Groups and Teams

For the Module 3 SLP, pick an experience in your workplace when you were assigned to work as part of a team. Think carefully about your experiences working on this team, and how the concepts in the background materials apply to your experiences. Then write a two to three page paper addressing the following issues: 1.Did Tuckman’s five stages of group development apply to your team? Did some of the stages apply but not others? Explain your reasoning with specific experiences that your team faced and references to at least one of the required textbook chapters from the background materials. 2.How would you rate the cohesiveness of your team? Was it not very cohesive, or was it too cohesive to the extent that your team suffered from groupthink? Explain your reasoning with specific experiences that your team faced and references to at least one of the required textbook chapters from the background materials. 3.Based on what you’ve read in the background materials, what do you think could have been done differently with this team to improve its performance?

SLP Assignment Expectations •Answer the assignment questions directly •Stay focused on the precise assignment questions, don’t go off on tangents or devote a lot of space to summarizing general background materials •Make sure to use reliable and credible sources as your references. Articles published in established newspapers or business journals/magazines are preferred. If you find articles on the internet, make sure it is from a credible source. •Reference your sources of information with both a bibliography and in-text citations. See the Student Guide to Writing a High-Quality Academic Paper, including pages 13-14 on in-text citations. Another resource is the “Writing Style Guide”, which is found under “My Resources” in the TLC portal.

BACK GROUND MATERIAL A good place to start is this interactive tutorial:

Group behavior and teams. (2014). Pearson Learning Solutions. New York, NY.

After reviewing the tutorials, dig deeper into this topic with the following readings. Important concepts to focus on in the readings include Tuckman’s five stages of group development, group cohesiveness, and groupthink:

Aswathappa, K. (2010). Chapter 12: Group dynamics. Organizational Behavior. Global Media, Mumbai [Available in Ebrary]

Nair, Suja R. (2010). Groups and Teams. Organisational Behavior. Global Media, Mumbai, pp. 271-298 [Ebrary]

Wellington, P. (2012). Chapter 2: Back to basics – the fundamentals of working in teams. Creating Success, Volume 45: Managing Successful Teams. Kogan Page Ltd. London, GBR [Ebrary]

Garfoot, A. (2003, 05). The reality of virtual teams. IT Training. 32-34. [Proquest]

Sadri, G., & Condia, J. (2012). Managing the virtual world. Industrial Management, 54(1), 21-25. [Proquest]

Rigby, R. (2013). How best to manage a virtual team. The Financial Times [Proquest]

West, Michael A. (2012). Chapter 2: Real teams work. Effective Teamwork : Practical Lessons from Organizational Research (3rd Edition). Wiley-Blackwell. Hoboken, NJ, USA [Ebrary] Note: you may find some of the other chapters worth looking at as optional readings for this module

Armstrong, M. (2013) Chapter 7: Team building. Creating Success, Volume 29: How to Manage People (2nd Edition), Kogan Page Ltd., London [Ebrary]

Aswathappa, K. (2010). Chapter 13: Team dynamics. Organisational Behavior. Global Media, Mumbai, pp. 285-314 [Available in Ebrary]