successful teamwork a case study

français
español
português (Brasil)
Bahasa Indonesia
Home
Educational collections
Ethics in Higher Education

The Library

Successful teamwork:a case study., full record, online access, collections.

entitlement

Show Statistical Information

Export search results

The export option will allow you to export the current search results of the entered query to a file. Different formats are available for download. To export the items, click on the button corresponding with the preferred download format.

By default, clicking on the export buttons will result in a download of the allowed maximum amount of items.

To select a subset of the search results, click "Selective Export" button and make a selection of the items you want to export. The amount of items that can be exported at once is similarly restricted as the full export.

After making a selection, click one of the export format buttons. The amount of items that will be exported is indicated in the bubble next to export format.

Corpus ID: 110468570

Successful teamwork:A case study.

Pina Tarricone , Joseph Luca
Published 2002

Tables from this paper

126 Citations

A model for successful teamwork, identifying peers to form an effective team in a project-based course innovative practice, power and culture of teamwork, students’ perception on the effectiveness of teamwork based activities in enhancing the learning process, building interdisciplinary teams through student design competitions: a case study, teamwork effectiveness in student's final year project, authentic design and administration of group-based assessments to improve the job-readiness of project management graduates, developing teamwork skills in undergraduate science students: the academic perspective and practice, student perceptions of teamwork within assessment tasks in undergraduate science degrees, conditioning factors and opportunities for teamwork. a case study from a catalan university, 20 references, does emotional intelligence affect successful teamwork, on becoming a team player.

Highly Influential

Team or group? Managers’ perceptions of the differences

Managing effectively through teams.

22 Excerpts

High-performance teams: Lessons from the pygmies

Team performance management, developing e-learning environments that support knowledge construction in higher education, the effect of personality type on team performance, the wolf pack: team dynamics for the 21st century, cooperative learning: making “groupwork” work, related papers.

Showing 1 through 3 of 0 Related Papers

Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia

Search form

About HERDSA
HERDSA Conference
Publications
Events Calendar

Research and Development in Higher Education Vol. 25: Quality Conversations

Why are some teams successful and others unsuccessful? What criteria or attributes are needed for success? Contemporary teaching and learning practice over the past few years in higher education institutions has seen a proliferation of open-ended constructivist learning designs that incorporate collaboration. This has promoted the need for identifying essential attributes needed for successful teamwork. This study reviews the literature with a view of identifying a framework that educators can use to help promote effective teamwork in their classes. A case study is used to investigate two teams of final year multimedia students completing a project-based unit, in which teamwork was an essential ingredient and immersed in an authentic context. Attributes gleaned from the literature for successful teamwork was used to compare the two diverse teams.

Keywords: Teamwork, higher education, authentic environment

Home > Research outputs pre 2011 > 4008

Research outputs pre 2011

Successful teamwork: a case study.

Pina Tarricone , Edith Cowan University Joseph Luca , Edith Cowan University

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia

Faculty of Community Services, Education and Social Sciences

School of Communications and Multimedia

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of: Tarricone, P. & Luca, J. (2002) Successful teamwork: A case study, in Quality Conversations, Proceedings of the 25th HERDSA Annual Conference, Perth, Western Australia, 7-10 July 2002: pp 640-646. Available here

Access Rights

free_to_read

Since September 07, 2010

Included in

Communication Technology and New Media Commons

Advanced Search Help Using Search

Notify me via email or RSS
Edith Cowan University
Collections
Disciplines

Author Information

Author Guidelines
Thesis Submission Guidelines

Article Locations

View articles on map
View articles in Google Earth

Home | About | FAQ | My Account | Accessibility Statement

Privacy Copyright

Teams That Changed The World (Team Case Studies)

Written by Victoria Allen

Apr 13, 2018 - Last updated: Aug 30, 2023

During our lifetime there are an abundance of occasions in which we are required to work as part of a team; most notably in the workplace, and because of this, organisations are habitually faced with complex problems, sometimes in higher levels of pressure circumstances.

Team development is more than just running team meetings and ticking of boxes. It involves making hard decisions, and working for the good of others even when the end is not in sight. Great teams cultivate a sense of psychological safety across the organization— from senior executive all the way down to entry-level colleagues.

What it Takes to Build a Top-Performing Team

The proper formation and careful maintenance of a team is crucial to the team's performance and success. Establishing a diverse team with mixed skills and strengths can improve team effectiveness and productivity. They also have a positive effect on the team's dynamics and help everyone achieve key goals individually and together.

Another vital element is communication. By communicating with one another and understanding each other’s communication styles and preferences, a shared culture is created.

Disagreements can be avoided (or easily resolved), with people understanding their individual and group roles in order for each team member to be striving for the same collective goal.

Research lead by Google has concluded that the best teams included team members who listen to one another and show sensitivity. Studies have also shown that when people work in high performing teams, in contrast to working alone, they are more productive and report greater job satisfaction.

Working in a team results faster innovation, quicker mistake detection and correction, better problem-solving, and greater performance according to research findings.

History is littered with top performing team case studies, and in this article we will look at the three top performing teams that we believe changed the world as we know it.

Before we dive into the case studies, if you're wanting to build a high performing team then you should take a look at QuizBreaker . It's an all-in-one team engagement platform that helps brings teams closer together through a variety of great tools. They offer a 7 day free trial too.

NASA’s Apollo 11

A huge milestone for science and for mankind, NASA’s 1969 Apollo 11 mission is a great demonstration of high-performing teams.

Televised across the world, three astronauts made the revolutionary journey toward the moon and two of the three astronauts stepped foot onto the moon’s surface, creating history.

Whilst Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins are the well-known faces of this prodigious achievement, they wouldn’t have made it to the history books without the efforts of their supporting team - years of previous research and expertise allowed this mission to take place and succeed.

For two years prior to the operation, mission planners studied the moon’s surface using photographs from satellites and the Surveyor spacecraft, to find the best place for Apollo 11 to land. They needed to consider the geography of the surface, factoring in craters, boulders and cliffs, as well as the best time to land due to the positioning of the sun.

NASA has estimated that more than 400,000 people made the moon landings possible; scientists, engineers and technicians, who had never worked in aerospace before, were given contracts to design a machine capable of transporting humans safely to out of space.

The astronauts visited the laboratories in order to create a human connection to foster a more cohesive team – the workers met the men whose lives were in their hands. In the operations control room, during each flight, there were numerous technicians guiding and supporting those heading into outer space. Essentially, each step of the way, communication was paramount, enabling the team behind NASA’s Apollo 11 to achieve a historical milestone.

The Manhattan Project

The American-led mission to develop the world’s first atomic weapon during WW2 was code-named the Manhattan Project .

It was and still is, thought of as a highly controversial assignment, though it is hard to dispute that it is an excellent example of a top performing senior leadership team.

The task began in 1942 after authorisation from U.S. President Roosevelt. Utilising the minds’ of some of the world’s leading scientists and military personnel, the Manhattan Project started as an attempt to beat the Nazis in a race against time to build a nuclear weapon. However, with hindsight, we now know that the Nazis would not be successful in their attempts to build an atomic bomb.

Involving over 130,000 individuals, spread across 13 locations in the United States of America and Canada, and all sworn to secrecy, this mammoth of a project had a huge risk of exposure and sabotage and therefore communication and coordination would be vital to this mission’s success.

One of the reasons why the Manhattan Project is considered one of the greatest examples of the top performing team case studies is that often, within the realm of research and invention, scientists have a desire to compete against others in order to gain notoriety for their work.

However in this instance, scientists (and other specialists) worked within a team and adopted a group mentality in order to achieve a shared goal.

The Royal Society of London

The Royal Society of London is a classic and old example of a top performing team. Granted a royal charter by King Charles II, the Royal Society of London was the first national scientific institution in the world.

Founded in 1660 and often referred to as “the invisible college”, the society was orchestrated by its team leaders in order to encourage the exchange of scientific and philosophic ideas and theories. The society’s motto “Nullius in verba” is translated as “take nobody’s word for it”. The motto was upheld as a manifest of the members’ drive to verify all statements by the means of scientific facts and experimental research findings.

Notable members over the years have included the legendary Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking.

When the society was formed, during a time dominated by prejudice, war and political unrest, the group prided itself of the fact that it accepted members of all backgrounds.

Papers were exchanged between the scientific scholars, and within the space of just 70 years the science we employ in everyday life today was developed. This includes the sciences of anatomy, astronomy, botany, chemistry, physics and zoology.

The team’s achievements were established on a foundation of trust, support and respect, as well as a collective goal – the advancement of science.

Many of us use Wikipedia on a regular basis and do not stop to think what a great example of teamwork the website portrays.

Volunteer writers and editors contribute by inputting knowledge and facts about the world onto the website in order to create an accessible and easily understood encyclopedic database. Without an army of regular employees, the team worked together to build the biggest database of information of all time.

