Foreword

It is with great pleasure that I introduce this fourth edition of the classic Team Building. Bill Dyer was a colleague and friend who realized from our joint experiences in the Bethel days of T-groups how important it was not only to understand what went on in groups but to build up some practical knowledge about how to improve how groups work.

In the highly individualistic society that the United States embodies, building effective teams is a practical necessity. Committees are not too popular, and teams are all too often seen as a way of diffusing responsibility, yet most managers and leaders espouse “teamwork” and then leave it to others to figure out what that might actually mean in practice. I remember very well the president of a company who told his vice presidents at a meeting, “I want you all to work as a team, but remember you are all competing for my job.” The highly touted “HP Way” is built around the notion of consensus in groups being the way to make decisions, yet all too often HP managers discovered that the real way to make decisions was to go individually to all the others on whom you were dependent and make deals with them one-on-one. Committee decisions “didn’t stick,” as they would say.

What all of this means is that group work does not come naturally in a highly individualistic society and is often not respected even though touted. And that, in turn, means that it is essential to have good training materials and concepts for improving how groups and ...

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