Team Building: Proven Strategies for Improving Team Performance, 5th Edition

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COMPOSITION

Getting the Right People on the Bus

If the organizational context is supportive of teamwork, the next task is to determine the appropriate size of the team, who should be on it, and how they should be managed depending on their skill set and motivation.

In this chapter, we discuss the importance of getting the right people on a team, as well as the optimal team size. To illustrate the importance of both team composition and context, we examine the practices of Bain & Company, a management consulting firm that has achieved superior results through the effective management of team context and composition. We also provide an assessment instrument for evaluating team composition and context.

Team Composition and Performance

For a team ...