Team Building & Participation

The traditional approach to the management of projects in the construction industry is constantly challenged, in particular the implementation of processes and the application of the project management knowledge base in complex projects. These challenges require a non-linear approach, a transformation from the control to the behavioural paradigm and a better understanding of how complexity in projects can be managed.

“As we know, well-led groups provide many member benefits: feelings of universality, a sense of hope, altruism, acquisition of knowledge and skills, and mutual support...This text is affordable, easy to use, and very suitable for providing group work material in BSW or MSW practice courses.”

— Greg Tully, West Chester University



AN EXPERIENTIAL APPROACH TO GROUP WORK
Second Edition

Rich Furman, University of Washington, Tacoma
Kimberly Bender, University of Denver
Diana Rowan, University of North Carolina, Charlotte

An Experiential Approach to Group Work is not your typical group work text! Using dozens of exercises that build practice-tested skills, the authors' approach is in perfect step with CSWE's competence-based education requirements. The book is organized into three sections—the first addresses stages of group practice, the second looks at major types of groups, and the final section looks at examples of group work practice with special populations.

Features of the Second Edition

    Expanded! Discussion of the theory of group process and dynamics
    New! Content regarding Canadian, British, and Australian group work practices
    New! Chapters on anti-oppressive practice, group work with immigrants, and macro-practice group work
    New! Content on the use and development of technology to aid group work
    Contains customized exercises for each group work topic, designed to build the student and practitioner’s skills for use in group work sessions
    Special emphasis on how to bring individual sessions or groups to closure
    Provides examples of group work in specialized settings: conflict resolution groups within elementary schools, pregnant teens, Latinos, and HIV/AIDS clients

Project execution is essentially based on a project team performance. A team passes through phases of development from a forming phase to results delivery and learned lessons. Along with primary tasks dedicated by a project team to deliver a project results, there are some strategies and tactics whereby the effectiveness and interaction of team work are kept in high levels. This study discusses the effectiveness of particular team management tactics in practice. Volvo Car Corporation is the company used as a case to investigate some followed practices that may correspond to those tactics. The theories discussed are in relation to how to secure the right project team members, motivate team members effectively, and facilitate smooth communication flow within a team. Activities of monitoring the development a team performance in practice are also discussed.

This book is for anyone concerned about effective team performance. Three previous editions of Team Building have been well received by managers, team leaders, and team consultants. In fact, roughly 100,000 copies have been sold in several languages over the almost three decades since our father, William G. “Bill” Dyer, wrote the first edition, making it one of the most widely read books on the subject. Bill was the consummate social scientist, trained in sociology at the University of Wisconsin after World War II. He had grown up in a rather large family of seven children (one was his half-brother Jack Gibb, another prominent social scientist) in a rather poor section of Portland, Oregon. Bill’s father ran a small grocery store attached to their home, and it was there that Bill learned the importance of hard work, and teamwork, as he worked in the family store. From these experiences he also recognized that education was the key to his future.

As more project teams are formed to help Malaysian organizations in achieving their objectives that individual efforts cannot achieve, there is a compelling reason to understand the critical factors that can influence project team effectiveness, because the effectiveness outcome can yield benefits to organizations.  This study developed a research model underpinned on Cohen & Bailey’s (1997) Team Effectiveness Framework to empirically analyze some critical factors that influence project team effectiveness.  Results show that project manager’s leadership roles are not directly influencing project team effectiveness, but they are directly influencing both team building & participation, and team shared mental models in which these two factors are directly and positively influencing project team effectiveness.

Chaos theory is used to prove that erratic and chaotic fluctuations can indeed arise in completely deterministic models. Chaos theory reveals structure in aperiodic, dynamic systems. The number of nonlinear business cycle models use chaos theory to explain complex motion of the economy. Chaotic systems exhibit a sensitive dependence on initial conditions: Seemingly insignificant changes in the initial conditions produce large differences in outcomes. This is very different from stable dynamic systems in which a small change in one variable produces a small and easily quantifiable systematic change. Chaos theory started with Lorenz's (1963) discovery of complex dynamics arising from three nonlinear differential equations leading to turbulence in the weather system. discovered that the simple logistic curve can exibit very complex behaviour. Further, May 1 plays a crucial role in explaining local stability of the saving, where, α: percent of national saving which belongs to private saving, β: percent of national saving which belongs to budget deficit, γ: percent of national saving which belongs to net capital outflow, λ: saving rate, k: marginal capital coefficient.

