Unit Nine: Working with Others: Groups vs Teams,  Communications, Managing Conflict

Part One: Assessment Activities

1. Assessment Activity: Are You a Team Player (Lussier page 351)

2. Evaluate Your Team Skills

3. Team Profile

4. Team Effectiveness Inventory

5. Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (Site A)      Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (Site B if Site A is down)

6. Team Effectiveness: Meeting Evaluation Form

7. My Communication Skills

8. Team vs individual Orientation Test

9. Self-Assessment: Listening Skills (Lussier, page 401)

Part Two: Email Application Activities

(Individual assignment) Send me a memo summarizing and interpreting the results of the Skill Builder 2: Group Performance (Lussier pages 380-381) for your in-class group.

(Individual assignment) Send me a memo outlining  which of the four frames best fits you.  Also please explain how using the four frames can help you better understand a conflict situation at work. 

Part Three: Textbook Assignment

Read pages 324-328 and chapters ten and eleven in Lussier.

Part Four: Unit Outline with Reading Assignments

I. The nature of groups and teams

    A. Advantages of Teams  

       1. Thomas J. Hackett, "Giving Teams a Tune Up," HR Focus, November 1997.          

        2. Jon Katzenbach, The discipline of teams, HBR, March 1997 (#93207). 

            a. Turning Groups into Teams

        3. Carl E. Larson and Frank M.J. LaFasto, Team Work , London: Sage Press, 1989.

    B. Basic guide to working in teams 

        1. Developing Groups

            a. Purpose

            b. Membership

            c. Organization

            d. Leadership

                1. Robin D. Johnson, Elizabeth K. Thurston, Achieving empowerment using the empowerment strategy grid. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Feb-March 1997 v18 n2 p64(10) 

                    a. Empowerment

                    b. Mentoring

                         1. Team Management Index

                        2. The Questions

            e. Stages in Team Development  

                    1. More on stages in team development               

            f. Group Processes

                1. Group roles

                    a. Role ambiguity

                    b. Role conflict

                2. Norms

                    a. Developing Norms

                    b. Why norms are established

                3. Group cohesiveness

                4. Groupthink

     C. Characteristics of high performing teams

II. Communications

    A. What is Communications?

    B. The Four Frames as Identified by Bolman and Deal  

    C. Genderlect

        1. Deborah Tannen, Power of talk: who gets heard and why, HBR (#95510) 

        2. Communicating with the Opposite Sex  

    D. Listening Skills 

IV. Managing Conflict

    A. Causes of conflict

    B. Types of conflict

    C. Handling Conflict

    A. Common Sense and Conflict. By: Wetlaufer, Suzy; Harvard Business Review, Jan/Feb2000, Vol. 78 Issue 1, p114, 11p, 5c, 1bw

    B. Conflict Strategies  

    C. How management teams can have a good fight. By: Eisenhardt, Kathleen M.; Kahwajy, Jean L.; Harvard Business Review, Jul/Aug97, Vol. 75 Issue 4, p77, 9p, 1 chart

V. How to run a meeting  

    A. The Seven Deadly Sins of Meetings  

VI. Examples of teams in action