Wikipedia is one of the most viewed websites in the world and is the result of the cumulative efforts of a vast, and somewhat anonymous, team.

In the world of sports, when thinking about top performing team case studies, one famous team in particular comes to mind.

The New Zealand national rugby union team

The All Blacks , are considered to be one of the greatest performing international teams in history.

Representing a country of just 4.5 million inhabitants, the All Blacks appear to be an untouchable team. They have won the title in 3 World Cups and accomplish a better ratio of wins than other sports teams, making them the foremost sports franchise in history.

In their 125 year long history, the All Blacks have won more than three-quarter of the games they have participated in which is a statistic unsurpassed by any other national sports team. Despite the frequent long periods of time spent away from family whilst touring for matches internationally, the team have a strong determination and drive to achieve a common goal - to win every game and maintain their reputation. All Black team players, including the coach, are seen as equal and as important components in the creation and maintenance of a successful team.

Nature - Birds

There are even examples of effective team performance in nature; think of geese, for example, each winter the flock work together in order to achieve their common goal - reaching their seasonal destination. Communicating by honking at one another, they encourage those who appear to be losing momentum or getting tired.

Or, by flying in a v-shape formation, the geese reduce the drag for those behind them. The same principles could be implemented in an organisational team. Or, by nurturing a team mentality, all members share a common goal and feel supported by one another.

History teaches us that in order for teams to be successful, the conditions must be right. Nurturing management styles, and awareness of others working styles are just some of the contributing factors that aid the creation of a high performance team.

Google’s " Project Aristotle " has highlighted the fact that when individuals join an organisational team, they do not want to leave their individuality and personality at home. People want to be their true selves and feel that they are free to share ideas and thoughts in a psychologically safe environment.

Communication, empathy and mutual understanding all create a productive environment for increased performance and job satisfaction.

By understanding each other’s work styles, strengths and attributes, work stops becoming an act of labour and becomes a collective goal or mission.

No man is an island. Business is a team sport!

About the author

Victoria is a Psychology Masters graduate and works in psychology research/copywriting. She has a background in marketing and has previously worked within the NHS in the Mental Health services. Victoria loves animals and is a self-confessed Pinterest-addict. She is always dreaming of her next travel adventure.

Build unique personality profiles for your team to help them work more effectively together

Start today

What makes teams work?

Psychologists are pinpointing the factors that make teams gel—research that has far-reaching implications for health care, education, research, industry and more

By Kirsten Weir

September 2018, Vol 49, No. 8

Print version: page 46

15 min read

Healthy Workplaces

The lone wolf is becoming an endangered species. In fields from health care to hospitality, startups to big business, teamwork has become the favored way to get things done. "The world is so complex, no one person has the skills or knowledge to accomplish all that we want to accomplish," says Susan McDaniel, PhD, a psychologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center and 2016 APA president known for her dedication to team-based work. "Interdisciplinary teams are the way to make that happen."

While humans have always joined forces with one another to achieve shared goals, psychologists are zeroing in on the methods and processes that make those collaborations more efficient and successful. "What's changing is the understanding and appreciation that there is a science behind how to manage teams," says Suzanne Bell, PhD, an associate professor of industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology at DePaul University in Chicago.

Now, a special issue of American Psychologist (Vol. 73, No. 4, 2018) details what psychologists have learned—and need to learn—about working in teams. "The Science of Teamwork," co-edited by McDaniel and colleague Eduardo Salas, PhD, of Rice University in Houston, in cooperation with American Psychologist editor-in-chief Anne E. Kazak, PhD, offers 21 articles that delve into the theory, research and applications of team science.

Here, we look at some of the most significant findings in the special issue, particularly the ways that team processes matter for psychologists, whether they're working in health care, research, industry, the military or education.

Building a dream team

Sometimes teams seem to click without too much effort, working together seamlessly and producing great work as a result. Other collaborations crash and burn. A team's success often depends on its composition, as Bell and her co-authors describe in their contribution to the special issue.

Surface-level attributes of individual team members—such as age, gender and reputation—can be important to the team's overall function, but they aren't necessarily the factors that matter most, Bell says. Instead, it's the "deep-level" factors you can't see at a glance, such as the members' personality traits, values and abilities, that tend to have a much bigger impact on work teams, studies suggest.

Those deep-level factors shape what researchers call the ABCs of teamwork: the attitudes, behaviors and cognitive states that collectively influence whether a team achieves its goals. Those elements depend to some degree on the context and on the team's objectives, Bell says. If the goal is to design an innovative new digital device, it's a good idea to build a team with diverse thinkers who bring a range of knowledge, skills and abilities to the project. But if a team's goal is to be more efficient, diverse attitudes might be less critical.

Team success also hinges on some basic tenets of team composition, say Bell and her co-authors. One person's mood and outlook can spread within a team, so a pessimistic team member could negatively influence the way the whole group views its goals. Individuals who value working in groups tend to be both more confident and more cooperative in a team setting. When team members are high in conscientiousness, they are better at self-regulating their teamwork. And groups composed of high-ability members who are able to learn, reason, adapt and solve problems are more likely to work well together.

Researchers are working to design algorithms that help organizations create effective teams for specific goals. In a project with NASA, for instance, Bell and colleagues are developing algorithms to identify crew members suited to working together on long-distance space missions.

Ultimately, such tools can help organizations create the best possible teams from the outset and tailor interventions for the unique needs of a team with a specific composition. "Teams are complex systems," Bell says. "The more you can manage them using a scientific basis, the better your teams will be."

The secret sauce: Cooperation in the military

Using scientific methods to understand teams isn't a new trend. Military researchers have been studying teamwork systematically for more than half a century, as Gerald F. Goodwin, PhD, of the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, and colleagues describe in an article in the special issue. "The military has been really central in supporting and executing research on teams since the 1950s," he says. "That support has been critical to moving this science forward."

Research on military teams has led to several core ideas that inform our understanding of how teams work best in both military and civilian settings.

That distinction might seem obvious, says Goodwin, but understanding the elements that allow teams to function well—team cohesion and shared mental models, for example—is important for training teams as well as evaluating their performance. "How well people work together may be more important than how well they work on the tasks," he says. "The secret sauce comes from the teamwork."

Research from military settings has also clarified the importance of team cognition—what teams think, how they think together and how well synchronized their beliefs and perceptions are. Team cognition is what allows team members to understand intuitively how their teammates will think and act, whether on the battlefield, in a surgical suite or on a basketball court. "Team cognition is really important for teams that have to quickly adapt to dynamic circumstances without having the opportunity to communicate a lot," Goodwin says.

Many of the empirical findings from military research apply to civilian teams as well. From the earliest studies, military and civilian researchers have openly shared findings and worked together to grow the science of teamwork, Goodwin says. The military, for instance, has made use of results from team research in aviation. Meanwhile, findings from military-funded research have informed processes in many industries, health care in particular.

Teaming up for better health

Teams in the military and in health care share an important commonality: They can be operating in situations in which team coordination can be a matter of life or death. Some of the earlier research on health-care teams focused on hospital settings, where teamwork failures can lead to patient harms such as misdiagnoses, medication mistakes, surgical errors and hospital-acquired infections. In a paper for the special issue, Michael Rosen, PhD, an associate professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and colleagues describe how medical team coordination affects patient safety and the quality of patient care.

Unlike teams in a business setting that might collaborate with one another for months at a time, health-care teams are often fluid, especially in hospitals. Medical personnel including physicians, nurses, surgical assistants and pharmacists might have to jump into a new care team at each shift change or for each new patient. The fundamentals of good collaboration are the same no matter how transient the team, Rosen says: "It's about having clear roles, clear goals and a clear plan of care."

Teams are also becoming increasingly important in primary-care settings. "I think the industry is recognizing that we don't have a choice. Health care has become too complex, and the current model isn't working very well," says Kevin Fiscella, MD, a professor of family medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center who co-authored a special issue article with McDaniel on the science of primary-care teams. "It's not a question of whether we adopt teamwork [in primary care], but how we do it—and how we begin addressing the barriers to teams."

Unfortunately, those barriers are not insignificant, Fiscella adds. One challenge is simply changing the way that many physicians think about primary care. "I graduated from medical school in 1980, and our whole training was that care is about me and the patient, and everybody else is there to support that relationship," he says. While that mentality is changing, it's not dead yet. "That unfortunate mental model of what it means to provide primary care can make it difficult" to move toward team thinking, he adds.

Systemic challenges also make collaboration difficult in primary-care settings. Clinicians such as family physicians, specialists and mental health professionals might be spread out in different locations. "It makes it harder to support other team members who are making important contributions," Fiscella says.