A conference paper presenting a body of literature and framework in linking strategic planning, team building, and roles, responsibilities, tasks, and relationships.  The importance of communication, action learning, and identity at the system, group, and individual level is stressed.

Forming project teams to implement various services are prevalent in many organizations today as organizations believe a project team's performance is exceeding the total sum of individual outputs. According to Project Management Institute (PMI), one of the critical interpersonal skills expecting from a project manager is team building as this skill can motivate the team to achieve the project goals. However, there is limited study to evaluate how team building & participation can influence team trust, team cohesion and project performance among project managers in Malaysia. This study has developed a research model extended from the research work conducted by Cohen and Bailey (1997). Based on the data collected and analysis conducted, this study provides empirical evidence that project managers need to initiate more team building & participation sessions as these can increase the team trust and improve the project performance. Moreover, project managers also need to promote team trust as this can improve team cohesion. However, project managers also need to be mindful about the negative consequence when their project teams are too cohesive. At the same time project managers need to manoeuvre wisely the project team size and project duration so that these two factors are not negatively impacting the team cohesion and the project performance. The outcome of this study has shed some lights in explaining the relationships among attitudinal, behavioral and performance outcomes derived from Cohen and Bailey (1997). Moreover, this study also provided some guidance to project managers how to improve team trust and project performance through team building & participation. Discussion, conclusion, limitation and future research are also incorporated in this paper.

Overall aim of the syllabus
To introduce knowledge and understanding of the business and its environment and the influence this has on how organisations are structured, on the role of the accounting and other key business functions in contributing to the efficient, effective and ethical management and development of an organisation and its people and systems.

Purpose -The purpose of this study was to develop and empirically explore a model of four intragroup conflict types (the 4IC model), consisting of an emotional person, a cognitive task, an emotional task, and a cognitive person conflict. The two first conflict types are similar to existing conceptualizations, whereas the two latter represent new dimensions of group conflict.

ВИСТИНСКИТЕ ТИМОВИ ГИ ВОДАТ ВИСТИНСКИТЕ КОМПАНИИ! Тимска работа. Тимови. Способност за работа во тимови. Сите претходно наброени се дел од нашето секојдневие и дополнително на тоа слушаме ајде ова тимски да го сработиме, ајде малку тимски да скоцкаме некои работи за да ја избуткаме годинава подобро од минатата итн.

This paper shows that internal and external lenses are required to understand entrepreneurial team performance. The findings indicate that high-performing entrepreneurial teams – as rated by external evaluators – gather a wide range of information from external contacts, and are efficient in doing so, i.e., using "weak" rather than "strong" ties. In addition, these teams have internal make-ups that are open to outside influences. The findings also show that while members know the benefit of engaging external contacts, they are less aware of the need for efficient information gathering.

The article assumes that Lipman's paradigm of 'Philosophy for Children' (P4C) as a 'Community of Inquiry' (CI) is very useful in extending the range of philosophical practices and the benefits of philosophical community reflection to collective life as such. In particular, it examines the possible contribution of philosophy to the practical and ethical dynamics which, nowadays, seem to characterise many deliberative public contexts. Lipman's idea of CI is an interesting interpretative key for such contexts. As a result, the article highlights the possibility of understanding a CI essentially in terms of an ethics of responsibility.
http://www.appa.edu/journal.htm

Fritz Breithaupt's "Three-Person Model of Empathy" (2012) offers a brilliant approach to relate empathy to side-taking. By thereby grounding empathy in subjective observation though, it becomes difficult to focus on how empathy interferes with phenomena of shared and embedded activity. This comment therefore raises the question of how Breithaupt's theory of empathy can be related to phenomena of participatory sense-making and second-person interaction.

Abstract
The traditional approach to the management of projects in the construction industry is constantly challenged, in particular the implementation of processes and the application of the project management knowledge base in complex projects. These challenges require a nonlinear approach, a transformation from the control to the behavioural paradigm and a better understanding of how complexity in projects can be managed.

