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PART TWO

SHARING LEADERSHIP TO CREATE TEAMWORK

At this point, students should be starting to do some serious group work in class and, depending

on which syllabus you’re using; they may be starting their team assignments. This two-chapter

part is designed to highlight some of the things they need to know in their early work. Much of

the material in these chapters is concrete, how-to-do it advice; some of it is more esoteric,

introducing students to issues that affect teams in the real world. In both cases, these chapters

introduce essential task and team-building concepts that are developed further as the semester

continues.

CHAPTER 3

THE “WORK” IN TEAMWORK: STARTING THE PROCESS

As a starter on groups, this chapter introduces students to the necessary steps to start working

together. Then it gives them a sense of how a work group or team functions in the context of a

larger organization and system, including a view of how parent organizations and teams must

fulfill responsibilities to one another. It helps them begin to operationalize what they must do, in

terms of setting goals and understanding their purposes and criteria for success.

Chapter Outline

Know the Context of Your Work

 Analyze the System

 Identify Responsibilities

 Organizational Responsibilities

 Team Responsibilities

Decide About a Leader

Choose a Recorder or Secretary

 Requirements for a Recorder or Secretary

 Responsibilities of a Recorder or Secretary

Set Work Expectations

 Time and Responsibility Commitments

 Meeting Schedules

 Purposes and Goals

Plan Agendas

 Agenda Types

 Informal and Special Agendas

 Formal Agendas

Summary

Exercises

Discussion Suggestions For Boxes

Start the Day with Coffee and a Scrum

You might start by asking students to identify what type of processes this quick meeting seems to

be using. Obviously, the Scrum is extremely task-focused; the author notes that the only time the

members took time to sit down took too long—and the meeting was boycotted the next time. So

everyone is focused tightly on what must be done. Note, however, that Olofson mentions the

Getting a Jump Start

Ask students to review meetings they’ve attended (you might share with them some you’ve

experienced, too) and relate this excerpt to those experiences.

Talking Points:

• What happens when the purposes of the meeting and its processes haven’t been planned?

• What happens when a meeting is held, even though it isn’t really necessary?

• And what happens when the leader dominates the meeting?

Suggestions For Guiding Chapter Exercises

Exercise 1: Team Identification Analysis

This exercise can be used as a major assignment (see Syllabus B) or as a group exercise for class.

Students may observe a group from their own college, workplace, or that of a family member.

Talking Points:

• How did the members’ reasons for being in the group relate to the goals of the group?

Did goals conflict? In what way?

• How well did the members (or representative) of the group understand its goals and

instrumental objectives? Were they able to articulate the goals? Were they able to

identify what they had to do to get to each goal? (People might not even know the term

“instrumental objectives,” but did they know what they had to do?) How clear were they

on their criteria for satisfactory goal achievement?

• As you observed meetings, did they discuss their goals, their instrumental objectives, or

their criteria? Again, members might not have used these specific terms, so the students

Exercise 2: Team Goals Analysis

As students discuss the charge to their hypothetical team for Families, Inc., encourage them to

recognize their purpose—to gather information that will provide a foundation for proposals.

Once they understand that, they can move into developing goals.

1. If students are having trouble identifying goals, ask them what they think this team will want

2. To identify each instrumental objective, you can suggest that they work backward from their

3. Once these steps are accomplished, in what ways will they help the group to do its work? In

what ways might this help the members to cooperate?

Exercise 3: High School Group Test Question Formulation

Remind students they are not to discuss the test questions—only the agenda for that discussion.

Remind them that participants in the meeting will be members of this class.

Some issues students may raise:

Issue: We don’t know much about groups, yet, so how does that affect how they plan the

agenda?

Probing Questions:

 Might you plan an agenda for information gathering first, then after collecting the

information, form the agenda for designing test questions?

Issue: What kinds of equipment or resource needs would we have?

Probing Questions:

 What kinds of materials might people planning a test use, besides a single textbook?

Issue: How can we identify persons responsible?

Probing Questions:

Exercise 4: Analyzing a Task Group Meeting in which a Student has Participated

This exercise can be used as the basis for a written assignment, a journal, or a discussion in class.

It’s not tightly structured, because it should encourage students to explore, to speculate, to

analyze freely what they’ve experienced.

Talking Points:

• What generalizations can you make from what they’ve observed?

(You might draw up a list, as they report their findings, of the things groups did well and

the things they did not do well.)

• What did you think were the most important successes or failures of your groups, and

why?

