CHAPTER 4
THE “TEAM” IN TEAMWORK:
BRINGING INDIVIDUALS TOGETHER
Although students will use the skills they learn from this course in all kinds of groups, the most
specific and difficult application is in the work groups that are intended to become real teams.
This chapter gives students a sense of what an excellent team—a “Superteam”—is like; it’s an
ideal for which to strive.
The chapter carries them further into the nature and impact of the context and culture within
which a team works, and then into some of the traditional—and crucial—concepts of individuals
in teams: their motivations, their potential contributions, their ways of perceiving, and their
backgrounds.
From there, the chapter develops how individuals make a team—its attributes, its phases, and
how it can use feedback to nurture its own development and success.
Chapter Outline
A “Superteam” Model
Organizational Environments
Organizational Cultures
Organizational Strategies
Individual Members
Why People Join Teams
Interests and Attraction
Drive Reduction
Team Development
Developing by Stages
Phases as Developmental Issues
Developmental Issues for Specific Teams
Creating Team Attributes
Team Culture
Shared Image
Shared Vision
Teamwork through Electronics
Virtual Teams—Good News and Bad News
Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW)—Good News and Bad News
Teamwork Improvement
Sources of Feedback
Uses of Feedback
Summary
Exercises
Discussion Suggestions For Boxes
Family History Can Affect Your Career
This excerpt provides an excellent way to start an exercise (see Additional Exercises for this
chapter). To initiate a brief discussion of the piece, ask students how they think the insights in
Group Empathy
Just in case someone thinks the terms, “futurist,” or “futurology,” is too new-age for practical
folks, it would be good to know that these terms are used by the magazine, Fast Company to
highlight important contemporary insights for the future of business—and that Fast Company is
a cutting-edge source for business people. Given that, students might discuss why Dr. O’Hara’s
ideas about empathy (and, as she points out, tolerance and flexibility) might be so important to
success, both in teams and in business.
Discussion Suggestions For Case Anaysis 4.1
Virtual Teams
A reading of this excerpt might raise the question, “How is the virtual team so different?” You
might discuss each of those rules with the students. Is rule one so different for face-to-face or
virtual groups? Is rule number two so different? Actually, we’ve emphasized the need for clear
focus and purpose (certainly for work teams) as well as the need to get to know one another to
get to know one another in all types of teams. Are these in any way different for virtual teams?
Perhaps the issue is the extent of the need and the difficulty of correcting a failure in these
respects if you can’t see and respond to the other in person. As for rule number three, students
might consider some of their own email or website experiences to date. What have they
observed, not only in context of the differences that Block notes, but in other differences as well?
How do they think communication on a virtual team could be guided to be more effective and
more sensitive to the receivers’ needs?
Suggestions For Guiding Chapter Exercises
Exercise 1: Food Inc. Joint Committee Formation
You can suggest that students start by considering Food, Inc.’s goals. What would they be? The
company may want to improve the health of the public, but students will see that the purpose of a
profit organization is to make money. So perhaps their primary goal is to increase sales—
possibly of particular kinds of foods. If students assume that the company wants to achieve both
goals—to increase sales and to improve children’s eating habits—then they can start to select
their team.
Talking Points:
• How would you examine expertise as it might affect the goals of profitability, and public
health?
• How important might diversity be to this team?
• How would you hypothesize some specific situations to examine the motivations,
perspectives, values, and ethics of this case?
Exercise 2: Evaluation of Team Syntality
This exercise stimulates students and helps them to identify their assets, to see how much they
have in common with others, and to start building their teams.
Exercise 3: Team Modeling
Provide students with large newsprint sheets and markers, and have tape available so they can
post their models.
• As the groups work, circulate and coach them along. Remind them to include all the
characteristics and to indicate processes in some way (vectors, loops, etc.). If they have
trouble getting started, suggest they imagine a hypothetical team and imagine that team
working through a particular situation together. How would the characteristics interact?
For example, how would culture affect the other attributes?
Exercises 4 and 5: Team/Group Analysis
These exercises work well as a unit. They are invaluable for self-assessment of your classroom
teams. If you are not using classroom teams, it also works for assessing outside groups in which
students are involved.
• Have students use Form 5.1 individually. Have them discuss what they discovered in
their journals or work with a group or their teams to compare and discuss their responses.
• If your class is working in teams, ask them to identify the areas they think their team is
doing well on, and those it needs to improve. Ask them to list some things they will do
as a team to improve its syntality. Have them keep that list to refer back to after two or
three more meetings. At that point they should reassess their syntality and see how they
have done on increasing its power.
