dialogue rather than discuss.