Interconnections between the various project parties, from individuals to companies, have always been identified as an area which requires attention. Indeed, project management sub-processes that have to consider interconnections, such as selection of project team members, structuring the project teams as well as the management style adopted, are either not
implemented or the execution remains subjective, despite the existence of appropriate techniques. Considering that complexity occurs in non-linear systems and interconnections, the lack of appropriate means affects the implementation of such sub-processes and consequently performance. Investigating the complexity of the interconnections for the two sub-processes and the management style adopted and enabling the management of its effects must enhance implementation and thus project outcome. Therefore, the development of a framework is proposed which, by using existing knowledge and complexity characteristics, will allow project management (PM) practitioners the multiple implementation of actions for the management of the effects of the complexity of interconnections on construction projects through the two sub-processes and the management style adopted.

The rationale of this investigation is that interconnections, formed between and affected by social entities in projects, give rise to complexity, which can be managed by improving the project organisation and the management style followed. A research strategy was established which encompassed a survey, interviews and case studies with both UK client and construction PM practitioners. The survey results confirmed previous findings and indicated that, although PM practitioners are aware of techniques and are given guidance, these are neither implemented nor considered. Consequently, project management outcome remains only at acceptable levels. Interviews confirmed that the complexity of interconnections is not considered and very limited actions are taken to manage its effects when organising project teams or considering the management style to be followed. Indeed the effect of complexity of interconnections on project performance is dramatic as established through the case studies.

Therefore, consideration should be given to means for managing complexity of interconnections when selecting team members, structuring the project teams and when deciding on the management style to be adopted. Awareness and guidance on processes currently given to PMs has to materialise, and this can be achieved through the use of the framework for managing the complexity of interconnections.

Key Words: Complexity, Interconnections, Project Management, Selecting Team Members,
Structuring Teams, Management Style

Perfectionism is a personality characteristic that has been found to predict sports performance in athletes. To date, however, research has exclusively examined this relationship at an individual level (i.e., athletes' perfectionism predicting their personal performance). The current study extends this research to team sports by examining whether, when manifested at the team level, perfectionism predicts team performance. A sample of 231 competitive rowers from 36 boats completed measures of self-oriented, team-oriented, and team-prescribed perfectionism before competing against one another in a 4-day rowing competition. Strong within-boat similarities in the levels of team members' team-oriented perfectionism supported the existence of collective team-oriented perfectionism at the boat level. Two-level latent growth curve modeling of day-by-day boat performance showed that team-oriented perfectionism positively predicted the position of the boat in midcompetition and the li...

Perfectionism is a personality characteristic that has been found to predict sports performance in athletes. To date, however, research has exclusively examined this relationship at an individual level (i.e., athletes’ perfectionism predicting their personal performance). The current study extends this research to team sports by examining whether, when manifested at team level, perfectionism predicts team performance. A sample of 231 competitive rowers from 36 boats completed measures of self-oriented, team-oriented, and team-prescribed perfectionism prior to competing against one another in a 4-day rowing competition. Strong within-boat similarities in the levels of team members’ team-oriented perfectionism supported the existence of collective team-oriented perfectionism at the boat level. Two-level latent growth curve modeling of day-by-day boat performance showed that team-oriented perfectionism positively predicted the position of the boat in mid-competition and the linear improvement in position. The findings suggest that imposing perfectionistic standards on team members may drive teams to greater levels of performance.

Coaching for a Better Society Coaching is a well-known profession with many connotations. People coach for many reasons. Under the 'win at all cost' philosophy so prevalent today, sport "stifles moral reasoning and moral development" (Eitzen, 2009, p. 74). Many poor role models coach. Crone (1999) suggests that as winning in emphasized, coaches are more likely to cheat. Eitzen (2009) examples Coach Rush Propst of Hoover High School, Alabama, changing players' grades and a fifth grade Florida youth football coach giving his players placards stating that first place is all that mattered. Wells and Ruger (2011) reported the Sarasota Gators coaches, a youth football team comprised of 13 and 14 year olds, beat up a referee. Lumpkin (2011) cited Felipe Alomonte, a 12 year olds Little League baseball coach, falsified his 14 year old son's birth certificate so that he can play on his team and win. Eitzen (2009) noted that a Portland high school coach knowingly used 12 men on the field because it was so foggy referees would not notice. Eitzen (2009) gave a further example of high school gamesmanship by telling about a Kansas high school basketball coach who switched twins' jerseys so the better twin could continue in the game and not foul out.