The traditional fee-for-service payment model also makes it difficult for medical professionals to prioritize teamwork, Fiscella and McDaniel add. Research has shown, for example, that when primary-care teams have short "huddles" before a visit to coordinate their care plans, they routinely report better teamwork and more supportive practice climates. Similarly, short team debriefings at the end of the day to hash out what worked and what didn't can boost learning and performance among team members and improve outcomes for patients.

Yet due to scheduling challenges, it can be tough for primary-care teams to find even a few minutes to come together for huddles or debriefings. "Time is money. If you take time out for a team meeting, that's lost revenue," Fiscella says.

Teamwork in the lab

Academia is famous for its departmental silos, but that, too, is changing as multidisciplinary research becomes the norm across all fields of science. Team science is gaining momentum for good reason, says Kara Hall, PhD, director of the Science of Team Science Team at the National Cancer Institute and co-author of a special issue article about collaboration in science.

Globalization and technology have made the pressing problems of society ever more complex, Hall says. Take the public health problem of reducing tobacco use, for instance. To address that challenge, you need an understanding of the genetic, neural, psychological and behavioral factors related to tobacco dependence, not to mention related social forces and the public policy context. "If you want to solve an applied global health problem, you need people who can bring their specialized knowledge to bear," she says. "Multidisciplinary teams can really [create] movement on these big problems."

Research on team science has found that collaborating across organizational and geographic boundaries increases productivity and scientific impact. And cross-disciplinary teams produce more academic publications and publish in more diverse outlets, Hall and her colleagues report.

Despite proven benefits, it can be hard for a researcher to wrap his or her head around team science. Most scientists were trained in an apprenticeship model, learning the ropes from a single mentor. "Historically, our scientists haven't been trained to work in teams or to lead teams," Hall says.

Even if scientists are prepared to take the leap to team-based research, their institutions might not be. Tenure and promotion are usually based on outputs such as academic publications, with more weight given to a paper's lead author and to articles published in journals in a researcher's own discipline. That model rewards competition, with the potential for tension as team members hash out who should be credited as first author. Team science is built instead on interdisciplinary cooperation—but so far, only a few academic institutions reward those cooperative efforts.

Because of the lack of team training and the institutional hurdles, Hall says, a research project may be technically and scientifically well-conceived yet fail to yield anticipated outcomes. If a cross-disciplinary team fails to meet its goals, was it because the topic was better suited to intradisciplinary science? Was it a problem with the way the team was composed? Or could the team have succeeded if members had received more institutional support and training?

Still, some early patterns are emerging to guide the way toward improved science teams, Hall and her co-authors report. Some studies have found that small teams are best for generating ideas that shake up the status quo, for instance, while larger teams are better at further developing those big ideas. And while cultural diversity can increase a science team's impact, diverse teams might benefit from more team science principles to head off challenges such as miscommunication.

Multicutural questions

The role of diversity in teamwork is a topic that needs a lot more attention, not just for scientific teams but in all areas of teamwork, says Jennifer Feitosa, PhD, an assistant professor of I/O psychology at the City University of New York, Brooklyn College. In the special issue, Feitosa and her co-authors describe the ways in which multicultural teams may function differently from teams in which all members share the same cultural background.

While multicultural teams can generate unique solutions, it can take longer for a diverse team to find its groove compared with a team made up of people with similar backgrounds and mindsets.

Yet it can take longer for a diverse team to find its groove than a team with similar backgrounds and mindsets. Individuals in multicultural teams are more likely to have different ways of doing things and might not understand where their fellow team members are coming from. "If you take a snapshot of a multicultural team at the beginning, it doesn't look so promising. They often need more time to all get on the same page," Feitosa says.

In both multicultural teams and more homogenous teams, trust is a key component for effective collaboration, Feitosa and her colleagues reported. But because of their differences, members of multicultural teams might have difficulty trusting each other at first.

"Focusing on shared goals can really help to develop that trust," she says.

In other ways, diverse teams operate quite differently from teams with cultural similarities. In the general teamwork literature, for example, research suggests that it's important to address and manage team conflict head-on. But when team members come from cultures that emphasize harmony and avoid conflict, calling out the elephant in the room can make people extremely uncomfortable and interfere with the teamwork dynamic, Feitosa says.

Differences in leadership style can also hinder multicultural teams. In North America, organizations are moving toward giving individuals greater autonomy and opportunities for self-management, Feitosa notes. "In very collectivistic and high power-distance cultures, people might rely more heavily on direction from team leaders and might rather be told what to do."

Fortunately, teams can prevent cultural differences from becoming obstacles by creating a "hybrid" culture, the authors report. "It's about establishing team norms that aren't entirely your culture or entirely my culture, but a little bit of everyone's," Feitosa says.

The research on multicultural teams can guide those looking to create collaborations that are both diverse and high-functioning. But to fully harness the value of cross-cultural perspectives and talents, Feitosa and her colleagues conclude, much more needs to be done to integrate findings from research on single-culture teams and multicultural teams. "Teamwork is a complex phenomenon, so we need to get more creative in how we look at this," she says.

Intervening to improve teamwork

Although researchers have more work to do to fully understand team processes, especially in multicultural contexts, it's not too early to apply what we know, Salas says. For the special issue, Salas and colleagues described evidence-based approaches for improving teamwork.

Organizations are clamoring for tools to make their teams more effective. "Team building is probably the No. 1 human resources intervention in the world," Salas says. Yet the results of such programs are mixed. If you send a group of executives into the wilderness for two days, they might have fun and learn something about one another—but it doesn't mean they'll magically develop new teamwork skills.

Put them into evidence-based team trainings, however, and the story is different. "Team training works," Salas says. "We know how to design, develop and evaluate it."

In particular, Salas and his colleagues describe four types of team development interventions that have been shown to benefit team performance: team training, team building, leadership training and debriefing.

Team training describes formalized learning experiences that aim to improve specific team skills or competencies. Structured team training has been shown to improve teamwork functioning and outcomes in industries such as education, engineering and health care. A prime example is TeamSTEPPS , an intervention to reduce medical errors by improving communication and teamwork skills among health-care professionals (see sidebar). Team-building interventions, meanwhile, aim to better teams by improving interpersonal relationships, clarifying roles and improving problem-solving. Such interventions might focus on increasing trust or setting challenging yet specific goals, for example. Leadership training targets a team leader's knowledge, skills and abilities, and improvements to these areas have been shown to support effective overall team processes. When leaders are trained in occupational safety, for instance, their teams exhibit safer behaviors on the job. Finally, team debriefings of the sort used in primary-care settings have been shown to improve performance in a variety of settings, including aviation and military teams.

There's power in numbers, and high-performing teams can be more than the sum of their parts. It's fortunate, then, that teamwork processes can be measured and improved with targeted interventions. But to keep sharpening the science, psychologists must continue exploring the conditions that allow teams to succeed, Salas says.

There's certainly no shortage of demand, he adds. "There's a tremendous amount of interest in trying to understand collaboration and teamwork—in health care, aviation, academia, the military, space exploration, the corporate world. I hope this special issue will inspire people to improve their teams, and to look for new ways of motivating their teams using psychological science."

To read the full American Psychologist special issue on teamwork, go to http://psycnet.apa.org/PsycARTICLES/journal/amp/73/4 .

Further resources

APA: A Curriculum for an Interprofessional Seminar on Integrated Primary Care www.apa.org/education/grad/curriculum-seminar

National Cancer Institute: Team Science Toolkit www.teamsciencetoolkit.cancer.gov

Team building in health care

Letters to the Editor

Send us a letter

Real Life Examples of Successful Teamwork [9 Cases]

Instead of retelling the same old stories about the best teamwork practices from companies such as Google, Chevron, or the Southwest airlines (which don’t really help when you have a small-to-medium team), we decided to find real-life examples of successful teamwork.

We asked everyday entrepreneurs, CEOs, and HR managers one simple question:

How did you improve teamwork in your organization?

Here are the best 9 examples we came across.

3-step onboarding

Developing teamwork should start as soon as the new employee walks through the door. According to Lauren McAdams , career advisor and hiring manager at ResumeCompanion.com , the most successful method for creating excellent intra-team relations was instilling a sense of teamwork early on in the onboarding process.

”While we do experiment with different team-building measures, there are three that have become common practice:

First, during onboarding, we have new employees shadow an experienced “coach” who is tasked with helping their integration into the team. After the initial phase, we assign the new employees to shadow other people so they get to have more than one “coach”.

Next, when we begin a new project, I personally assign mini-teams to handle those projects. These smaller units are often comprised, in part, of employees who haven't had a chance to work together. This way, new hires get an opportunity to work and develop relationships with everyone they collaborate with.

And finally, leadership rotates on these projects so different people have a chance to test their leadership skills. Also, since project teams always have different people on them, everyone in the company gets to know each other at some point by working together. This level of exposure and collaboration resulted in very strong teamwork at our company.”