• If your group had confused and chaotic meetings, with no agenda or structure, how did it

affect the group’s processes?

• Were transactional processes disrupted because people became frustrated—or, even,

because they were having a good time but were insensitive to some members?

 Were task processes impossible because they couldn’t stay on the topic?

 How did it affect achieving the group’s goals?

Additional Exercises

EXERCISE 1: STARTING TEAMS ON A TASK

Objective

To get a team started

Time

Materials

1. Paper and pencil

Procedure

See the Instructor’s Manual Suggestions for Implementing Syllabi for ways to create teams.

After you’ve put the teams together, follow these steps:

1. Ask students to meet for ten minutes. Instruct them to:

A. Memorize one another’s names.

2. Give teams another fifteen minutes to learn something about one another. Tell them they

should know something about each person’s:

3. You can break the exercise here and assign the remainder for outside of class, or you can

continue.

4. Give teams fifteen minutes to do the following:

If they have decided to choose a leader, tell them to:

B. Choose a decision mode if, in fact, they want to designate a leader.

If they have decided not to choose a leader, tell them to:

D. Decide what alternatives will work for them.

E. Make a brief plan for when and how they will evaluate their decision and alter it if

5. Use Form 3.1 to record some of what they’ve learned about their team.

6. Plan an agenda for their next meeting. Tell them that their next few meetings will be for the

7. You can break the exercise here and assign the rest for outside of class—or you can continue

into the next class period.

8. Have teams meet with the agendas they have planned. Instruct them to fulfill their agendas

and set an agenda for their next meeting.

Debriefing

This is a pragmatic, guided way to get teams started. You need to circulate from group to group,

encourage them to achieve their tasks, ask questions. As each part of the series is completed,

you need to have them report to you informally—be sure you know what they’re doing, make

suggestions as necessary. As they work together, students will run into several kinds of

problems. Ask them to talk about how well the experience went. Some issues:

1. How effectively did they accomplish each task? Students may have had a good time but

2. In how much depth did they learn about one another’s strengths, values, agendas? Usually

4. Teams will work at different rates. As they give you their agendas and work on them, be

EXERCISE 2: ANALYZING A TEAM IN A SYSTEM

Objective

To help students see the relationship between their teams, tasks, and larger systems.

Time

Half an hour to forty-five minutes

Materials

Large sheets of newsprint and markers

Procedure

1. Ask students to brainstorm every organization to which their classroom team is related.

2. Ask them to include systems and subsystems that might be related to a topic area. (For

3. On their large sheets of newsprint, have teams list related organizations and ways these may

have impact on their work.

5. For each report, ask the class to suggest any additional systems or subsystems the team has

not noted.

Debriefing

1. As the teams report, ask them in what ways related systems or subsystems may help or

hinder their work. How can they maximize relationships that can be useful?

2. Ask where related systems and subsystems may have conflicting interests or goals—either

with one another or with the team. How might they need to resolve those conflicts?

3. Suggest that as the teams go back to planning their work, they should:

Case Study: The Superstudent Club Service Project

The Superstudent Club, whose purposes are partially social but primarily service, is preparing to

plan its projects for the next year. The committee assigned to suggest a list of projects includes:

Sam, a junior; he’s a transfer student who returned to school after three years working in

missions in the inner city, where he still has many contacts. No one in the group knows him yet.

Questions

1. What should be on the agenda for the meeting?

2. What systems and subsystems do you think this team might be related to?

Debriefing

1. Obviously, the agenda should include introductions and orienting Sam and Jake to the group,

its goals, and the way it works. You might ask students how they think the agenda might

develop potential projects. Would they have the members brainstorm possible projects? Set

goals? Set criteria? In what order? Guide students to see that the order may determine the

quality of their ideas.

2. Students will see that the group is related to the college hierarchy, to the student activities

office, to other student groups. Ask them in what ways these relationships might hinder or help

the group’s projects.

Ask what other systems and subsystems the individual members bring with them. If they get to

know Sam, for example, the committee will discover his contacts with missions in the inner city;

Additional Resources

Print Resources

Honeycutt, A. (1989). The key to effective quality circles. Training & Development Journal,

May, 81-84.

Hutchings, Tony, Hyde, Michael G., Marca, David and Cohen, Lou . (Oct 1993). Process

improvement that lasts: an integrated training and consulting method. Communications of the

ACM, 36.n10 pp104(9).

Media Resources

Group productivity. Carlsbad, CA: CRM Films. 20 min.

Meeting robbers. Carlsbad, CA: CRM Films. 20 min.