ABSTRACT
In the course of the past three decades, working alone and together, we have devoted an average of a day per week working with some 100 organizations in the private and public sectors, at more than 150 of their sites, and with at least 4000 persons from nearly 50 countries. These engagements involved many different activities (e.g., facilitating small and large group meetings and retreats, training, coaching, conducting formative and summative evaluation studies, and process consultations), including three methods for team development interventions – our focus in this chapter. Typically, the groups and teams whom we assist are work units (or subgroups within them) that function to accomplish formal tasks, although we also have worked with cross-functional groups created for short terms to deal with specific problems of concern to the entire organization or to the units from which members are drawn (Devine, Clayton, Philips, Dunford, & Melner, 1999; Greenbaum & Query, 1999). Many of the groups we assist are teams, either because members refer to themselves that way to capture a high level of cohesiveness they feel they possess or because they possess the structural criteria for that type of group (Arrow, McGrath, & Berdahl, 2000; LaFasto & Larson, 2001).
