CHAPTER 1
YOUR GROUPS AND TEAMS:
COMMUNICATING FOR SUCCESS
Every student has had experiences with groups—families, friends, churches, classes, teams—and
everyone has seen both bad news and good news in working with others. So we start from that
to show students why and how teamwork may be critically important to their future careers.
We give them an idea of the kinds of groups and teams that currently are used in the workplace,
why and how teamwork is powerful, and why the trend is to increasing uses of groups and teams
in organizations. We briefly introduce the importance of diversity, gender, and ethics as integral
Chapter Outline
Your Group and Team Experiences
Your Future in Groups and Teams
Careers and Teamwork
Systems and Subsystems
A Team Processes Model
Preparation for Your Teamwork
Summary
Exercises
Discussion Suggestions for Boxes
Virtual teams make loyalty more realistic
The idea that teamwork can be conducted partially or wholly online may seem unrealistic.
Nonetheless, the virtual team is a major teamwork method—albeit without the emphasis on
groupness and without the interpersonal and nonverbal contact.
You might ask students to consider:
1. In what ways do you think working on a virtual team would be different from working in
a face-to-face team?
2. In what ways do you think you could make a virtual team more “real?” What do you
imagine you’d want to accomplish in your first face-to-face meeting with other team
members?
3. What would be the advantages of working in a virtual team? What would be the
disadvantages?
4. What types of work do you think could be done in a virtual team and what would be more
difficult?
Business Teams Win Professional Awards for Excellence
This textbook provides many criteria for judging effectiveness of work teams. This box provides
a good opportunity to stimulate discussion on how they might set the criteria for determining
excellence in a business team.
Talking Points:
• What do you know of any of the organizations mentioned in the box? Did any already
have a reputation for excellence in your mind?
• What criteria would you set up to measure the excellence of a business team?
• Would the priority of those criteria be influenced by your background or the fact that you
are taking this course?
• What factors might prejudice an awards committee in the selection of winners or setting
up the criteria for winning?
Suggestions for Guiding Chapter Exercises
Exercise 1: Analyzing Career Want Ads
• Arrange students in groups of five to seven members and ask them to share with one
another what they found in advertisements.
Exercise 2: Comparing Best and Worst Group Experiences
After students have generated their lists of best and worst group characteristics, ask them the
following questions:
• Why did these characteristics affect their groups for good or ill?
• How did these characteristics affect the transactional and task processes of their groups?
• What kinds of behaviors might members have used to improve those groups?
• What will they look for, based upon their experiences, in their future groups and teams?
Exercise 3: Researching Group Utilization in Local Organizations
Divide the class into research groups and assign them this exercise. Give them the option to meet
face-to-face outside of class or to use virtual teamwork. If students would like to conduct virtual
teamwork, they can try the sites given in the exercise or simply set up an email team, agreeing to
specific time limits for brainstorming and assigning on individual responsibilities, reporting
findings to one another, and settling on how to report their conclusions.
Whether meetings are all face-to-face in class or partially online, have students report their
findings orally in class, then ask them, ad hoc:
• How did they plan their work? Would they set it up differently now they’ve had some
Exercise 4: Opening First Corporate Office in Japan
You may need to encourage students to use their imaginations on this one. What they must do is
imagine what each member of this project team should be like.
Criteria you might help them to consider:
• Knowledge of Japanese culture and business practices;
You might mention that high status and good manners are very important to Japanese business
people. Given that, what characteristics of representatives would they want to avoid putting on
the team?
Exercise 5:
Students will do this exercise individually.
You may want to have them keep their lists of things they do well and things they want to im–
prove private, but you can use this as a shared exercise:
Additional Exercises
EXERCISE 1: TEAM IN A SYSTEM SIMULATION
Objective
To involve students in identifying relationships in team and systems interactions.
Time
Approximately 45 minutes
Materials
2. An index card labeled for each student
4. Pins
6. A large room with movable chairs
Procedure
2. Distribute a labeled index card and a pin to each person.
4. Instruct students to find and form a group with others who have the same label.
6. Give each group a ball of yarn.
8. Hand message cards out—one at a time—to the groups designated on the cards. Allow time
for the recipient to deliver the card, along with the ball of yarn, and return to his or her group
before you hand out another one.
Debriefing
1. When all cards are delivered, have people remain in position and debrief the exercise.
3. Have each team read the cards it has received; as the messages emerge, reproduce the
network on the blackboard.
4. Discuss the following questions:
A. Is the network on the board exactly the same as the one revealed by the yarn?
B. If not, where did messages go astray? Why? (General chaos, or people’s loss of
concentration, or misreading the card may have resulted in a message being delivered to
the wrong address. Or the yarn holder may have lost track of the message.)
