Successful Group Work


Book Description

Successful implementation and completion of team activities requires instructors and students alike to confront challenges not present in individual work. To maximize learning, group projects need a solid lesson plan that helps students understand the benefits of group work, develop ground rules and assign responsibilities, value everyone’s contributions, and resolve potential conflicts. Teacher, curriculum designer, and “teacherpreneur” Patrice Palmer offers thirteen easily implemented, robust group-work activities formatted to foster the development of life skills. Designed with secondary and postsecondary students in mind, Palmer’s workbook takes students through the team-building process, from getting to know one another to a final evaluation of the group’s work and success. Written in a user-friendly format, Successful Group Work: 13 Activities to Teach Teamwork Skills allows teachers to choose activities that best meet their students’ needs. Make group work a powerful addition to your teaching repertoire. You may be surprised how your students rise to meet a new challenge!




TeamWork: How to Build a High-Performance Team


Book Description

Great your team on the same page with TeamWork. Do you wish your employees felt more energized and engaged? Would you like them to be on the same page and fully aligned with your goals? Your business success depends on your ability to align and develop the people who work for you. High-performance teams are built intentionally by leaders who understand the three essential components of growth: alignment, development, and transition. TeamWork breaks each of these components down into actionable processes, with steps you can take immediately to start making a difference today. Learn how to create teams that work the way you want them to. Then, discover ways to scale those teams, keeping them aligned with your objectives-and with each other-as your business grows. If you want your teams to excel, TeamWork can fast-track your path to a winning business with a thriving culture.




The Ideal Team Player


Book Description

In his classic book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni laid out a groundbreaking approach for tackling the perilous group behaviors that destroy teamwork. Here he turns his focus to the individual, revealing the three indispensable virtues of an ideal team player. In The Ideal Team Player, Lencioni tells the story of Jeff Shanley, a leader desperate to save his uncle’s company by restoring its cultural commitment to teamwork. Jeff must crack the code on the virtues that real team players possess, and then build a culture of hiring and development around those virtues. Beyond the fable, Lencioni presents a practical framework and actionable tools for identifying, hiring, and developing ideal team players. Whether you’re a leader trying to create a culture around teamwork, a staffing professional looking to hire real team players, or a team player wanting to improve yourself, this book will prove to be as useful as it is compelling.




The Secret of Teams


Book Description

Teams are critical to the success of every organization. Departmental, interdepartmental, cross-functional, ad hoc, task-specific—teams do everything from planning the office party to setting the annual budget to establishing performance goals. But what separates the teams that really deliver from the ones that simply spin their wheels? What is the secret of high-performance teams? As he did in The Secret, Mark Miller uses a compelling business fable to reveal profound yet easily grasped truths that can dramatically transform any organization. Debbie Brewster, the heroine of The Secret, has been promoted and is now struggling with taking her new team to the next level. Her old mentor, Jeff Brown, the company’s CEO, sends her out to find the secret of teams. On her journey she learns from three very different teams—the Special Forces, NASCAR, and a local restaurant. Debbie and her team discover the three elements that all successful teams have in common. But that’s just the beginning. The devil is in the details, as the story of Debbie’s efforts to actually implement the three elements shows. You’ll learn how to change entrenched ways of thinking and acting, what you have to do to optimize each of the three elements of a successful team, how to measure your progress, and more. Creating high-performance teams does more than just give your organization a competitive advantage. It can be a performance multiplier that significantly improves results while honoring and developing people. It may be the ultimate win-win-win that your organization is seeking.




Focus and Finish


Book Description

FOREWORD BY CARSON WENTZ Learn What It Takes to Succeed Zach Ertz didn’t start out as a great football player. In fact, his first love was basketball. But then a chance encounter with an NFL legend changed the course of his life forever. Join Zach as he works his way up from oversized middle-school lineman to the Super Bowl–-winning and All-Pro tight end he is today. Go behind the scenes and discover what the life of a professional athlete playing at the highest level looks like. Children ages 8-12 will learn, by Zach’s example, the value of hard work, dedication, and perseverance, traits that he developed with the help of his mom, coaches, and most important, Jesus Christ.




