Team Building

Introduction This book is for anyone concerned about effective team performance. Three previous editions of Team Building have been well received by managers, team leaders, and team consultants. In fact, roughly 100,000 copies have been sold in several languages over the almost three decades since our father, William G. "Bill" Dyer, wrote the first edition, making it one of the most widely read books on the subject. Bill was the consummate social scientist, trained in sociology at the University of Wisconsin after World War II. He had grown up in a rather large family of seven children (one was his half-brother Jack Gibb, another prominent social scientist) in a rather poor section of Portland, Oregon. Bill's father ran a small grocery store attached to their home, and it was there that Bill learned the importance of hard work, and teamwork, as he worked in the family store. From these experiences he also recognized that education was the key to his future. After finishing his doctorate at Wisconsin, Bill and his wife, Bonnie, moved on to Iowa State University and shortly thereafter to Brigham Young University. His early research studies in the 1950s were on family dynamics and role conflict within families. In the late 1950s Bill was introduced by his brother Jack Gibb into the world of "T-groups" (the T stood for "training"), which at the time were largely sponsored by National Training Laboratories (NTL). The assumption underlying the T-group was that individuals-and particularly organizational leaders-were impaired by the authoritarian assumptions they held about those they worked with and needed to change their assumptions about people and ways of doing work. Organizations were largely seen as being oppressive-creating "organization men"-and stifling creativity and innovation. Stanley Milgram's studies during this time period pointed out that anyone could become a victim of authoritarianism, and Douglas McGregor in The Human Side of Enterprise noted that most managers in organizations operated using Theory X assumptions (people are basically untrustworthy and lazy) but should have been basing their actions on Theory Y assumptions (people essentially are good and want responsibility).1 Other writers such as Chris Argyris and Abraham Maslow argued that organizations as human systems needed to allow people to achieve their potential and become self-actualized. It was in this context that the group dynamics and humanistic psychology movement began to flourish in the 1960s. T-groups were composed of strangers led by a "T-group trainer," whose job it was to allow group members to explore what it meant to be part of a group that would provide them with feedback about their own behavior, require them to respond in an "open and honest" manner, and encourage group members to accept responsibility for their behavior as well as be willing to engage in relationships based on equality rather than hierarchy or status. It was in this environment that Bill, as a T-group trainer, initially learned about the dynamics of groups and the individuals who were a part of them. For several years, Bill consulted with many organizations that wanted to use the T-group to improve the performance of their employees and their teams. Those within the "T-group movement" believed that the T-group could be the vehicle to change the values of organization leaders, and that by so doing, these new values would "filter down" throughout the organization. Organizations in this way could be transformed into more humane and creative systems. Bill also was influenced at this time not only by Jack Gibb but others such as Dick Beckhard and Ed Schein, who were to become the founders of a new field of practice, organization development. Moreover, famous psychologist Abe Maslow had a significant influence on Bill, since Maslow attended a T-group sponsored by NTL in Bethel, Maine, and Bill was chosen to be Maslow's T-group trainer. As children growing up in the Dyer home, we would often hear our father tell stories about Maslow and his wit and wisdom. The stories about Maslow invariably had to do with the importance of being honest and being a "congruent" person-sharing openly what we think and feel-and acting in a way consistent with our values. One story that our father shared was about Maslow and his wife inviting a friend, Harry, to stay with them. The first morning at breakfast Abe's wife Bertha burned the toast and profusely offered an apology to Harry. To which, Harry replied, "Don't worry. I kind of like burned toast." So every morning after that, Bertha remembered to burn the toast for Harry. Finally, one morning Harry had had enough and blurted out at the breakfast table, "What's with the burned toast? Why are you giving me burned toast every morning?" To this the Maslows replied, "But we thought you liked burned toast-that's what you told us." Harry then came clean: "I don't like burned toast. I only said that to be nice." After that incident, when either Abe or Bertha felt they weren't being completely honest with one another, one of them would often say, "Remember Harry's toast." In Bill's office hung a sign which read, "The cruelest lies are often told in silence." Bill often talked about the importance of being a congruent person and wanted his children to apply the ideas of personal congruence that he was taught by Maslow. Growing up in the home of a social scientist like Bill also created some interesting opportunities for learning. For example, on one occasion Bill had a long conversation with a friend about the different dynamics that were found in their two families. The two of them decided that it would be a useful exercise for each of their families to gain some deeper insights into how families functioned (for example, rules about chores, homework, bedtime, and so on). To gain this insight, they decided to swap a child for a week, and then have each child report back on what it was like to be a member of the "new" family. Then the two families would meet together to discuss the differences between the families. Apparently Bill and Bonnie felt that Mike, the second oldest, was expendable, so Mike spent the week with the McLean family, and we received Herb McLean in return. It proved to be an insightful and memorable experience for us, and we remember it even thirty or so years later. Bill had a unique ability to share his philosophies regarding management in a way that others-even his children-could understand. On one occasion his son Jeff commented that Bill wasn't catching very many fish on a family fishing trip. The four Dyer boys were out-catching him-and Bill was supposed to be the expert fisherman. Bill proceeded to describe his role as "manager" of a group of Dyer children (four boys and a girl) on a fishing trip. He explained that in order for the trip to be a success, all of the members of the Dyer fishing group needed to experience success in catching fish. That meant that Bill needed to spend much of his fishing time showing each of his children how to tie on hooks and cast, and, basically, coaching us in the art of fishing. As a result, his personal production decreased, but the team production increased. Collectively we caught more fish because the manager, Bill, was less concerned with his individual achievement than with team achievement. This analogy offered a poignant lesson on the art of management-and what it takes to be an effective team manager. Many of the ideas in this book come from Bill's belief that groups can be used to help people learn, can bring the best out in people, and can create much of what is good in the world. Through his T-group experience, he also learned the importance of team skills such as problem solving, communication, and conflict management, and how to develop those competencies in a team. His thoughts on these topics are central to what is presented in this edition of Team Building. The early 1960s were an exciting time for those involved with T-groups. Many felt that the T-group would be the vehicle that would help change the nature of authoritarian organizations and help unleash human potential that had been suppressed. However, a study conducted by Campbell and Dunnette in 1968 was to change most of that thinking.2 Campbell and Dunnette reviewed the major studies that had looked at the impact of T-group training on individuals and on organizations. Not surprisingly, they found that the T-group did, in fact, help individuals become more comfortable with themselves and their ability to manage interpersonal relationships. However, the study also showed that T-group training had virtually no impact (and sometimes a negative effect) on organizational or team performance. The T-group experience often helped people become more open and honest, but this sometimes led to dysfunctional confrontations in the team and didn't necessarily translate into solving the team's specific performance problems. Given these findings, Bill had to make a decision regarding his work as a T-group trainer. It was at this point that he decided to create a new paradigm for working with groups-the "team building" paradigm. He wrote about this change from T-groups to team building as follows: As practitioners developed more experience in applying the T-group methods to work units, the T-group mode shifted to take into account the differences of the new setting. It became clear that the need was not just to let people get feed-back, but to help the work unit develop into a more effective, collaborative, problem-solving unit with work to get out and goals to achieve. Slowly the methodology shifted from...