Instructions to Class
We’re going to track a few of the messages that flow through a system and in and out of it from
other systems. Here are the players:
The organization is a media production company that makes music videos. We have
representatives of upper management and of middle management to which the teams are
responsible.
Upper Mgmt.
Families Middle Mgmt.
[Once students are arranged in these groups, give each group a ball of yarn. Then resume the
instructions]
Message Cards
Upper management—Tell project team you want a report in three weeks
Project team—ask middle management if they know what the CEO wants in the report
Middle management—go to upper management and ask about the report
ACT—go to FCC about the unsuitability of the music video for children’s viewing
FCC—go to upper management about the suitability of this music video for prime time
television
Political organizations—go to upper management about ethical problems with the video
Upper management—go to middle management about political problems with the video
Marketing team—go to reference groups to test the market
Middle management—go to project team to ask when the video will be ready
Project team—go to marketing team to discuss the schedule
EXERCISE 2: GROUP VS. INDIVIDUAL PRODUCTIVITY CONTRAST
Objectives
1. To demonstrate the potential of groups for generating more ideas than individuals.
3. To demonstrate the care and skill needed to make a group work effectively.
Time
Approximately 45 minutes
Materials
1. Paper and pencils
3. Chalk or markers
Procedure
This exercise involves two steps—the first with students working alone and the second with the
students working in groups.
1. To be done by individual students. Read the following situation to students and instruct them
to make a list of every idea they have in response to it. Give them about ten minutes.
2. To be done in small groups. Read the following situation to students and instruct the groups
to make a list of every idea they have in response to it. Give them about ten minutes.
Debriefing
1. Have someone take notes on the board. Ask students to report what they generated on their
individual lists for Situation A. After the first list is entered, have the recorder simply check
off repetitions and add new ideas as students report their lists
Ask why some people had ideas that others did not. What aspects of their backgrounds, in-
terests, personalities, and talents helped various students to generate different ideas?
2. Again, have a recorder list ideas at the board. Have each group report out its ideas for
Situation B. Talk about the quantity and quality of ideas. Ask students about how they
worked together to generate them. Was it more fun, more energizing to work together than
alone? Did one person’s idea give another person an inspiration? Did they piggyback one
idea onto another? How did the diversity of groups contribute to developing ideas together?
Ask about the drawbacks to the group process. Did it need to take more time than you gave it?
(Probably, because groups do take more time.) Were there frustrations in getting ideas out and
being heard? Were there people left out of the discussion? Were there ideas that did not get on
Case Study: The Hanston Township Crisis
There’s a problem in Hanston Township. This small, rural community has suddenly experienced
an influx of new residents. A new highway system has made Hanston easily accessible to people
who work in the city, developers have been building new homes and apartments, and the city
dwellers have headed for Hanston. This means a greatly expanded need for schools, city
services, medical services, and educational and cultural opportunities.
Not only is Hanston’s populace expanding, it’s also changing. Hanston has always been a mostly
white, middle class town. Townspeople included two doctors, a lawyer, and two dentists; there
were pastors and staff for a Baptist Church, a Methodist Church, and a Roman Catholic Church.
The mayor realizes she doesn’t really know exactly what the community needs to do to accom-
modate its rapid change. So she’s appointed a committee to study the situation. That committee
is charged with identifying the areas that need attention immediately and recommending special
groups to work on proposals for each area.
The mayor’s committee includes the following people:
Dr. Richard George, dentist; white, conservative, Baptist. He has lived in Hanston all his
Consider these questions
1. What can each of these people bring—in terms of background and experience—to the job
they have to do as a group?
2. What do they lack?
3. What would you suggest the mayor consider as criteria for adding other people to the
committee?
Suggestions for Debriefing Case Study
Students will probably notice that each member brings a long history in the town—each will
know a lot about the people, how they live, how they work. Ask students to identify some
specific benefits of each—for example, Dr. George has long experience with education in the
town and knows how the board thinks and functions. Langston Krup, too, has experience and
Additional Resources
Print Resources
Barra, R. (1983). Putting quality circles to work: A practical strategy for boosting productivity
136). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Kerfoot, Karlene. (June 2006). On leadership: establishing guardrails in leadership. Dermatology
Nursing, 18.3 p293(2).
Krueger, R. A. (1994). Focus groups: A practical guide for applied research (2nd ed.). Thousand
Media Resources
Be prepared for meetings. New York: Insight Media. 24 min.
Cultural baggage. New York: Insight Media. 9 min.
Groups and group dynamics. New York: Insight Media. 30 min.
The cross-cultural conference room. New York: Insight Media. 35 min.
Valuing diversity: Multi-cultural communication. Lake Zurich, IL: The Learning Seed. 19 min.