Group Dynamics and Team Interventions: Understanding and Improving Team Performance

by Timothy M. Franz

Organizations thrive or struggle as a result of interactions among team members. To optimize the performance of teams, Group Dynamics and Team Interventions bridges the gap between the most up-to-date academic research findings about group behavior and real-life practice. Chapters summarize the theories behind group and team behavior while offering proven application and intervention techniques that can be utilized in workplace settings. Topics addressed include team formation and development; understanding culture and team diversity; improving team cohesion, decision making, and problem solving; managing and reducing team conflict; team leadership, power, and influence; and others. Brief case studies and interventions that illustrate each theory help to enhance the clarity of the topics. Group Dynamics and Team Interventions will benefit academics and practitioners alike, who gain from a better understanding of the dynamics that inform team behavior, along with assessment tools and practical intervention techniques to create and maintain a high-performing team.

Genres: Leadership, Nonfiction

376 pages, Hardcover

First published March 8, 2012

Reviews

[Steven De Landtsheer · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my consulting work I notice that there is more and more need to help clients in building well functioning teams. Obviously it is less clear which one comes first, my personal interest and inclination and therefore your personal radar to spot the issues .. Still, if you want to make a team really good at deploying a certain activity, service and let them improve on their current performance level, they need to be functioning well as a team.
If you have come to a similar conclusion, you will find great value in this book. I have graduated as a psychologist, but that was back in 1990, so honestly, the world has moved a bit since then. So I really enjoyed this book as it is both well founded in academic research and practical application. It is always enjoyable to read an up beat pamflet about some new fashion to make your team super human. As a trained psychologist I am probably too sceptical to believe the hype. My approach therefore is to read the 'hype' books to pick out the cherries and test them in real life. This book however is of the foundational category. If you need a good overview on everything to know about group dynamics, then start here.
The only spoiler: the quality of the binding was really bad - after having read the book, it literally fell apart … the content is however top notch

[Samantha · Rating 2 out of 5]

The two stars are for the quality of the information included. The stars lost are for presenting the information in an extremely boring manner and for the presence of way too many grammatical, stylistic, and punctuational errors for a communications text book.