Preface
When I first came to the Kellogg School of Management in 1995, there were only
a small number of course offerings on group dynamics and teamwork. Sheer demand for more
teamwork led to the development of a 3-day team-building
program for executives. In this program, leading scholars—Deborah Gruenfeld, Dave Messick, Keith Murnighan, Brian Uzzi, and I—provide
the latest team-building and management principles to managers and executives from
different industries all over the globe. The participants are always as surprised as we
are to see the commonality of concerns and interests regarding their teams. Most of the
participants were hungry for a book that would pull together the basic and cutting-edge
concepts they learned from the seminar. I searched for a book that would capture and
supplement the broad and deep scope that this program reflected. Often, the popular book
choices were not theory-based and the scholarly books not very practical. I set out to
write a book that would do three things:
- Provide an extremely engaging approach to teamwork by connecting models and theories
with actual teams and companies.
- Maintain a rigorous, cutting-edge research focus—all of the material in the book is
produced by leading scholars in the field and represents hard science, in the strict sense
of the word.
- Provide a big-picture view of teamwork by giving the manager and team leader practical
advice and solutions to problems.
Making the Team separates fact from fiction and outlines in a clear,
step-by-step fashion how young managers, as well as seasoned executives, can improve the
functioning of their teams. Each chapter opens with a case analysis of a real team. The
reader of this book will learn how to diagnose the causes of team failure, conduct a
performance evaluation of teams, leverage the team within the organization, determine
effective leadership behavior, create opportunity from conflict, deal with global teamwork
issues, set the stage for creative, breakthrough thinking in teams, reduce prejudice, and
manage meetings and study groups for effective learning and decision making. In short,
this book transforms the art of teamwork into a science to be studied and mastered.
I took the perspective of the manager when writing this book; arguably, I should have
taken the perspective of the team. However, this choice was for expositional purposes, as
all of the messages for the manager of the team apply to the team itself.
The 12 chapters are arranged into a sequence of three major sections: Part I covers the
basics (types of teams, facts, and myths); part II covers internal dynamics of teamwork
(building the team, collective intelligence, decision making, conflict, and creativity);
and part III focuses on the external dynamics of teams in organizations (networking,
leadership, interteam relations, and information technology).
The first chapter ("Teams in Organizations") lays
out the basic concepts of the book and attempts to dispel some common myths about
teamwork. It introduces the basic building blocks for analyzing and perfecting teamwork.
Chapter 2 ("Performance and Productivity") tackles the question of how we know
whether a team is performing well, and if not, what to do about it. Chapter 3
("Rewarding Teamwork") deals with the question of rewarding teamwork in
organizations, the impact of rewards on motivation and behavior, and the choices that
organizations have in this regard.
Part II of the book focuses on the internal dynamics—or what is going on inside
the team itself. Chapter 4 ("Building the Team") focuses on structuring tasks,
selecting people, and fostering team relationships. Chapter 5 ("Sharpening the Team
Mind") explores how teams communicate (and the most common reasons for failures), how
teams process information, and how they create a collective team intelligence. Chapter 6
("Team Decision Making") examines the four most common team decision-making
pitfalls. It discusses the causes and consequences of conformity and how to deal with it.
Chapter 7 ("Conflict in Teams") focuses on how to turn negative conflict into
positive conflict for teams. Chapter 8 ("Creativity") examines how to design
teams to be maximally creative.
Part III of the book focuses on external dynamics—or how the team fits in the
organization. Chapter 9 ("Managing the External Environment") takes up the
topics of team boundaries, interteam relations, networking, and boundary spanning. Chapter
10 ("Leadership") focuses on the dual tasks of effective leadership: Dealing
with internal dynamics as well as external dynamics. Chapter 11 ("Interteam
Relations") focuses on the issues of conflict and competition between teams in the
organization. Chapter 12 ("Teamwork via Information Technology") examines the
impact of information technology on global, as well as local, teamwork and some of the
choices the manager has for maintaining high productivity.
