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Frank LaFasto and Carl Larson. When Teams Work Best: 6,000 Team Members and Leaders Tell What it Takes to Succeed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002, 221 pages, $24.95.
Reviewed by Anthony R. Montebello, Senior Vice President, Psychological Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO.
I liked this book about teamwork and team leadership for three reasons. First, it's about working relationships and collaboration, something we all grapple with in the workplace. second, it is based on extensive research-interviews with over 6,000 team members and leaders. Finally, it is a short, easy read with many readily applicable concepts and ideas.
The authors' intent is to provide a practical guide to promote collaborative teamwork. They did an excellent job in meeting this goal. The intended audiences-executives and managers, team leaders, and team members-should benefit from the work, as the authors present the collective insights of team members and leaders about what it takes to bring out the best in teams.
The authors posed five basic research questions about teamwork and team leadership:
1. What attributes or behaviors of individual team members help the team succeed or interfere with the team's success?
2. What strengths and weaknesses of working relationships exist in teams?
3. What behaviors make some teams more successful than others at problem solving?
4. What behaviors of team leaders help lead the team to success or cause the team to stumble and lose its way?
5. What organizational processes and practices increase or decrease the likelihood of team success?
This book summarizes the above five issues and delineates the factors that support or hinder a team in achieving its goals. Throughout the book there are numerous quotations (behavioral incidents) from the team members and leaders that speak candidly about their successes and disappointments.
Each chapter is nicely organized. At the beginning of each chapter there is a one page "snapshot" overviewing the content. Each chapter opens...