TITLE : TEAMS, TEAMWORK & TEAMBUILDING: THE MANAGER'S COMPLETE GUIDE TO TEAMS IN ORGANISATIONS.

PREFACE

THIS is a book about teams, teamwork and the deve]opment of teams. We have tried to provide a comprehensive guide to many issues re]ating to teams, but the focus of the book is essentially on improvement. The major part of the text is concerned with how managers, team leaders, team members and other interested individuals might engage strategies that facilitate development and improvement.

The central tenets of the book are as follows:

1 Development has more than one dimension. There may be scope for improvement in a wide range of areas, which relate to individuals, the task, the team, and the organisation.

2 Development should take place only in those aspects of operation where it is needed.

3 All the above areas (individuals, task, team and organisation) should be considered. A weakness in one area can critically affect performance in other areas.

4 Teams are unlikely to succeed unless there is real support and commitment from the top of the oganisation, and this may require some radical rethinking about the systems and processes used

Adding something new to what many colleagues said was a saturated field in terms of publications was a daunting thought, but it was apparent when scanning the bookshop shelves that much of the available material in the area of team development is intuitive in its approach and fails to explain the contributory concepts fully. This is where our text enters the scene. We have included detailed explanations of what we consider the more important items of conceptual material and included a number of areas largely ignored in other texts. For example, the chapter on 'Influencing' explains the conceptual foundation of the skill and provides advice on how individuals might increase their competence. While we have drawn extensively on a broad range of literature items, we have exercised caution in accepting without reservation all assertions and claims about the supposedly 'right' way to do things. Despite this, in the absence of rigorous research, it has been necessary to accept many items of common wisdom and expedient to draw on the writings and experiences of respected and scholarly colleagues.

What made the task even more daunting was the fact that this book was always intended for what are normally considered two discrete markets: students of management and busy practitioners. It is generally assumed that one can write in a serious mode for the former, supporting arguments with rigorous evaluation, while the latter demands a lighter 'simply tell them how to do it' approach. This seems somewhat patronising to those practitioners who take their profession seriously and, in the case of this book, want to gain a greater understanding of the whole issue of organisational teams. We believe we have written in such a way as to appeal to all who are interested in the subject of this text. For those who wish to support academic study, we have provided extensive references and a relatively comprehensive bibliography. For the manager seeking sound practical advice, we have suggested effective practice throughout the text, and reinforced this by including a summary of the implications for managers at the end of each major section.

We are indebted to those who have helped us in one way or another to assemble our ideas and write this book. Particular gratitude must be expressed to Jerene Tan of Prentice Hall, Singapore, who encouraged us to take on the project, and her colleague Ang Lee Ming who has worked closely with us throughout the project; to Michael Heng, Managing Director and Principal Consultant of Mikros Management Consultants for sharing his extensive knowledge of human resource management with us; Doug McGuffick for his assistance with the chapter on 'Team Roles'; and Andrea and Kim who have been supportive of our efforts. To all these, we are immensely grateful.