Building High-performance Teams: A Practitioner's Guide

Hays

Item Description

The use of teams in the public and private sectors continues to increase. Most people working today would have experienced working in teams, and increasingly supervisors and managers are team leaders who are expected to manage and motivate teams, not individuals. Internal and external team training and team-building programs for staff and managers alike have proliferated. Universities have integrated team theory and team projects into many courses.

An onslaught of articles and books continues to extol the virtues of teams while making the achievement of high-performance and self-directed teams seem deceptively easy. The fact is, while teams can be productive and fulfilling, they often fail to deliver. Team work is difficult and gains in productivity and creativity are not automatic.

Too many authors and trainers provide 'feel-good' discussions about teams and their potential, but have little to offer when it comes to making them work. One wonders if they have really worked in teams and learned from the experience. Building High-Performance Teams: A Practitioners Guide provides practical solutions to achieving more effective and productive teamwork. It provides a step-by-step approach, starting with the very first days of working with or in a new team. It provides useful and proven tools and techniques for chartering the team, for team problem solving, decision making, and action planning, for participative goal setting, and for leading High-performance Teams.

Building High-Performance Teams: A Practitioners Guide represents over a decade of research and practical work in and with high-performance and self-directed teams.

About the Author
Dr J. Martin Hays lectures in management at The Australian National University and is the founder/director of Canberra-based Synapsis Organisational Development and Change Pty Ltd.