Using imaginative examples, this entertaining and informative book looks at the ways anyone who is part of a team can help improve its performance. The reader travels through time and space with Team Fantastic--in the Brazilian jungle looking for a cache of diamonds, on a mid-eighteenth century railroad track straightening ties, in the seventeenth century acting in a Shakespearean play--and shares the successes and failures of this fictional team while learning valuable real-life team skills from it. A series of recommendations for team members provides specific advice on how to manage conflict, better utilize available skills, become more innovative, build commitment, and more. A worksheet helps the reader choose the most important recommendations, rank them by importance, and develop specific goals for team improvement.

Geographically dispersed teams are work groups with members separated by time and distance. Essential to the success of organizations in a global marketplace, these teams create unique challenges to effective task performance. This report summarizes what the important literature on GDTs has to say about how they should be formed, developed, and led. It is primarily for individuals charged with creating or leading GDTs, for designers who provide the technology for these teams, for trainers who are expected to help these teams develop and operate, and for organizational consultants called in to assist.

This hands-on guide instructs the business manager in how to organize and direct teams. All aspects of creating a successful team are described, including identifying tasks and choosing effective people, steps to effective leadership, ensuring harmonious relations, and monitoring the team's progress.

This guide provides over 300 pages of resources suggested by leadership educators in surveys, Center for Creative Leadership staff, and search of library resources. This eighth edition is half-new, including web sites and listserv discussion groups, and it places a stronger focus on meeting the needs of human resources professionals and corporate trainers. An annotated bibliography groups leadership materials in several broad categories: overview; in context; history, biography and literature; competencies; research, theories, and models; training and development; social, global, and diversity issues; team leadership; and organizational leadership (180 pages). Includes annotated lists of: journals and newsletters (9 pages); instruments (21 pages); exercises (41 pages); instrument and exercise vendors (5 pages); videos (29 pages); video distributors (4 pages); web sites (6 pages); organizations (21 pages); and conferences (9 pages). (Contains a 66-page index of all resources.) (TEJ)

Approaching issues from an evaluative perspective enables leadership development professionals to consider multiple perspectives and draw lessons as a natural part of the way work is done.

As a part of the effort to find new ways to promote the development of leadership, trainers have begun to make use of artistic activities. One such activity is the touchstone exercise, in which people create sculptures that represent their vision and purpose as leaders. This report describes how the exercise is conducted, provides examples of sculptures (or touchstones) produced in programs at the Center for Creative Leadership, and considers the effectiveness of the activity as a means of facilitating leadership development.