Role switching

Some organizations encourage their employees to walk a mile in someone else's shoes. Lee Fisher , an HR manager at Blinds Direct , says that successful teamwork should be based on solidarity, respect, communication, and mutual understanding. With that in mind, his company has been organizing a series of team-building events over the years.

“Our most unconventional event to date was the 'Role Switch'. It was launched across our web and marketing department. In the event, each team member switches roles with a colleague. Usually, team members work together closely but they don’t really understand the complexities of other person’s role.

Spending a day in your colleague’s shoes highlights their efforts, which brings more understanding and respect for one another. The 'Role Switch' was a huge success: it brought the team closer together and made people more considerate of other's workloads and requirements .”

Cross-training

Sharing experience with your peers is important, but recognizing where they can best help you improve is even more important. According to Steven Benson , founder, and CEO of Badger Maps , his company has benefited from one self-initiated cross-training session which resulted in an increase in both teamwork and productivity.

”An example of successful teamwork at our company was when the customer relation department put together an initiative of cross-training and specializing team members for different roles. After deciding who will focus on what, the group sat down and taught one another what they would need to become the expert in their respective area.

Because people were cross-trained, they had a broader set of skills they could use to handle customer interaction - which resulted in fewer hand-offs. This not only enhanced teamwork and productivity, but also improved customer satisfaction. Everyone worked as a team and covered for one another, which made everything move smoothly and quickly."

The Big Book of Team Culture

*Enter your email address and subscribe to our newsletter to get your hands on this, as well as many other free project management guides.

We weren't able to subscribe you to the newsletter. Please double-check your email address. If the issue persists, let us know by sending an email to [email protected]

Newsletter subscribers can download all free materials

Scheduled breaks and self-reflection

Publicly reflecting on achievements increases everyone’s morale. Bryan Koontz , CEO of Guidefitter , considers teamwork to be more than just brainstorming ideas or helping a colleague on a project - it’s about fostering a culture of trust and respect.

“A few ways we cultivate an environment of trust and respect is through meetings, or rather "breaks", that don't necessarily focus on work. By scheduling “break” times in our calendars, we allow our employees to talk, relax, and discuss the ins-and-outs of their days.

We also strengthen our teams through brief weekly meetings with the entire office: each Wednesday morning we huddle up to recap the past week, with each employee sharing one professional and one personal "win". This encourages everyone to pause for self-reflection on their achievements, often serving as motivation to their peers while forging a bond among our team members.”

Team traditions

Members of jelled teams have a strong sense of identity and often share traditions like getting together for a drink after work. According to Katerina Trajchevska co-founder and CEO of Adeva , establishing team traditions is the foundation upon which teamwork is built.

“Rather than using one particular method for strengthening our team, we focus on creating an environment that fosters team spirit and communication. We organize after hours drinks and hangouts, and develop a culture that encourages everyone to speak up and take part in the big decisions for the company.

Team traditions can do wonders, no matter how trivial they seem: we have a team lunch every Friday, celebrate birthdays and other important dates, and celebrate one of our national holidays together. All of this has contributed to a more cohesive and a close-knit team.”

Unconventional business meetings

Some companies use their business meetings to improve teamwork within the organization by making them fun and laid-back. James Lloyd-Townshend , CEO of Frank Recruitment Group believes that bringing teams together in an informal environment improves teamwork, strengthens bonds, and bolsters morale - which is why he decided to spice up the company’s monthly meetings.

”One unusual method we’ve introduced is “First Thursdays”: we start off our monthly business meetings with a business review, promotions, and awards - and then move on to an open bar event.

Apart from “First Thursdays,” we also have “Lunch Club”: another monthly event where employees enjoy an all-expense-paid afternoon to celebrate their success and enjoy fine dining and have fun with their colleagues.

However, the most popular team building method we employ is our incentivised weekends away. Our top-performing consultants get the chance to travel to major cities such as London, New York, and Miami as the rewards for their hard work.”

Peer recommendations

Some companies are building teamwork through peer recognition. Jacob Dayan , a partner, and co-founder of Community Tax said that encouraging employees to be active participants in recognizing their peers has proven to be quite a powerful motivational tool.

”I ask employees to share or report instances when someone on their or another team has been particularly helpful or has gone above and beyond their call of duty. After we thank the contributing employee for their input, we make sure the employee being acknowledged knows the source of information. Having employees “nominate” their peers for recognition has the additional bonus of bringing them closer together and building camaraderie with long-term productivity benefits.”

However, Mr. Dayan is well aware that peer reports and nominations can be driven by personal feelings (positive as well as negative), and can give an unrealistic representation of certain employee's contribution.

”Personal relationships, both close and less so, are an important consideration when pursuing this approach, which is why we do not hand out recognition without validating the worthiness of the employee's contribution. We ask the appropriate manager to review the submission and keep an eye on it over time, just to make sure there are no dubious activities.”

Conflict resolving

Successful teamwork happens when members of a group trust each other, are comfortable expressing themselves, and deal effectively with conflict, according to Laura MacLeod , a licensed social worker specialized in group work, an HR consultant, and a mastermind behind “From the inside out project” .

”Many companies think that team building is about company picnics, happy hours, and other fun events. These things are fine, but they don't address the real issues people face when they have to work together. Going out for a drink with someone you can't get along with will be just as uncomfortable and awkward as trying to finish a project with that person - the only difference is having alcohol as a buffer.”

According to Laura, certain team-building exercises can help individuals overcome both intragroup and personal conflicts .

“Choose simple activities that help build cohesion and trust amongst team members. For example, you can use “Pantomime in a circle” exercise: without using words, pass an imaginary object (a bucket of water or a ball) around the circle; the point of the exercise is for group members to rely on each other to complete the activity.

When it comes to personal misunderstandings, you might want to choose an activity where you are actually allowed to yell at a person. So, pair off people and have them repeat opposing sentences (such as it’s hot/it’s cold) back and forth - going from soft to very loud. This will allow people to get out strong emotions in a non-threatening way, and blow off some steam in the process.”

"Spotless" team-building exercise

Dmitri Kara , a tenancy expert at Fantastic Cleaners , shared with us a team-building exercise his team uses to increase cooperation and efficiency.

”Everybody in the office has to simultaneously perform a 2-to-5-minute cleaning routine (like wipe their desk, keyboard, monitor, shelves). But there’s a catch: the tools are limited. For example, make everybody wipe the dust off their desks at the same time but provide only 2 sprayers and 1 roll of paper towel (if your team has 10 members)-. Scarcity will encourage people to share and help each other.”

Besides providing obvious benefits (like a cleaner working environment), Dmitri says this team building activity boosts organization, improves long-term productivity, and develops a sense of morale, discipline, and shared responsibility. He even shares how the exercise came into being:

”At first it was not really a dedicated exercise. The first time we did it all together, it was because of a video shoot. But since it felt good, a few days later somebody said, "let's do that again". And that's where the whole thing came to be.”

ActiveCollab 2021 Calendar

Other posts in the series on the big book of team culture.

Tips To Take Better Meeting Notes
How To Be a Good Team Leader
How To Deal With a Toxic Coworker
How to Create Organizational Culture
Characteristics of a Productive Team
Group vs Team [Differences, Comparison, Transformation]
Belbin Team Roles: Theory and Practice
High Performing Teams: What Are They and How Do I Build One?
All Leadership Theories in Under 15 Minutes
What Is Teamwork Actually?
Organizational Culture and Its Impact on Team Performance
Types of Teams [Advantages and Disadvantages]

Start your trial today, free for 14 days ! Onboard your team, plan, collaborate, organize your work, and get paid.

By signing up you are agreeing to the ActiveCollab Terms of Service & Privacy Policy.

Choose your favorite topics and we’ll send our stories from the tech front lines straight to your inbox.

Unsubscribe at any time * ActiveCollab Privacy Policy

Just a second

Awesome! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter.

Oops, something went wrong! Please try again later.

We detected that you already have an ActiveCollab account

You can log in to an excisting account or you may start a new one

Great, just a few seconds and you're in.

All done! Redirecting you to your account.

We've sent you an email to confirm that it's you. Please check your email to complete the trial account creation.