"We need more volunteers," Your ministry leader begs from the front of the church. Even after fervent appeals, guilt trips, repetitive bulletin announcements, and complaints at board meetings, no one has responded to the call. Ever been there? How can you help your ministry leader build a strong ministry team?

You just came up with an exciting idea for a new ministry. It will make a big difference for the mission. How can you recruit a strong, committed team ministry team to effectively carry it out?

Whether you are coaching a leader in building their ministry team or starting a new ministry yourself, here are some basic, yet powerful practices that can help people buy-in and sacrifice for the ministry vision.

Read this short article to discover "Five Ways to Recruit an Incredible Ministry Team."

More and more project teams are formed to achieve organizational objectives as organizations generally recognize the importance and benefits of project teams. One of the outcomes working in a project team is the proliferation of Team Shared Mental Models (TSMM). It is critical to examine the antecedents of TSMM which is the aim of this study as TSMM by itself can contribute to project team learning and others. However, it is unclear from literature whether both leadership roles and team building & participation can influence TSMM concurrently especially in a project setting study whereby there is resource and time constraint compare to normal work teams which are ongoing and operational in nature. This study has developed a research model underpinned on Cohen and Bailey’s (1997) Team Effectiveness Framework to empirically analyze how leadership roles and team building & participation can predict TSMM. Based on 201 random sample responses from project managers in Malaysia, findings suggest that leadership roles can influence TSMM indirectly via team building & participation. Knowledge contribution of this study is that project managers should invest extra efforts in team building & participation as it is the main contributor to TSMM.

This talk was constructed in near real time on request of participants at the FINT workshop on "Interactive Workshop on Organizational Trust Interventions" held in Milan, Italy 15 June 2012.  The talk describes my personal experiences and point of view.  It does not represent the views of current employer (IHMC), NASA, or any other agency or personnel of the US Government.

The aim of this study was to investigate multiprofessional collaboration as well as collaboration between professionals and challenging students and their parents in which the focus for these collaborations was on handling the challenging students’ academic and social behavior. A grounded theory study of collaboration between a prereferral resource team and teachers, principals, challenging students, and their parents was conducted. Qualitative interview and focus group methods were used. The findings presented a grounded theory of collaborative synchronizing in relation to challenging students around two ideal types, human resource synchronizing and human resource desynchronizing.

Though your FIRO-B® test results do not necessarily directly cause team conflict, they can reinforce certain types of problematic situations and lay the groundwork for unhealthy conflict.  As a team leader, or team member, you want to understand what specific issues can arise from each team member’s FIRO-B interpersonal needs. With this information, you will be able to better recognize the specifics of non-productive team functionality, and once identified, you will be better equipped to manage your team and dissolve these issues in a healthy matter, keeping the team intact and productive.  Matching your team’s FIRO-B test results to the information provided in this blog will greatly improve your chance of success and productivity. Hereinafter we will discuss “Common Types of Team Conflict” as explained in the text, “Participating in Teams” authored by Eugene R. Schnell and published by CPP Inc. We will also discuss team behavior and conflicts that are caused by certain FIRO-B interpersonal needs.

Over the last ten years organisational teams have become more distributed and complex. Despite the number of technologies available to assist teams and group-based work, it is still exceedingly difficult to manage teams. And contrary to popular belief the introduction of new real-time conferencing and collaboration technologies can actually make things worse. It may distract team members from their application focus and drive them into ongoing loops of technology experimentation. In these situations, the focus on the work mission is often lost in favour of mastering and attempting to extract ever increasing benefits from technology itself.

Forming project teams to implement various services are prevalent in many organizations today as organizations believe a project team’s performance is exceeding the total sum of individual outputs.  According to Project Management Institute (PMI), one of the critical interpersonal skills expecting from a project manager is team building as this skill can motivate the team to achieve the project goals.  However, there is limited study to evaluate how team building & participation can influence team trust, team cohesion and project performance among project managers in Malaysia.  This study has developed a research model extended from the research work conducted by Cohen and Bailey (1997).  Based on the data collected and analysis conducted, this study provides empirical evidence that project managers need to initiate more team building & participation sessions as these can increase the team trust and improve the project performance.  Moreover, project managers also need to promote team trust as this can improve team cohesion.  However, project managers also need to be mindful about the negative consequence when their project teams are too cohesive.  At the same time project managers need to manoeuvre wisely the project team size and project duration so that these two factors are not negatively impacting the team cohesion and the project performance.  The outcome of this study has shed some lights in explaining the relationships among attitudinal, behavioral and performance outcomes derived from Cohen and Bailey (1997).  Moreover, this study also provided some guidance to project managers how to improve team trust and project performance through team building & participation.  Discussion, conclusion, limitation and future research are also incorporated in this paper.

