Business and Professional Communication, 3rd edition
Kelly M. Quintanilla, Shawn T. Wahl
Chapter 7: Strengthening Teams and Conducting Meetings
Chapter Activities
Activities to Illustrate Key Concepts
Activity 1: Individual Writing Activity
Description: This is an individual writing activity. It is designed as a reection learning
assignment to understand the distinction between a group and a team.
Directions:
1. The activity relies on the discussion of the dierence(s) between groups and teams as
discussed in chapter 7.
2. Discuss with the class the prevalence of small-group assignments in college and
university se”ngs, allowing the students to brie$y react. Keep their discussion short
because they should include some of these thoughts in the re$ection writing
assignment.
3. Assign the students to individually write a one-page paper on the dierence(s) between
groups and teams. They should provide a de(nition of each. They should also suggest
Activity 2: Team Role Identi’cation Activity
Description: This is an individual research activity and a class activity. The activity is
designed to help students to identify what they think their possible role in a team might be.
Directions:
3. During the next class period, the instructor should have the students divide up into
groups based on the roles the students identi(ed as being the possible role they would
play in a team.
4. Have each of the groups spend 10 minutes or so sharing with each why they felt this is
the role they would play in a team.
Activity 3: John Dewey’s Problem-Solving Exercise
Description: This is a small-team exercise to expose students to the process-oriented way of
solving problems as a team.
Directions:
1. Students should be familiar with the Problem Solving section of chapter 7 dealing with
John Dewey’s Re$ective Thinking Process.
2. The class should be divided up into teams of 4 or 5 people.
3. The problem that all teams are to solve is how to plan, execute, and prepare to
completion a team literature review research project on the topic of Cultural Diversity
Problems in the Workplace. The instructor can substitute another topic of their
choosing.