Sorry, we could not create an account for you at this moment. Please double check your email address. If the issue still persists, please let us know by sending an email to [email protected]

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

View all journals
Explore content
About the journal
Publish with us
Sign up for alerts
Open access
Published: 14 October 2022

Towards understanding the characteristics of successful and unsuccessful collaborations: a case-based team science study

Hannah B. Love ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0011-1328 1 , 2 ,
Bailey K. Fosdick ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3736-2219 3 ,
Jennifer E. Cross ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5582-4192 2 ,
Meghan Suter ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8824-279X 4 ,
Dinaida Egan 4 ,
Elizabeth Tofany 3 &
Ellen R. Fisher ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6828-8600 5 , 6

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume 9 , Article number: 371 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

4274 Accesses

5 Citations

9 Altmetric

Metrics details

Complex networks
Information systems and information technology
Operational research
Science, technology and society

Scientific breakthroughs for complex, large-scale problems require a combination of contributory expertize, disciplinary expertize, and interactional expertize, or socialized knowledge. There is, however, little formal recognition of what expertize is important for team success, and how to evaluate different types of contributions. This is problematic for the field of the Science of Team Sciences (SciTS). Funding is increasing for team science globally, but how do we know if teams are collaborating in meaningful ways to meet their goals? Many studies use bibliometric and citation data to understand team development and success; nevertheless, this type of data does not provide timely metrics about collaboration. This study asks: Can we determine if a team is collaborating and working together in meaningful ways in a process evaluation to achieve their goals and be successful in an outcome evaluation, and if so, how? This exploratory longitudinal, mixed-methods, case-based study, reports on eight interdisciplinary scientific teams that were studied from 2015–2017. The study used six different methods of data collection: a social network analysis at three-time points, participant observation, interviews, focus groups, turn-taking data during team meetings, and outcome metrics (publications, award dollars, etc.). After collecting and analyzing the data, a Kendall Rank Correlation was used to examine which development and process metrics correlated with traditional outcome metrics: publications, proposals submitted, and awards received. Five major implications, practical applications, and outputs arise from this case-based study: (1) Practicing even turn-taking is essential to team success. (2) The proportion of women on the team impacts the outcomes of the team. (3) Further evidence that successful team science is not about picking the right people, but on how to build the right team for success. (4) This article presents process metrics to increase understanding of successful and unsuccessful teams. (5) Teams need to engage in practices that build relationships for knowledge integration. This case-based study represents an early step to more effectively communicate how teams form and produce successful outcomes and increase their capacity for knowledge integration. The results contribute to the knowledge bank of integration and implementation by providing additional evidence about evaluation for scientific teams, including the know-how related to everyday interactions that lead to goal attainment. This study provides further evidence that to create new knowledge, scientific teams need both contributory and interactional expertize.

Interpersonal relationships drive successful team science: an exemplary case-based study

Fresh teams are associated with original and multidisciplinary research

The impact of gender diversity on scientific research teams: a need to broaden and accelerate future research

Introduction.

Scientific breakthroughs for complex, large-scale problems require a more systemic approach than cross-disciplinary scientific teams merely exchanging information and collaborating across different disciplines (Read et al., 2016 ). They require different types of expertize. Bammer et al. ( 2020 ) defined two types of expertize needed to solve complex global challenges: contributory and interactional expertize. Contributory expertize is the “expertize required to make a substantive contribution to a field” (Collins and Evans, 2013 ; Collins H. and Evans, 2007 ). Interactional expertize is socialized knowledge about groups that are codified through “learning-by-doing,” and augmented from project to project (Bammer et al., 2020 ). Today’s most pressing environmental, societal, and health problems, however, cannot be solved with contributory expertize alone. To solve complex global problems, teams need to have both contributory and interactional expertize. This aligns with a growing body of literature that frames knowledge creation as a social process (Zhang et al., 2009 ; Brown and Duguid, 2000 ; Cravens et al., 2022 ; Csikszentmihalyi, 1999 ; Hakkarainen, 2009 ; Love et al., 2021 ; Paavola and Hakkarainen, 2005 ; Sawyer, 2003 , 2017 ; Wheatley and Frieze, 2006 ; Zhang et al., 2011 ) There is, however, little formal recognition of what expertize is important for the team’s success, and how to evaluate different types of contributions to the team’s success. To date, most SciTS research has relied heavily on bibliometric data to assess team formation, team structures, and outcomes (Duch et al., 2012 ; Guimerà et al., 2005 ; Leone Sciabolazza et al., 2017 ; Wuchty et al., 2007 ; Zeng et al., 2016 ). A recent review of literature on SciTS, published between 2006–2016, found 109 articles that met the criteria for inclusion as specific studies of scientific teams (Hall et al., 2018 ). They reported that 75% of these articles used pre-existing data (e.g., archival data), 62% used bibliometrics, over 40% used surveys, and over 10% used interview and observational data (Hall et al., 2018 ). Notably, the majority of these studies used only one evaluation method, rather than a mixed-methods approach to examine the processes of team formation and team interaction. This 2018 review concluded by stating there is “a critical need for more sophisticated designs, including those that are multivariate, examine multiple causal factors, and take longitudinal, experimental, or data-intensive approaches (e.g., within-team time series analyses or computationally driven modeling)” (Hall et al., 2018 , p. 542). It is essential to adopt more sophisticated methods of evaluation to understand the phasic and developmental features of scientific teams (Hall et al., 2012 ) because bibliometric and citation data do not provide a timely measure of team success.

To date, few studies provide methodological or practical guidance on how to assess the capacity for knowledge integration, and provide pragmatic and feasible methods to study knowledge integration (Hitziger et al., 2019 ). There’s a lack of understanding across many disciplines including One Health (Hitziger et al., 2018 ), sustainable agriculture (Ingram, 2018 ), ecosystem services (Dam Lam et al., 2019 ), sustainability science (Lang et al., 2012 ) and SciTS about what makes some teams successful while others fail to launch. To obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the connections, networks, and outcomes of knowledge, more studies need to engage social network analysis to characterize how patterns of interaction impact the development and processes of scientific teams.

Existing studies do not provide pertinent data to know if teams are collaborating in meaningful ways to meet their goals. This is problematic for the field of the Science of Team Sciences (SciTS). The National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other major research funders have recognized the necessity for support of scientific research teams; yet, there is limited evidence about, how scientific teams build the infrastructure for the teams; how to use the evidence from Science of Team Science (SciTS) in impactful ways; and how do funding organizations measure the impact of the investment (Börner et al., 2010 ; Hall et al., 2018 ; Love et al., 2021 ; Oliver and Boaz, 2019 ; Stokols et al., 2008 ).

SciTS scholars have published frameworks to understand more about what processes contribute to a team’s success, but few published studies have ultimately used those frameworks. Wooten et al. ( 2014 ) outlined three types of evaluations to understand the complexity of scientific teams over time: outcome, developmental, and process. An outcome evaluation is a measure of goal achievement (Wooten et al., 2014 ). Developmental evaluations aim to answer questions such as: are specific roles being fulfilled? Are tasks being completed? It focuses on the continuous process of team development (Patton, 2011 ). A process evaluation is an iterative and recursive practice that centers on measuring program effectiveness (Saunders et al., 2005 ; Wooten et al., 2015 ). Similarly, Borner et al. ( 2010 ) proposed a multi-level mixed-methods approach to study complexities, gain perspective, and create best practices for scientific teams. Studying a scientific team’s development, process, and outcomes, at multiple levels, presents many challenges and few literature studies use multiple methods, are multivariate, examine causal factors, or use data-intensive approaches to understand how teams change over time.

This exploratory case-based study thus seeks to explore various evaluation methods that provide a more comprehensive view of how scientific teams are collaborating. This study asks: Can we determine if a team is collaborating and working together in meaningful ways in a process evaluation to achieve their goals and be successful in an outcome evaluation, and if so, how? We explored the literature for process metrics that might increase our understanding of how scientific teams develop, interact, and perform.

Case-study selection

In 2015, a major research university initiated a program to invest in and support interdisciplinary research teams. This program provided teams with significant financial and programmatic support to catalyze interdisciplinary teaming and increase proposal submissions and competitiveness to high-risk, high-reward extramural funding opportunities. Early in the program, the university determined that, in addition to supporting the teams financially and administratively, it was also essential to provide these teams with skill development in effective team development and interaction. The extant literature, however, provides few studies of team development or intergroup interactions and none that have established metrics that align with the theoretical framework of successful and unsuccessful science team development (Hall et al., 2018 ). Therefore, this research university and their program became the case-study.

Case-study description

The teams were self-formed interdisciplinary scientific teams. Each team submitted a written application to the program, which was reviewed by both faculty and staff internal to the university. A select group of applicants then advanced to compete in a “pitch fest” (a very short oral presentation of the proposed project, with an intensive question and answer session) to vie for selection into the program. Seven teams from a range of university colleges, academic disciplines, and topics were selected to participate. With this investment, teams were expected to contribute to the following high-level program goals, and within the outcome evaluation for the program, team success has been primarily measured by a team’s ability to achieve these overarching goals:

Increase university interest in multi-dimensional, systems-based problems

Leverage the strengths and expertize of a range of disciplines and fields

Shift funding landscape towards investing in team science/collaborative endeavors

Develop large-scale proposals; high caliber research and scholarly outputs; new, productive, and impactful collaborations

These overarching goals were measured by having the teams report on a variety of outcome metrics, including publications, proposals submitted, and awards received. An additional team was evaluated herein, which was not part of the program, but that volunteered to participate in the study. This team was a multidisciplinary team that had already received a large grant from a federal agency. These eight teams were randomly assigned a number 1–8 and will be named based on their assigned number for anonymity.

