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.
Research-backed assessment tools and interventions for building high-performing teams
Now in its Second Edition, Group Dynamics and Team Interventions: Understanding and Improving Team Performance provides academics and practitioners with the foundational theories and practical techniques needed to diagnose team problems and implement effective solutions. Modeled after the scientist-practitioner paradigm central to applied psychology, this edition offers validated assessment tools available for free on the author's website, enabling immediate application of research-based methods to real organizational challenges.
Each chapter follows a consistent structure: first assessing team performance through research, then summarizing relevant theory, and finally providing three specific intervention strategies. Topics include team inputs such as member characteristics and task design, team outputs including performance and member satisfaction, data collection methods through observation and surveys, culture and inclusion assessments, and the pursuit of synergy. Readers gain both a resource guide for measurement tools and a practical toolbox of interventions.
Group Dynamics and Team Interventions serves academics teaching upper-level or Masters-level courses in group dynamics and team performance, as well as practitioners seeking structured approaches to organizational team assessment and training design. Both audiences will find the integration of theory, assessment instruments, and intervention techniques essential for understanding and improving team effectiveness.
