ABSTRACT
In public services, managers are frequently encouraged, sometimes obliged, to bring people together in groups. As we discussed in Chapter 1, new organizational structures often emphasize the need to reduce the number of levels in the hierarchy and to devolve responsibility to working groups. Since the 1980s, such groups have increasingly been referred to as teams.1 Sometimes the teams are semipermanent, as in multi-disciplinary teams, or more transient, as in project teams which are brought together to implement particular changes (Chapter 3). The use of the term ‘working party’ has declined, perhaps reflecting an acceptance that little work is done and that attendance at them is no party! With teams comes the idea of a team leader, someone responsible for the performance of the team in a much more managerial way than ‘chairing’ a committee. With the emergence of ‘self-managed teams’, the distinction between a team and a group blurs again. In this chapter we are concerned with the work a manager needs to do, whenever people are brought together in groups, whether in departmental meetings, committees, working parties or in teams. We use the term ‘managing groups’ to distinguish this kind of work from that involved when managers ‘manage individuals’. We discuss the work involved in managing individuals in Chapter 8.