There were 135 team members in the sample, which included 17 graduate or undergraduate students. Each team was organized around a distinct “grand challenge” type topic that brought together individual researchers from across multiple disciplines. These topics were wide-ranging, spanning air quality, urban eco-districts, polymers, sensors, microgrid electricity, sustainable agriculture, and genomics.

Social network surveys

A social network survey was administered to understand both scientific collaborations and to identify what social relationships were forming. (See Supplemental Table 2 for the complete survey). Annually, the teams self-reported a team roster listing the team members, self-identified gender, academic department, and email address. A social network survey was sent to every member of each team’s roster. Participants were surveyed using this tool at the beginning of the program, halfway through the program (mid-points), and at the conclusion of the program. The response rate for the three periods of data collection is presented in Supplemental Fig. 1 . The lowest response rate for a team was 39% and the highest was 93%. Following IRB protocol #19-8622H, participation was voluntary; all subjects were identified by name on the social network survey to allow for complete social networks construction; following data recording, names were removed (Borgatti et al., 2014 ).

The survey had two sections with multiple questions. The first set of questions was developed primarily to collect information about scientific collaborations within the teams. It asked if team members collaborated on joint publications, presentations, or conference proceedings; composed or submitted a grant proposal together; conducted university business together, consulting and technical support; and/or served jointly on a student’s committee (or, for students, if a team member was a member of their thesis/dissertation committee). These questions were analyzed separately, and they were combined to create the measure called ‘collaboration’ for the purposes of statistical analysis. The second set of questions focused on social relationships within the team including mentor relationships; advice relationships (personal/professional); who you would want to hang out with for fun, and who would you consider a personal friend. Data from this set of survey questions were also analyzed separated and combined used to construct multiple social networks (e.g., mentor, advice, friend, and fun networks).

The relational networks were analyzed using UCInet (Borgatti et al., 2014 ) and RStudio (RStudio Team, 2015 ), wherein nodes are the researchers and an edge exists from researcher A to researcher B if A perceived a relation with B. For example, in the mentorship network, a link from A to B signified that A considered B to be a mentor. These relations were summarized using nodal average degree and nodal betweenness. The average degree of a node is the average of the in-degree (how many links enter) and out-degree (how many links exit) (Giuffre, 2013 ). Average degree of a network is average number of edges for all nodes in the network. Average degree of the network was selected because it can be used as a tool to compare networks that are different sizes. We calculated the betweenness score for each member of the team for five social network diagrams: mentor, advice, friendship, fun, and collaboration (as noted above the “collaboration” diagram combines grant writing, publications, new research/consulting, and participation on student committees). Betweenness centrality is a measure of node centrality that captures a person’s role in allowing information to travel from one side of the network to another (Golbeck, 2015 ). A person with a high betweenness centrality or betweenness score is acting as a bridge to other nodes in the network. Given this, we hypothesize that betweenness scores help us understand how social support travels and is shared on teams involving multiple scientific disciplines.

Turn-taking data

An evaluator attended one to two meetings per year for each team, to observe and collect turn-taking data. In the meetings, the evaluator recorded information on who spoke, for how long, and what types of knowledge were transferred during the conversation. After each meeting, the evaluator recorded and calculated the number of turns-taken every 10 min and the median number of speaking turns for each attending participant. The percent above/below the median that each person on the team spoke was also calculated to investigate the variability in turns across participants. Finally, the spread above/below the median was calculated.

Participant observation and field notes

Two to four meetings of each team were attended to gather turn-taking data and to make additional observations about the team. There were two exceptions to this: Team 1 did not have face-to-face team meetings, precluding participant observation; Team 5 did not consent to evaluator observation at their meetings. After the meetings, field notes were recorded to provide qualitative insights about the progress of the team development and their patterns of collaboration.

Outcome data

The seven program teams self-reported typical scientific outcome metrics quarterly to the university, and the eighth team reported to NSF metrics, which included: total proposal dollars submitted, total award dollars received, and total publications. Additional outcome metrics include the average degree of the final publications and grant networks. Recognizing that team development takes time and occurs over stages, we exclude metrics reported from the first year to allow teams time to become established.

Statistical analysis

We use Kendall’s rank correlation to quantify the association between and among the process and outcome metrics. Kendall’s rank correlation assesses the degree to which there is a monotonic relationship between variables (i.e., do larger values of turn-taking correspond to larger numbers of publications?) but is invariant to the specific form of the relationship (e.g., linear, quadratic). Permutation based p -values are calculated and used to assess the statistical significance of the estimated correlations. We discuss p -values less than 0.10 as “marginally significant” and p -values less than 0.05 as “significant.”

Process, development, and outcome data

This article uses a combination of process and development data, as well as outcome data to understand which process measure correlated with positive outcome measures. A complete table of metric descriptions can be found in the Supplemental Table 3 . These data provide insights into the development and processes of teams. Table 1 lists current SciTS literature measures and measures used in this study to extend those literature measures. Also listed are team development and process data and outcome metrics that align with the literature measures. Ultimately this extension and alignment with literature measures allows us to provide additional insight into the context of previous research.

The outcome metrics were established by the university and focused heavily on traditional metrics of scholarly performance and productivity. Outcome data were recorded for quarters five to nine because we recognize that team development takes time. Moreover, outcome measures of scholarly performance were unlikely to be directly resultant from the program itself, but rather representative of efforts by the team and team members that were already underway prior to participation in this program. Therefore, we excluded outcome metrics reported from the first year (four quarters), in recognition that teams need time to become established and included outcome data after funding ended, as outcomes often extend well beyond a funding period.

Table 2 reports on the team process and development metrics that are significantly associated with the outcome metrics. In Table 2 , the outcome metrics include average degree of the publication network, total publications, total award dollars received, and total proposal dollars submitted. The following subsections further discuss metrics focusing on those that were statistically significant.

Role of women on teams

In the data set, each team had team members who self-identified as women, and many of the teams had women as Principle Investigators (PIs) and/or women on the leadership team (Table 3 ). In the rank correlation (Table 2 ), the proportion of women on each team had a negative correlation with one outcome metric: final grant network average degree ( τ = −0.52, p < 0.10). As this finding did not entirely align with previously published literature, these data were further investigated.

Field notes revealed that during the quarterly updates to the university, Teams 1, 4, and 7 never had a woman presenter. Further investigation of the field notes found that women had a range of roles on teams from PI or member of a leadership/executive group, to simply being present on the team roster. A woman PI or member of the leadership team was correlated with the total proposal dollar submitted ( τ = 0.86, p < 0.01).

Based on these data and observations, we calculated the betweenness score of the women in the mid-point social network data. We found that the top woman betweenness score in the mentor network was positively correlated with the publication network ( τ = 0.60, p < 0.05) total proposal dollars submitted ( τ = 0.52, p < 0.10) and total award dollars received ( τ = 0.69, p < 0.05). The top woman betweenness score in the collaboration network was correlated with total proposal dollars submitted ( τ = 0.62, p < 0.05). The advice networks were not correlated with any outcome metrics (Supplemental Table 1 ). Figure 1 illustrates differences in betweenness scores for individuals in the mentor network.

Women play significant role in mentor network on teams.

Figure 1 reports the betweenness score for each individual on a team in the mentoring network. Notably, high (i.e., ≥~0.2) and low (i.e., <0.05) betweenness scores appeared in both small and large teams. Women did not play central roles on Teams 1 and 7. Teams 2, 4, 5, and 8 had women with very high betweenness scores, indicating these women played a central role in the mentoring network. In some instances, the woman with the highest score was the PI, and in some instances, she was just a member of the team.

Mid-point social network measures

Knowledge creation has traditionally been framed in terms of individual creativity, but recent literature has placed more emphasis on social dynamics. A team with a high average degree hangs out with more team members for fun and/or considers more team members friends (Supplemental Fig. 2 ). The average degree of the fun network was correlated with the publications network average degree ( τ = 0.60, p < 0.1). The average degree of the friend network was not only correlated with publications network average degree ( τ = 0.63, p < 0.1), but also with total proposal dollars submitted ( τ = 0.60, p < 0.05), and total award dollars received ( τ = 0.78, p < 0.01). Finally, the friend and fun networks were highly correlated ( τ = 0.9, p < 0.001). In addition, the average degree of the advice network was correlated with total award dollars received ( τ = 0.55, p < 0.05), and having isolates in the advice network was negatively correlated with the average degree of the publication network ( τ = −0.69, p < 0.10).

