You are a clinical specialist who is considered to be the expert on how to use hospital imaging equipment like CT or MRI scanners. For the past 4 years, you have been working for a medical device company, and you work in a virtual environment with team members who live around the United States and are always travelling. Once your sales associate sells a device to a hospital or clinic, it is your job to slide in and train the doctors, nurses, and technicians on how to use the equipment. Last week, you were dramatically affected when a team from a different region had to be replaced, and everyone from your team except you was reassigned. This week, you were given a new team to manage the entire region of the country. You are the only member who is familiar with all of the accounts from the region.

Your 4-member team members includes the following:

Sally is the medical device sales associate.

Juan is the physician research director.

Alik is the equipment installment supervisor.

Vivian is the office secretary at corporate assigned to your team.

You feel like you are the only person who knows what is going on. All the work for the past week has been on your shoulders.

The group has planned a teleconference for later in the week. During this call, you expect the team to spend time "storming" while everyone figures out who is going to do what activity. You need the group to move quickly and start producing.

Your assignment: Produce an e-mail to the team designed to prepare everyone for the call you will have later in the week.

There is no need for outside research. Rely on your textbook to remind you of organizational behavior concepts and theory. In this e-mail you should do the following:

Introduce yourself, describe your goals for the group, and remind them of the group's first teleconference call together later in the week.

Identify key constructs from how self-managed team members interact.

Suggest how the group might make decisions by creating a unique model for your team.

Give an example of how a decision might go through this proposed group decision-making process by using an imaginary situation.

The e-mail should be professional in tone; however, it is acceptable to use your imagination when filling in the details not offered in the assignment description.