• Ask students to discuss, as teams, what they see in their images that reflect their
syntality—and how they would change that image to improve it. You might refer them
back to the Levi Strauss Aspirations Statement in the box. How does that statement
reflect a syntality that Levi Strauss wants to develop? How would making the statement
help them to do it? How, therefore, would determining the syntality the students want to
develop in their teams help them to create it?
Additional Exercise
FAMILY HISTORY AND YOUR TEAMWORK
Objective
To help students identify ways in which their own families affect their teamwork.
Time
Half an hour
Materials
Paper and pencil
Procedure
1. Have students read the box “Family History Can Affect Your Career.”
2. Put students into small groups and ask them to brainstorm a list of ways in which families
can create habits or approaches that people might take into groups. They can start with the ones
4. Ask students to work as individuals at this point. Have each student examine that list and
5. Have students reconvene in groups and share what they have identified (to the extent they
6. Ask students, in their groups, to identify ways in which they can make some of the negatives
7. Have the groups report the ways in which they thought negative influences could be turned
to positive in their teamwork.
Debriefing
As the groups report out, encourage them to identify ways in which many behaviors can be either
positive or negative, depending upon the context and their intensity. A person from a very quiet
family, who seems shy and reserved, may also be an excellent listener because that person is not
dominating the conversation. A person who hates conflict may learn to be an excellent
Case Study: Brouhaha on the Human Resource Team
The Human Enterprise Program (HEP) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating
opportunities for unemployed people to develop small businesses. It combines the efforts of
volunteers or assignees from corporations, volunteers from the public sector, and a small staff of
paid employees.
The administration of HEP decided that more attention needed to be paid to the internal morale
and effectiveness of the organization, so they organized a Human Resource Team. It is
comprised of the following people:
Marisa Hernandez, full-time employee, project manager for HEP.
Towanda Lopez, volunteer; also works as a sixth-grade teacher in a local school.
At first, the team’s meetings were exciting. The members tossed around a lot of ideas; they
called themselves the “Dream Machine,” because they felt that their focus was on fulfilling
dreams. Besides, they considered themselves a top-quality, smoothly functioning system of
relationships among diverse members, each of whom contributed his or her special attributes to
the team, so Dream Machine seemed appropriate. They were developing some effective ways of
working together, and often repeated stories about their experiences together at NTL. They had
“inside” jokes and ways of behaving; they considered their team to have an outgoing, strong,
creative personality of its own—with enormous energy that members brought together.
Marisa observed that all members seemed to be connected by some invisible bond.
What happened? As you discuss this case, consider the following:
1. In what ways did the team demonstrate the attributes of a good team? Consider the
2. How could you explain the breakdown in the way the team functioned?
3. How could you explain the turnaround in the Dream Machine’s work?
Suggestions for Debriefing Case Analysis
Question 1. Remind students to look back at the team attributes. If they do, they will find
aspects in this study of team culture, image, vision, syntality, synergy, and cohesiveness. If they
need help to find this, you can ask them:
A. What does the name “Dream Machine,” along with the explanation of it, tell you about
the team? Lead them to see that this name articulates the image the team has of itself; that
Question 2. If students start picking at the individual problems—ask them to go back and look at
what they’ve learned about the life of a team. They should see that this one is going through
normal phases of development. In Tuckman’s and Jensen’s terms, they went through “norming
Additional Resources
Print Resources
Andrews, P. H., & Herschel, R. T. (1996). Organizational communication: Empowerment in a
technological society. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Monalisa, Mitali, Daim, Tugrul, Mirani, Fahim, Dash, Pranabesh, Khamis, Rabah and Bhusari,
Vijay . (July-August 2008). Managing global design teams: a study of virtual design teams
reinforces the importance of considering the strategic implications of creating such teams and
then, managing them with care. Research-Technology Management, 51.4 p48 (12).
Norman, C. A., & Zawacki, R. A. (1991 September). Team appraisals—team approach.
Personnel Journal. 101-104.
Stein, B., & Kanter, R. M. (1987 Summer). Understanding corporate culture.
GoodmeasureNotes. Cambridge, MA: Goodmeasure, Inc. 1-3.
Media Resources
Computer-mediated communication in the public arena. New York, NY: Insight Media. 30 min.
Group dynamics in the electronic environment. New York, NY: Insight Media. 30 min.