Question: Practice Being a Manager

Campus Improvement Teamwork is vital to the success of organizations. And this makes creating high-performance teams an important management challenge. In this exercise, you will work with fellow students to brainstorm the creation of a high-performing team. Pay particular attention to the assumptions that you and your peers bring to this process regarding what works, and what doesn't work, in relation to creating a high-performance team. At the conclusion of the exercise, you will have an opportunity to discuss the theory and common assumptions regarding effective team building.

Step 1: Get into groups. Your professor will organize small groups.

Step 2: Review the situation. Assume that your group has been hand-picked by the president of your college or university to work for one semester as a "campus improvement" team. At the end of the year you will submit your recommendations to the president and the board of your institution. These leaders have assured you that they will make every effort to implement your recommendations.

Step 3: Develop a plan. Brainstorm and develop a plan for working as a team to achieve the objective of delivering a set of quality recommendations to the president and the board. You should consider the following in developing your plan:

• Working well together as a team

• Establishing criteria for "quality recommendations" (such as representing the various important constituencies and interests on campus)

• Outlining steps, areas and types of work, and assignments for each member that are most likely to take full advantage of the capabilities and resources in your team

Step 4: Discuss your plans as a class. Is this the sort of project that is well suited to using a work team? Why or why not? How might work team characteristics such as norms, cohesiveness, and team size play a role in this team effort? What conflicts might be likely down the road, and at what stage of the process are these conflicts most likely to occur?