It's Great to Work Together


Book Description

"Introduces the reader on how to work together in certain situations"--




Debugging Teams


Book Description

In the course of their 20+-year engineering careers, authors Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman have picked up a treasure trove of wisdom and anecdotes about how successful teams work together. Their conclusion? Even among people who have spent decades learning the technical side of their jobs, most haven’t really focused on the human component. Learning to collaborate is just as important to success. If you invest in the "soft skills" of your job, you can have a much greater impact for the same amount of effort. The authors share their insights on how to lead a team effectively, navigate an organization, and build a healthy relationship with the users of your software. This is valuable information from two respected software engineers whose popular series of talks—including "Working with Poisonous People"—has attracted hundreds of thousands of followers.




When Bad Teams Happen to Good People


Book Description

The teamwork troubleshooter we all need! Turn your team into a cohesive unit. “This timely book provides readers with a new way of thinking about work and survival strategies for those who find themselves on bad teams. Readers who are looking for a playbook that can help them to understand and develop soft skills needed for teamwork will be eager to have a copy nearby.”—Booklist Why do some team members not get along? What is the best way to get new teams and ad-hoc teams to maximize their performance in the least amount of time? How can meetings be designed to achieve useful outcomes? Teams are the source of problem-solving and innovation that today’s organizations need to survive and thrive in an increasingly complex and challenging marketplace. Teamwork is hard because there is no magic formula or step-by-step procedure to ensure results. Think of a programmer asked to develop new features for a cell phone: they write new code, test the code, troubleshoot problems encountered, revise the code, and repeat the testing process until the new features work without problems. Similarly, a team leader asked to deliver specified outcomes develops a plan, runs team meetings, troubleshoots problems encountered, revises the plan, and repeats until the team outcomes are achieved. The difference is that a programmer has tools to help streamline troubleshooting, while team leaders do not—until now. Valerie Patrick applies a troubleshooting mindset that includes: Proven tactics for team members and leaders to address leadership problems Guidelines for recruiting and changing teams for optimum performance Techniques to identify and address aspects of team climate that are limiting the productivity of one or more team members Examples of effective ways to operate teams and of meeting designs that produce transformative outcomes




How Winning Works


Book Description

Practical and accessible with workbook activities and exercises for readers to do, this book shares the eight essential elements of teamwork, using Benincasa's exciting, challenging, and life-affirming experiences as an extreme world class adventure racer.




HBR's 10 Must Reads on Leadership Lessons from Sports (featuring interviews with Sir Alex Ferguson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Andre Agassi)


Book Description

Leadership and management lessons from the sports world. The world's elite athletes and coaches achieve high performance through inspiring leadership, mental toughness, and direction-setting strategic choices. Harvard Business Review has talked to many of these high performers throughout the years to learn how their success translates to the world of business. If you read nothing else on management lessons from the world of sports, read these 10 articles by athletes, coaches, and leadership experts. We've combed through our archive and selected the articles that will best help you drive performance. This book will inspire you to: Improve on your weaknesses, not just your strengths Take care of your body for sustained mental performance Increase your confidence and manage your energy before an important event Turn a struggling team around Understand the limits of performance metrics Focus on long-term goals to overcome setbacks Understand where the analogy of sports and business doesn't work This collection of articles includes "Ferguson's Formula," by Anita Elberse with Sir Alex Ferguson; "Life's Work: An Interview with Greg Louganis"; "The Making of a Corporate Athlete," by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz; "The Tough Work of Turning a Team Around," by Bill Parcells; "How an Olympic Gold Medalist Learned to Perform Under Pressure: An Interview with Alex Gregory"; "Mental Preparation Secrets of Top Athletes, Entertainers, and Surgeons," an interview with Daniel McGinn by Sarah Green Carmichael; "SoulCycle's CEO on Sustaining Growth in a Faddish Industry," by Melanie Whelan; "Life's Work: An Interview with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar"; "Major League Innovation," by Scott D. Anthony; "Looking Past Performance in Your Star Talent," by Mark de Rond, Adrian Moorhouse, and Matt Rogan; "Life's Work: An Interview with Mikhail Baryshnikov"; "How the Best of the Best Get Better and Better," by Graham Jones; "Life's Work: An Interview with Joe Girardi"; "Why There Is an I in Team," by Mark de Rond; "Life's Work: An Interview with Andre Agassi"; and "Why Sports Are a Terrible Metaphor for Business," by Bill Taylor.