Learning Team Skills

Book excerpt: For courses in first-year orientation that focus on personal development, team work, and group dynamics. For practicing managers in a corporate environment. Broad, practical coverage of team skills offered in a conversational tone that encourages reader participation. Teams offer us many advantages as an organized way to accomplish tasks - but what are the best methods and practices for harnessing the full power of a team successfully? In its second edition, Learning Team Skills offers insight into how both those in a college and corporate environment can use teambuilding skills as well as their individual strengths to create, participate in, and lead successful working teams. With a concise format and relaxed tone, this text teaches readers about the overwhelming advantages of teamwork over individual striving as well as how teams can foster meaningful interpersonal relationships, aide in conflict resolution, and, in due course, lead to goal achievement. The newly-revised second edition of this practical and interactive text retains its many reader participation features and true-to-life anecdotes while adding major new sections on best practices for virtual teams; ways to diagnose team problems; measurement instruments for evaluating the motivation of team members; cultural considerations when building a strong team; effective inclusion of team members born after 1985, and more than a dozen online resources for forming and managing excellent teams. We encourage you to visit this Blog at www.learningteamskills2epearson.blogspot.com. The authors will be answering student and faculty questions here as well as adding interesting articles and other pieces on team skills.