team building
structure and culture.
W. Gibb Dyer, Jr.
In the general field of organization development
(OD), the title given to the process of inter-
vening in organizations to improve productivity
and morale has been called team building. It
was probably the first innovation in the OD
movement, advancing the basic premise that
before any group of people can begin to improve
their performance, group members must be able
to work together effectively and collaboratively.
Team building, then, is a planned, systematic
process designed to improve the collaborative
efforts of people who must work together to
achieve goals.
Team-building methods grew out of an earlier
invention called the training group (or T-
group). This learning process, developed in the
late 1940s and 1950s, featured an unstructured
group, usually a collection of strangers, for the
purpose of allowing interaction to occur without
predetermined direction. Out of this interac-
tion, participants were trained to observe how
the dynamics and structure of a group emerges,
and to gain insights into their own and other
members’ interaction styles. Emphasis was also
placed on giving personal feedback to all group
members, and as the T-group movement devel-
oped, this latter emphasis began to predominate,
subordinating group dynamics analysis.
Participants in early T-groups were captivated
by the impact the group had on them in terms of
increased TRUST, openness, and cohesiveness.
In an attempt to transfer these same conditions
back to their organizational settings, T-group
trainers were asked to conduct the T-group
training for organizational work teams. These
early practitioners found that the T-Group
methodology, which was appropriate for under-
standing how a group forms and giving feedback
to relative strangers, was less suited to groups of
employees with specific assignments, common
work goals, and a longstanding knowledge of
each other. The T-group methodology had to be
altered to take into account the conditions found
in work groups with common goals, specific
assignments, deadlines, allocation of important
rewards such as salary and advancements, and
often high task interdependence within an
Wiley Encyclopedia of Management, edited by Professor Sir Cary L Cooper.
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
organization context where there was a given
The goals of almost all team-building efforts
are to help group members develop a sense
of trust among themselves, open up channels
of COMMUNICATION so that all relevant issues
can be discussed, make sure that everyone
understands the goals and assignments, make
decisions with the commitment of all members,
prevent the leader from dominating the group,
openly examine and resolve conflicts, carry out
assignments, and regularly review and critique
work activities to improve processes.
While it was recognized early on that groups
differed along a series of important dimensions
(e.g., size, composition, length of life, nature
of the task, degree of interconnectedness of
individual tasks or assignments, sophistication
of team members in group dynamics, time
frames and deadlines, management patterns,
and organization culture), there has been a
tendency to consider all groups (or teams)
as being similar and team-building methods
were commonly applied to all types of groups.
Practitioners began to consider that different
actions needed to be taken if one was working
with a new team, a team rife with conflict, an
apathetic team, a team dominated by a boss, or
one split into cliques. An expanded set of actions
and skills was developed to meet these various
conditions, and a repertoire of team-building
models emerged (see CONFLICT AND CONFLICT
MANAGEMENT).
In recent years, the most dramatic difference
in team-building methods has been between
decision teams and work teams. A decision team
such as a management executive committee or a
university academic department, or a collection
of doctors or lawyers in a clinic or firm, must
function as a team primarily to make decisions.
These team members do not have to coordinate
their daily tasks to accomplish a goal. They do
have to make decisions which people can accept
and implement with commitment. In contrast,
a work team (e.g., a hospital operating unit, a
police SWAT team, a NASA space crew, and
some production units) must coordinate its
efforts constantly every day. This has led to a
new set of methodologies around building the
autonomous or semi-autonomous work team
(see WORK GROUPS/TEAMS). It is apparent that
2 team building
work teams must also make a range of decisions,
so effective decision making is a central activity.
Another recent phenomenon has been the
advent of “virtual teams,” which are work teams
composed of individuals who work in different
locations and therefore must communicate and
coordinate team activities primarily through
information technologies. This creates unique
challenges for creating common goals, values,
and effective working relationships in such
teams (Thompson, 2004).
Dyer (1995) found that many company execu-
tives said that they believed team building to be
important but few (only 22%) actually engaged
in any ongoing team building. When asked why
team-building programs were not being used,
the executives listed the following:
Managers did not know how to do team building.
They did not understand the rewards.
They thought it would take too much time.
Team building efforts were not rewarded in the
company.
People felt they did not need team building.
People felt it was not supported by their supe-
riors.
Simple team-building activities focus on
asking team members to address the following
questions:
What keeps our work group from being an effec-
tive team?
What changes would help us become a better
team?
What are we currently doing that helps us work
together as a team?
All group members share their responses to
the above questions, a list of issues is developed
specifying changes needed, and change actions
are agreed upon and taken.
Another common design (Role Clarification
Model) asks each person in the work group to
describe their work or job assignment, obtains
clarification from others about the job, and then
encourages agreements from every other person
about what is needed from them in order for the
person in question to get their job done. This is
especially useful when work roles are not clear.
A fundamental principle of team building
is that it is a process, not an event. Too many
companies have a one-time team-building event,
with no long-lasting results. Research by Boss
(1989) has noted that personal management
interviews (regular interviews between the
team leader and team members concerning team
performance) in conjunction with team-building
activities reinforce and sustain positive changes
in teams over time.
See also group decision-making
Bibliography
Boss, R.W. (1989) Organization Development in Health
Care, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.
Dyer, W. (1995) Team Building: Current Issues and New
Alternatives, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.
Fisher, K. (1993) Leading Self-Directed Work Teams,
McGraw-Hill, New York.
Thompson, L.L. (2004) Making the Team: A Guide for
Managers, 2nd edn, Pearson, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
Zenger, J.H., Musselwhite, E. and Hurson, K. (1994)
Leading Teams, Business One Irwin, Homewood, IL.