Second, the average degree of the network ‘serving on a student committee’ was correlated with multiple outcome metrics (Supplemental Fig. 3 ). The rank correlation (Table 2 ) found a correlation between the student committee network and total publications ( τ = 0.64, p < 0.05), total proposal dollars submitted ( τ = 0.62, p < 0.05), and total award dollars received ( τ = 0.69, p < 0.01). In addition, the collaboration network in 2016 was correlated with the average degree of the publication network in 2017 ( τ = 0.87, p < 0.05). Many of the process variables to measure scientific collaboration (grants average degree, publication average degree, collaboration network. expertize, contribute) were not statistically significant with the outcome measures or only significant with one metric (Supplemental Table 1 ).

Turn-taking

Based on field notes, a team with a high number of turns in 10 min typically had multiple members sharing ideas and no dominant turn-takers. In the Rank Correlation (Table 2 ), turns-taken in 10 min was positively correlated with total award dollars received ( τ = 0.80, p < 0.05) and total proposal dollars submitted ( τ = 0.8, p < 0.05). Figure 2 illustrates two turn-taking measures: (1) number of turns-taken in 10-min intervals and (2) number of turns-taken over the observation time.

Time spoken and number of turns-taken in 10-min.

To measure uneven turn-taking for the Rank Correlation (Table 2 ), we calculated the spread between the person on the team who had the highest number of turns above the median and the one lowest below the median. Field notes revealed uneven turn-taking occurred when one person was monopolizing the time and number of turns. We found a negative correlation between this measure of uneven turn-taking and total proposals ( τ = −0.74, p < 0.05).

Figure 3 illustrates in more detail the total time a person spoke during the meeting. Team 7 has the most extreme outlier. This person did not take many turns in 10 min, but they took a lot of time when they did speak, monopolizing over 50% of the total meeting time. Team 4 had two team members who took a lot of time, accounting for nearly two-thirds of the available meeting time on a team with nine members. Teams 3, 6, and 8 had relatively even distributions of turns, with Team 8 having the most even distribution among all individual team members.

Time spoken per person.

Finally, Bear and Woolley ( 2011 ) wrote that women on teams often mediate even turn-taking. We found a −0.9 correlation between the proportion women on teams and turns above the median ( p ≤ 0.001), indicating that teams with low proportions of women also tended to have a dominant speaker, confirming findings by Bear and Woolley ( 2011 ) and Woolley et al. ( 2010 ).

Scientific teams are complex systems; thus, conducting a team evaluation with only one method and a handful of measures is not likely to provide adequate insight into why a team succeeds or fails. Can we determine if a team is collaborating and working together in meaningful ways in a process evaluation to achieve their goals and be successful in an outcome evaluation, and if so, how? Although many studies have recommended conducting longitudinal, mixed-methods studies with social network analysis, few have conducted this type of assessment. This study aimed to help fill a methodological gap in SciTS literature by longitudinally studying eight scientific teams. In this study, by using a mixed-methods approach, we found process metrics and measures that were significant in the development, process, and outcome of teams as well as those that appear not significant. The addition of qualitative data such as field notes and interviews provided additional information not contained in the quantitative data. Moreover, the mixed-methods methodology allowed for comparison of the data across different time points of data collection to assist in future research and theory development.

Proportion women

Researchers from many disciplines have found that gender-balanced teams lead to the best outcomes for group process in terms of men and women having equal influence (Bear and Woolley, 2011 ; Keyton et al., 2008 ; Smith-Doerr et al., 2017 ; Woolley et al., 2010 ) Fewer studies have explanations for why gender balance (or why proportion women ) plays an important role on interdisciplinary teams. In this study, the proportion of women on teams was not the key factor in team outcomes. We extended our exploration of gender and teams through participant observation, social network, and turn-taking data to further clarify these observations. We found that women played a significant role in the mentoring networks for teams and are correlated with turn-taking in team meetings. We also found that having a woman in a PI or leadership position positively impacted the outcome metric of team total proposal dollars submitted. The question of how or why gender balance on teams affects team performance remains a complex issue and additional work on this question must continue to address the myriad ways that team members interact.

Mid-point social network Measures

Our findings build on a growing body of literature that suggests knowledge integration is a social process. Considering knowledge integration as a social product, it is not surprising that the average degree in the friend, fun, and advice networks was statistically significant. In addition, the friend and fun networks were highly correlated. Writing grants and publications is a long, arduous task. When conflict arises or challenges occur, strong social relationships keep the team together. This also explains why data on several scientific collaboration measures including collaborating on grants and publications appear to not be statistically significant or only significant with one outcome metric.

We were surprised that the measure ‘student committees’ was correlated with so many outcome metrics. More research is needed to understand why serving together on student committees is important. We present three hypotheses: first, this is perhaps a proxy for the strength of ties, where faculty who collaborate more frequently tend to sit on committees of student members of their teams. However, of the 135 team members in the sample, only 17 were graduate or undergraduate students. Another possible explanation is that faculty are fulfilling the role of the outside committee member on graduate student committees, providing a perhaps otherwise non-existent link between faculty members. Although the formal role of the outside committee member is to ensure there is no bias in the student evaluation process, often the outside committee member is selected for their relevant (albeit extra-disciplinary) expertize. Moreover, many outside committee members are selected by the student or suggested by a third party (e.g., another graduate student), rather than by the advisor. In other words, the graduate student may be the connector between faculty members. As all graduate committees have an outside committee member, future research should investigate the role graduate students play in knowledge transfer across the university. Another possible explanation is that when team members have served on a student committee together, it is more likely they have had additional opportunities to discuss terminology, create a shared language, and build trust. Thus, participating in student committees creates additional opportunities for faculty to get to know each other’s perspectives and collaboratively explore scientific questions, thus strengthening trust and shared understandings.

This study and numerous others have consistently documented the importance of even turn-taking on scientific and business teams (Bear and Woolley, 2011 ; Lehmann-Willenbrock et al., 2013 ; Ravn, 2017 ; Rawls and David, 2005 ; Schegloff, 2002 ; Stivers et al., 2009 ; Woolley et al., 2010 ). In our study, even turn-taking was positively correlated with total publications, total proposal dollars submitted, and total award dollars received. Uneven turn-taking was negatively correlated with the total proposal dollars submitted.

The mixed-methods study design also highlighted the role of women in turn-taking. Similar to previous studies, we found the presence of women on scientific teams was correlated with more even turn-taking (Bear and Woolley, 2011 ; Woolley et al., 2010 ). We further found that teams with a member who monopolized time and turns were negatively correlated with outcome metrics and also had fewer women. The mixed-methods design provided additional information about teams with uneven turn-taking from participant observation data and field notes. Less-even turn-taking on teams was attributable to one or two men monopolizing time and turns. In our study, a woman never monopolized time or turns in a meeting attended by an observer. Why do teams with more women have more even turn-taking and better outcome metrics? It is well accepted in the scientific literature that diversity of thought increases creativity, and influences knowledge integration (Amabile, 1988 ; Cravens et al., 2022 ; Csikszentmihalyi, 1999 ; Hitziger et al., 2018 ; Pearsall et al., 2008 ; Phelps et al., 2012 ; Sawyer, 2003 , 2017 ; Smith-Doerr et al., 2017 ). When everyone has a voice on a team, it could signify an openness to diversity and inclusion in team composition, discipline, and more. Because of the reasons outlined above, we believe that even turn-taking is one of the most important measures to creating effective collaborations with the capacity to truly build new knowledge through scientific teams.

Insignificant measures and analysis

In evidence and policy studies, the first step to understanding effective teams is establishing and sharing effective (and less effective) methods to study teams (Oliver and Boaz, 2019 ). To support future research and improved methods in the SciTS field, we also report other process measures that appear as not significant in our study (Supplemental Table 1). First, we hypothesized that the survey question “I understand how their expertize will contribute to the research team” [asked about other team members] would be statistically significant. We also asked a question about how well the survey respondent understood the expertize of each team member (e.g. “I could not describe their area of expertize at all,” “I could vaguely describe this person’s expertize,” “I can explain the general field of this persons expertize, I can explain this persons unique expertize in their field,” and “I understand this person’s expertize very well because it overlaps with some of my expertize.”) These questions appear not statistically significant. Our data revealed that social relationships matter more than expertize or understanding of the expertize of others. In other words, building a personal connection with a team member may be more important than having deep-level knowledge of that individual’s field or discipline. It also suggests there may be more nuances not captured by this relatively simple question around how individual team members interpret the goals and mission of their team, and how they perceive other members may fit into that individualized picture of the team.

Many of the mid-point social network questions did not appear to be statistically significant. From the mid-point social network data on interpersonal relationships, we calculated the average degree of the following mid-point social network measures: advice, mentoring, grant, and publications. Further, we hypothesized that the number of isolates in the mentor and advice networks would be statistically significant because everyone on a team should be either giving or receiving mentoring/advice. Finally, the combined metric called the collaboration network was only correlated with the 2017 publication network, which further emphasized that the interpersonal metrics were more influential than the scientific collaboration metrics. It was surprising that the metrics about scientific collaborations on scientific teams were not significant in this study, and we recognize that this might not be true for all teams (Thompson, 2009 ).