I also included four appendices that the managers, executives, and students I have
worked with told me they wanted to see in this book. Appendix 1 focuses on how to run a
meeting. Appendix 2 contains tips for consultants and facilitators of meetings. Appendix 3
focuses on how to build and maintain an effective study group. Appendix 4 contains
examples of 360-degree evaluations.
The research and ideas in this book come from an invaluable set of scholars in the
fields of social psychology, organizational behavior, sociology, and cognitive psychology.
During the past 12 years, my life has been enriched in very important ways by the
following people with whom I have collaborated: Linda Babcock, Max Bazerman, Terry Boles,
Jeanne Brett, Susan Brodt, Gary Fine, Craig Fox, Dedre Gentner, Robert Gibbons, Kevin
Gibson, Rich Gonzalez, Deborah Gruenfeld, Reid Hastie, Peter Kim, Shirli Kopelman, Rod
Kramer, Laura Kray, Terri Kurtzburg, John Levine, Allan Lind, Jeff Loewenstein, Beta
Mannix, Vicki Medvec, Dave Messick, Terry Mitchell, Don Moore, Michael Morris, Keith
Murnighan, Janice Nadler, Robin Pinkley, Vanessa Ruda, Harris Sondak, Tom Tyler, Kathleen
Valley, Leaf Van Boven, Kimberly Wade-Benzoni, and Laurie Weingart. In the book, I use the
pronoun we because so much of my thinking has been influenced and shaped by this
set of eminent scholars.
Fourteen students who were enrolled in an advanced "managing groups" course
at the Kellogg School read the book, criticized it, and improved it immensely during the
fall of 1998. These people are Diego Lezica Alvear, Pablo Gonzalez Beramendi, Geoffrey
Bolan, Elmer Choy, Francesco Dalla Rovere, Read T. DuPriest, Shawna Gwin, Alison Hyman,
Jean Johnson, Thomas Lott, Rebecca M. Mayne, Ryan Reis, Pamela L. Skonicki, and Carrie
Tower. These people improved the book tremendously and humbled me in the process of doing
so.
A number of people read this book in an earlier form and provided very helpful
comments: Joan F. Brett, Karen Cates, John A. Drexler, Jr., and Jeff Polzer, and our
reviewers Donald Ashbaugh, University of Wisconsin–Madison; Sigal Barsade, Yale
University; Theodore Forbes III, University of Virginia; Daniel Gigone, Duke University;
Cristina Gibson, University of Southern California; and Judith Gordon, Boston College.
Two other people played an enormously important role in this book: Avi Steinlauf and
Greg Grieff. Avi Steinlauf conducted all of the information searches on the examples
covered in the book based on real companies. His work was intensive, thorough, and
creative and it made the book really come alive. Greg Grieff was the first-round
high-level copy editor for the book. He raised the important questions, reorganized the
flow of thoughts, made the logic clear, and provided much of the focus and direction of
each chapter.
This book would not have had a chance without the dedication, organization, and
editorial skills of Rachel Claff, who created the layout, organized the hundreds of
drafts, mastered the figures, and researched various aspects of the book.
I completed this book while I was at the Kellogg School of Management, a place
whose spirit is motivating, energizing, and inspirational. I feel honored to live and work
in the midst of so many great people and I am indebted to Dean Donald Jacobs and the Kellogg Teams and Groups Center
(KTAG) for their generous support of this book, and to Ken Bardach for helping to provide
the vision for our team executive program. Very important, grants from the National
Science Foundation’s Decision Risk and Management Science Program have made it
possible for me to conduct several of the research studies that I discuss in this book.
This book is very much a team effort of the people I have mentioned here, whose talents
are diverse, broad, and extraordinarily impressive. I am deeply indebted to my colleagues
and students, and I feel very grateful that they have touched my life and this book.
