Theory, tools, and techniques to create and maintain high-performing teams
Group Dynamics and Team Interventions delivers essential knowledge on foundational theories for understanding how groups work as well as practical concepts for intervening to improve teams. The book is modeled after the scientist-practitioner paradigm that is part of applied psychology with an emphasis on both action and research. In this second edition, validated assessment tools are available for free in the book resources section on the author's website.
Each chapter starts with a way to learn about how well a team is doing through research, then summarizes relevant theory and provides three ideas for intervention. Through the author's unique approach, this book helps readers understand the basic processes involved in assessing and evaluating teams, finding measurement tools to use for assessment, and equipping themselves with a toolbox of interventions that they might use to help groups and teams perform better.
Sample topics covered in Group Dynamics and Team Interventions include:
- Inputs necessary to understand what teams bring to the system prior to working together, such as how the members, system, and team tasks affects teamwork
- Team outputs, such as performance, productivity, and member satisfaction
- How to collect data through observation, interviews, focus groups, and surveys
- Steps to conduct a culture and inclusion assessment and identify artifacts, espoused values, enacted values, and assumptions
- The goal of synergy and the reality of most teams
Group Dynamics and Team Interventions is an essential learning resource for academics and practitioners who want to understand and then improve the teams with which they work.