Being able to work in groups is an important skill to master at university – especially when you’re assessed on it. Learn how to master this key professional and life skill to become an effective team member. Build communication skills and get to know your team Define roles and workloads by playing to everyone’s strengths Resolve challenges so you can avoid conflict. Super Quick Skills provides the essential building blocks you need to succeed at university - fast. Packed with practical, positive advice on core academic and life skills, you’ll discover focused tips and strategies to use straight away. Whether it’s writing great essays, understanding referencing or managing your wellbeing, find out how to build good habits and progress your skills throughout your studies. Learn core skills quickly Apply them right away and see results Succeed in your studies and in life Super Quick Skills gives you the foundations you need to confidently navigate the ups and downs of university life.

From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together

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.

From tribal religious rituals to the Playboy mansion, and from ancient Rome to Burning Man, Plays Well in Groups explores the phenomenon of group sex. Author Katherine Frank draws on surveys, ethnographic research, participant interviews, and more to provide explanations for both, participation in group sex and our complex reactions to it, from fascination to fear. This book looks at group sex across cultures—who has it, and why. Group sex is almost always taboo and often criminalized, and yet it persists across cultures throughout history. Plays Well in Groups looks at the symbolism of orgies, as well as contemporary manifestations of group sex in bathhouses and public sex venues, at BDSM and swinging parties, on Craigslist, and in political scandals, Tantra classes, reality television, and more. Frank explores the many reasons people participate in group sex, from arousal to spiritual transcendence, in this bold study of subversive sexuality.

What are the secrets of successful teams? Why do some teams achieve remarkable success while others fail or are consigned to mediocrity? To find the answers, Carl E. Larson and Frank M. J. LaFasto conducted a three-year study of teams and team achievement. Interviewing a wide range of teams, including the space shuttle Challenger investigation team, executive management teams and a championship football team, Larson and LaFasto discovered a surprising consistency in the characteristics of effective teams. In Teamwork, they explore the eight properties of successful teams: a clear, elevating goal; a results-driven structure; competent team members; unified commitment; collaborative climate; standards of excellence; external support and recognition; and principled leadership. A final chapter examines the priority of the steps that lead to the building of a high performance team. The authors strive to make the concepts concrete, coupling solid theory with straightforward, practical advice on how to apply it and with lively, fascinating anecdotes. The volume will appeal to practitioners, scholars, and advanced students in the areas of organization studies and management, as well as interpersonal communication. "We believe it is an important book that will be very useful to the sport psychology community. Its brief and readable nature makes it an ideal supplementary text for courses in the social psychology of sport or sport-related group dynamics. It could also be used in research methods courses to provide insight into qualitative data collection procedures. In addition, coaches and mental skills consultants will find much valuable information here about the evaluation and enhancement of team functioning. Finally, researchers will be intrigued by Larson and LaFasto′s eight-category framework and their brief description of a rating-scale instrument designed to assess these dimensions of team effectiveness. Given this diversity of potential uses, we urge our colleagues to examine Teamwork for themselves." --The Sport Psychologist "(A) superb effort conducted by the authors. . . . A must read." --HR Planning Newsletter "Teamwork attempts an ambitious goal in a small number of pages and succeeds quite well. . . . The authors have useful and interesting things to say--things that fit well with what other studies and authors have concluded and with what the teams they studied experienced and concluded. A prime audience for this book would be managers and team members with a modest ′academic bent′ who want guidance on how to make their teams work more effectively and who are willing to listen to the reasons why the authors make their suggestions and how they reach their conclusions. Students and academics who are looking for a wise and balanced attempt to capture what we seem to be learning about what works in groups should also find this refreshingly short volume valuable." --Journal of Management "Larson and LaFasto provide a brief, efficient, and well-focused checklist of principles for managing group processes. The authors report on the results of a relatively systematic, 3-year program on in-depth interviews with participants from ′successful teams′--e.g., a Mount Everest expedition; DeBakey-Cooley cardiac surgery teams; a Notre Dame championship football team; several business executive and project management teams; Presidential cabinets; and disaster response teams--to come up with some ′. . . distinguishing features of effectively functioning teams. . . .′ Practicing managers should have no difficulty identifying with anecdotes described in this book. A list of characteristics parallels the chapter outlines of this good organizational behavior textbook written from a management process perspective. . . . It is hard to imagine a more efficient way to capture the fundamentals than the way Larson and LaFasto have done it. Newly appointed supervisors without a formal organizational behavior and management process course--and any practicing manager who could use a quick brushup--will find this guidebook useful." --Human Resource Planning "Teamwork [is] one of the best and most concise handbooks on team management around. No one interested in teamwork should miss reading this guide." --The Learning Edge

The past half-century has witnessed a dramatic increase in the scale and complexity of scientific research. The growing scale of science has been accompanied by a shift toward collaborative research, referred to as "team science." Scientific research is increasingly conducted by small teams and larger groups rather than individual investigators, but the challenges of collaboration can slow these teams' progress in achieving their scientific goals. How does a team-based approach work, and how can universities and research institutions support teams? Enhancing the Effectiveness of Team Science synthesizes and integrates the available research to provide guidance on assembling the science team; leadership, education and professional development for science teams and groups. It also examines institutional and organizational structures and policies to support science teams and identifies areas where further research is needed to help science teams and groups achieve their scientific and translational goals. This report offers major public policy recommendations for science research agencies and policymakers, as well as recommendations for individual scientists, disciplinary associations, and research universities. Enhancing the Effectiveness of Team Science will be of interest to university research administrators, team science leaders, science faculty, and graduate and postdoctoral students.

The benefits of collaborative learning are well documented—and yet, almost every teacher knows how group work can go wrong: restless students, unequal workloads, lack of accountability, and too little learning for all the effort involved. In this book, educators Nancy Frey, Douglas Fisher, and Sandi Everlove show you how to make all group work productive group work: with all students engaged in the academic content and with each other, building valuable social skills, consolidating and extending their knowledge, and increasing their readiness for independent learning. The key to getting the most out of group work is to match research-based principles of group work with practical action. Classroom examples across grade levels and disciplines illustrate how to * Create interdependence and positive interaction * Model and guide group work * Design challenging and engaging group tasks * Ensure group and individual accountability * Assess and monitor students' developing understanding (and show them how to do the same) * Foster essential interpersonal skills, such as thinking with clarity, listening, giving useful feedback, and considering different points of view. The authors also address the most frequently asked questions about group work, including the best ways to form groups, accommodate mixed readiness levels, and introduce collaborative learning routines into the classroom. Throughout, they build a case that productive group work is both an essential part of a gradual release of responsibility instructional model and a necessary part of good teaching practice.