Today's design activities are usually conducted in teams of professionals who represent different design domains, e.g. architects and engineers. . Within these teams clear and accurate communication of design and technical concepts and information is critical. A current trend is for the conduct and management of these teams to move towards working more in virtual environments. The use of high bandwidth Information and Communication Technologies (ICT's) is increasing and with this increase is the need to better understand those generic skills, such as communication, which contribute to the successful application of the ICT hardware and software. Communication skills have been identified as an important factor which may be affected in the transition from co-located team collaboration to the virtual environment. These issues usually manifest themselves in the ability of team members to use both visual and verbal forms of communication concurrently. Also of significance is the importance of "cues" in communication interactions during collaboration, this resulting in less effective achievement of shared understanding among team members. This paper reports on industry based research of both colocated and virtual teams involved in the activity of designing. It concentrates on the communication between team members. The results of this research identify a range of communication issues which confront these teams in their design activities which will inform, in association with other factors being researched, which are outside the scope of this paper, the development of skills auditing and mapping tools.

A retreat is a meeting designed and organized to facilitate the ability of a group to step back from day-to-day activities for a period of concentrated discussion, dialogue, and strategic thinking about their organization’s future or specific issues. Organizations will reap full benefits if they follow basic rules.

This essay examines the work of Kurt Lewin in terms of the socio-historical context which framed his early work. It examines the assumptions (or meta-theories) underlying Lewin’s extension of gestalt psychology into the social real following the lead provided by the gestaltist principles of perception and illusion: his development of participative management; and his influence on the human relations movement in American management. The implications for management in the early 1980’s are investigated.
While written in 1983 this paper still has relevance as the meta-theoretical principles and assumptions underlying social psychology and psychology in general still remain uncovered or hidden.

Purpose -The purpose of this study was to develop and empirically explore a model of four intragroup conflict types (the 4IC model), consisting of an emotional person, a cognitive task, an emotional task, and a cognitive person conflict. The two first conflict types are similar to existing conceptualizations, whereas the two latter represent new dimensions of group conflict.

A retreat is a meeting designed and organized to facilitate the ability of a group to step back from day-to-day activities for a period of concentrated discussion and strategic thinking about their organization’s future or specific issues. Organizations will reap full benefits if they follow basic rules.

Conflict can be functional or dysfunctional to the organization’s performance. This study focused on the relationship between conflict approaches implemented by the project manager based on project team member’s perception on the effectiveness of the project manager in managing project’s conflict. Questionnaires were modified from Barker et al. (1988) to measure conflict management approaches and outcomes of managing project conflict. Data were gathered from 57 respondents who worked in the Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) contractors serving the upstream sector of the Oil and Gas industry in Indonesia. By using Pearson correlation, result of this study indicated that project managers were perceived to be effective in managing project confl ict when implementing cooperative and confi rmative approaches, but ineffective when combining competitive and avoidance approaches. Further research should investigate correlation between cultural dimensions with conflict approaches and outcomes of managing conflict.

Over the last ten years organisational teams have become more distributed and complex. Despite the number of technologies available to assist teams and group-based work, it is still exceedingly difficult to manage teams. And contrary to popular belief the introduction of new real-time conferencing and collaboration technologies can actually make things worse. It may distract team members from their application focus and drive them into ongoing loops of technology experimentation. In these situations, the focus on the work mission is often lost in favour of mastering and attempting to extract ever increasing benefits from technology itself.

Изучение интеракции в командах претерпевало методологические изменения в ходе развития научной картины мира – от классических представлений о возможности объективно анализа процессов до рефлексии их конструирования здесь и сейчас участниками взаимодействия. Собственно, методология коллективной субъектности, заложенная А.В. Брушлинским, – является продуктивной в анализе взаимодействия в командах. Понимание самого процесса как ценностного сотворчества его участников, а также акцент на субъектной активности каждого, приводит к осознанию необходимости изучения пространства командной интеракции  как интерсубъектно создаваемого / субъектно осмысливаемого.