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Looks at the use of the Team Management Index (TMI) as a team building intervention in a programme of organizational development (OD). Attempts to assess the instrument’s effectiveness using a variety of measures (including the taxonomy of De Meuse and Liebowitz, 1981). In so doing, raises wider methodological and epistemological issues as to the whole nature of data collection, validity and proof in measuring the effectiveness of OD interventions. Discovers that, according to the measurement criteria, set out by De Meuse and Liebowitz, the TMI can be considered to be an effective OD instrument. However, finds that these measurement techniques are “blunt” and, by their very nature, lacking in academic rigour. Argues, therefore, that all levels of data collection and evidence gathering can never constitute 100 per cent proof of a causal link between OD interventions and resultant changes in the organization. Concludes that what will be deemed to count as adequate evidence or proof of an intervention’s effectiveness ultimately will be a personal choice; that in concentrating on comparing before and after measures of a team’s effectiveness theorists have ignored the change process which is taking place as a team begins to become effective, and have treated teams at the end of a team building intervention as if they were finished products; and finally that research time should be devoted to studying the process of change which a team undergoes during its development (of which team building is just the beginning) in order to highlight the ways in which an organization could nurture, support and facilitate this process to ensure the effective development of its work teams.

To provide readers with a better understanding of the organizational conditions that lead to complexity in team structure, operation, and dynamics, and introduce guidelines for facilitating complex team interventions.

This article is based on the author's 20 years' experience as an internal OD executive, external consultant, and associate professor in the areas of organizational change and teambuilding.

The article concludes that team‐building failures frequently occur when facilitators operate from team archetypes that are radically outmoded, and severely underestimate the complexity of certain team‐building issues. Readers are introduced to six guidelines for managing complex team interventions.

This article is designed to help OD practitioners plan extremely complex and difficult team‐building interventions. The article should serve as a useful tool to experienced OD consultants who are attempting to tackle more advanced team‐building interventions. An organizational example is provided to illustrate key concepts.

The author believes that this article provides a unique perspective, by examining issues of organizational complexity that must be faced by experienced team facilitators.

Organization development is focused on implementing a planned process of positive humanistic change in organizations through the use of social science theory, action research, and data-based feedback methods. The role of personality in that change process, however, has historically been ignored or relegated to a limited set of interventions. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a conceptual overview of the linkages between personality and OD, discuss the current state of personality in the field including key trends in talent management, and offer a new multi-level framework for conceptualizing applications of personality for different types of OD efforts. The chapter concludes with implications for research and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to design and test an online team intervention for university students, focusing on communication, leadership and team processes, to influence team cohesion and subsequently team assignment performance. It was administered twice as a formative feedback measure and once as a summative evaluation measure across a semester.

Survey data were collected from 154 university students across four management modules in a large Australian university. Multiple regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses and open-ended questions were used to understand why the team intervention was effective.

The results showed that the implementation of an effective team intervention leads to higher levels of team cohesion and subsequently team performance. Open-ended responses revealed that the team intervention caused students to develop team-based sills and increase regular contributions.

In order to develop positive team behaviours amongst students in group assignments and increase the effectiveness of team-based learning activities, educators should implement a regular and process focused team contribution intervention, like the one proposed in this study.

This research contributes to the team intervention literature by drawing on the social information processing perspective, to demonstrate how an intervention that is based on the students’ social processing, task focused, regular implementation and formative feedback has a salient effect over team cohesion.

Reports results from an extensive survey of major American change programmes which revealed a set of clusters of interventions. Most typically, the change programmes involved combinations of intervention techniques. Team‐building, strategic planning, skill building and restructuring were the most common interventions. Success, however, appeared to depend on complex interactions amongst individual, organizational and change process variables.

The pressures currently facing US health care organisations, especially hospitals, in a risk environment are analysed. An important route to maximising efficiency is identified as improved collaboration amongst personnel. Team‐building interventions are recommended and the elements essential to effective team building are listed together with the benefits that can accrue from such exercises.

For many years there has been a preoccupation with the need to evaluate the effectiveness of team building interventions (TBIs) in organizational development projects. Often these evaluations attempt some kind of measurement of the team before and after the team‐building event in order to measure any change in skills or attitudes. Such work has several potentially valuable outcomes. However, such research often has had mixed success in gathering or assessing data that would serve as conclusive (“bottom line”) proof in these cases. Much of the research does not even attempt an evaluation. It may be that the nature of the phenomena under investigation itself, or the circumstances under which data are collected, is not amenable to that kind of analysis. The starting point for this paper then, is twofold: (1) if it has proved elusive and largely fruitless to try to evaluate team building in these ways; maybe there is a better and more useful way to examine the action that takes place on TBIs?; and; (2) if it is the case that team building is often an intervention that in practice turns out to be less than permanent (and perhaps even damaging), what can be done to help overcome this problem? Takes the view that to try and assess the effectiveness of the team building event per se is to treat the team after the team‐building event as a finished product. Instead, the team‐building intervention is seen as a start, with the team in the process of becoming. Sees the team as a dynamic entity, always under flux and adapting to its circumstances. Postulates that if we can identify what is happening both within the team and to the individuals involved during a team‐building event that sparks off this process of becoming an effective team, then this might gives assistance to the organization as to what kinds of support, practices and resources they might be able to offer the team on its return to ensure the becoming continues. Data were collected from 22 full‐time MBA students on a three‐day outward bound residential course via an open‐ended questionnaire. Each student was asked to recount, in their own words, positive and negative events on a daily basis and consider whether anything had changed regarding themselves or the team. Examines emergent themes in a discursive way and proposes tentative recommendations in what is a preliminary study in an ongoing piece of work.

Team coaching (TC) is a popular new addition to the team learning and development toolkit. However, the conceptualization of TC and the distinction between TC, team training, team development and team building interventions remains unclear. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors address this significant gap by abductively exploring how TC is conceptualised in practice (n=410). The authors survey practitioners engaged in delivering TC to ask how they would define TC and distinguish it from other team interventions.

A thematic analysis of the data reveals eight themes, which can be used to define TC and illustrate areas of overlap and distinctiveness with other team interventions.

The absence of a clearly defined construct is hindering the development of a rigorous theory of TC. The contribution of the paper is, therefore, a clear and comprehensive definition of TC, which can be used by researchers and practitioners alike when working within the domain of TC.

The paper provides the first systematic exploration of a definition of TC in relation to alternative team interventions. By utilising an abductive approach in the research, the authors are able to capitalise on practitioner experience in this practice-led field.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of applying appreciative intelligence and appreciative inquiry concepts to design a possibly new model of ice‐breaking, which is strengths‐based and very often used in any training in general and team building training in particular.

The design has evolved from the authors' study and practice of appreciative intelligence and appreciative inquiry in their consulting and facilitation work.

A new ice‐breaking design is proposed which is built on a strengths‐based generative model of appreciative intelligence and appreciative inquiry. The new design infuses creativity and positive envisioning into the context of team‐building intervention. The appreciatively intelligent ice‐breaking design engages the team energy in an inspiring manner, channeling the team deliberations and working with a focused positive agenda founded in generative capabilities. Arguments are offered in terms of how the proposed new design is different and advantageous over the traditional ice‐breaking model.

This paper presents a value‐seeking and value‐adding design of an ice‐breaking exercise in the context of a team building intervention. Practical implications of this new design for both OD practitioners/trainers and academic educators are discussed.