Regarding turn-taking, there were many statistical measures that did not adequately capture field notes and participant observations from the meetings. For example, average number of turns per person, percent of turns above and below the median for each person on the team, and statistical measures related to the average turn-taking (e.g., z -scores) were easy to read and interpret but did not appear to represent turn-taking during the meeting. We believe this is a result of the nature of interdisciplinary scientific teams, wherein meetings sometimes focus on the science or technical challenges of specific projects and sometimes they focus on budgets or other operational concerns of the team. These conversations do not always involve the same groups of people and can easily skew an average because they may just naturally end up being one-sided (e.g., when a business manager reports on the current status of a team’s budget expenditures and revenues).

Limitations

The current work reports on the results from an exploratory study on real-world academic scientific teams. Thus, the data presented herein do have some notable limitations. First, because these were real-world scientific teams, each team had different concerns about participating in SciTS research. For example, Team 5 was initially reluctant to participate in our research study, and consequently, we have a more limited data set for this team. It is also possible that teams behaved differently because they were part of a research study. Participant observation requires a team scientist to be in the room at meetings, retreats, during conflicts, and more. All of these instances were detailed in field notes so that the positionality and possible influence of the team scientist was well-documented (Baxter and Jack, 2008 ; Greenwood, 1993 ; Marvasti, 2004 ).

Second, a researcher was not present at every team meeting for every team. Thus, the turn-taking data may not be representative of all the team interactions. Moreover, given that many of the team meetings that were observed had a very mixed agenda (i.e., both scientific results and business/operations were discussed), deciphering the evenness of the turn-taking becomes problematic because a business meeting might involve fewer graduate students, or a scientific meeting might focus on one troublesome aspect of the science. Third, the sample size is limited to only eight teams and should be expanded in future research. Fourth, a limitation of all social network data is that it captures one-time point (the time of the survey). For example, teams not routinely asked whether they were having fun, so this measure taken solely from the survey results may not be an accurate representation of the amount of “fun” any team might experience. Finally, the survey did not give respondents the option to report gender in non-binary terms. However, all of our respondents reported binary gender identifiers (men and women). Future research should seek more diverse samples and provide additional options for gender identifiers.

Future directions

Future research should focus on four key areas. First, future studies should engage mixed-methods methodologies to explore additional metrics and measures. Second, numerous studies have consistently documented the importance of turn-taking. Future research should further explore what constitutes even turn-taking and why it is important. Ravn ( 2017 ) described four different types of meetings. The managerial style, which relies on somewhat authoritarian management; the parliamentary style, which has rules and formalities; the collective–egalitarian style of community-type meetings where anyone can speak anytime about anything; and the facilitative style, wherein a trained facilitator guides the meeting conversation to increase even turn-taking and participation. We highlight these differences because turn-taking might look different in different types of meetings, as indicated in our discussion of the limitations of the study. In terms of scientific teams, turn-taking in a meeting about science outcomes (e.g., presentations of recent results by team members) may be very different than in a meeting about business administration/operations for the team. We do not believe that even turn-taking on a scientific team means that everyone participates equally in every meeting. Meetings often focus on one aspect of the research project, and some are more focused on administrative details. These different roles should shift and adjust turn-taking in a well-structured team. More data are needed to develop measures that account for more nuances in team interactions and fully explore the impact and effects of these two measures for team science success.

Third, this exploratory study revealed measures that are important for team development, processes, and outcomes, but we are certain there are more. Questions we would like to test in the future include: who did you learn from?, who do you consider a leader on the team?, who do you trust?, questions about inclusivity (e.g., did you feel listened to? and did team members respect your diverse ideas?), and specific questions about expertize. Fourth, numerous bodies of literature have reported that the “proportion of women” is important on scientific teams. We tested many measures to try to understand the role of women on the scientific teams studied here. However, only three measures were statistically significant. More investigation is needed to understand the significance of how women shape team interactions and thus team performance. Future research should investigate non-binary gender roles, intersectionality, and other forms of diversity on scientific teams and their roles in knowledge integration.

Finally, a key limitation of the study is the length of time we followed teams. Teams were followed for 2.25 years. Many important outcome metrics take years to fully materialize. For example, the number of citations would increase understanding about the impact of the research; whether or not a team stays together after the funding ends could indicate a measure of cohesion; and developing an appropriate timeline for the number of years before team ‘outcomes’ are declared should be considered. Thus, future research studies that follow teams for even more extended periods of time are needed.

Application to scientific teams

SciTS represents a complex system that requires attention to both standard outcome metrics as well as more nuanced interpersonal interactions to develop robust measures of team success and promote the creation of truly effective teams. Although there is not a silver bullet to create the perfect team that meets their goals. there are four major implications, practical applications, and outputs from this case-based study of successful and unsuccessful teams: (1) Practicing even turn-taking is essential to team success. (2) The proportion of women on the team positively impacted the outcomes of the team. (3) Further evidence that successful team science is not about picking the right people, but on how to build the right team for success. (4) This article presents process metrics to increase understanding of successful and unsuccessful teams. (5) Teams need to engage in practices that build relationships for knowledge integration.

To date, few studies provide methodological or practical guidance on how to assess the capacity for knowledge integration, and provide pragmatic and feasible methods and metrics to study knowledge integration (Hitziger et al., 2019 ; Love et al., 2021 ). These findings about successful and unsuccessful teams could be applied and investigated further in areas such as One Health (Hitziger et al., 2018 ), sustainable agriculture (Ingram, 2018 ), ecosystem services (Dam Lam et al., 2019 ), and sustainability science (Lang et al., 2012 ). To provide a more comprehensive understanding of the connections, networks, and outcomes of knowledge more studies need to engage social network analysis to understand the patterns of interaction.

This case-based study provides additional evidence for the knowledge bank on how both contributory and interactional expertize contributes to scientific innovation. It advances claims about how teams form and produce successful outcomes. The mixed-methods evaluation builds on a growing body of literature in SciTS studies that team science is not just about the science, but also about building relationships; further demonstrating the need for both contributory and interactional expertize. These processes are not, however, always recognized and rewarded in tenure and promotion decisions, by funding agencies, and by others. How do you reward even turn-taking, and how do you support equal gender proportions on teams? These and other challenges will need to be addressed. Otherwise, our scientific teams lose potential brainpower when women are excluded, and likely more than half their brainpower when all ideas are not included in the process (even turn-taking).

In conclusion, based on our exploratory case-based study, one simple thing a team can do to improve collaboration, is to practice even turn-taking. Furthermore, the next time the question, “How do we pick the right people for the team?” arises, scientists should additionally be asking, “How can we build the right relationships for a success team?”

Data availability

The data for the article may be accessed here: https://hdl.handle.net/10217/194364 .

Amabile T (1988) A model of creativity and innovation in organizations. Res Organ Behav 10(1):123–167

Google Scholar

Bammer G, O’Rourke M, O’Connell D, Neuhauser L, Midgley G, Klein JT, Grigg NJ, Gadlin H, Elsum IR, Bursztyn M, Fulton EA, Pohl C, Smithson M, Vilsmaier U, Bergmann M, Jaeger J, Merkx F, Vienni Baptista B, Burgman MA, … Richardson GP (2020) Expertise in research integration and implementation for tackling complex problems: when is it needed, where can it be found and how can it be strengthened? Palgrave Commun 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0380-0

Baxter P, Jack S (2008) The qualitative report qualitative case study methodology: study design and implementation for novice researchers. Qual Rep 13(2):544–559. https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol13/iss4/2

Bear JB, Woolley AW (2011) The role of gender in team collaboration and performance. Interdiscip Sci Rev 36(2):146–153. https://doi.org/10.1179/030801811X13013181961473

Article Google Scholar

Borgatti SP, Everett MG, Freeman LC (2014) UCINET. In: Encyclopedia of social network analysis and mining. Springer, New York. pp. 2261–2267

Börner K, Contractor N, Falk-Krzesinski HJ, Fiore SM, Hall KL, Keyton J, Spring B, Stokols D, Trochim W, Uzzi B (2010) A multi-level systems perspective for the science of team science. Sci Transl Med 2(49). https://doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.3001399

Bouty I (2000) Interpersonal and interaction influences on informal resource exchanges between R&D researchers across organizational boundaries. Acad Manag J 43(1):50–65. https://doi.org/10.5465/1556385

Brown JS, Duguid P (2000) The social life of information. Harvard Business School Press

Collins H, Evans R (2013). Rethinking Expertise. In Rethinking Expertise. University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226113623.001.0001

Collins H, Evans R (2007). Rethinking expertise. University of Chicago Press

Cravens AE, Jones MS, Ngai C, Zarestky J, Love HB (2022) Science facilitation: navigating the intersection of intellectual and interpersonal expertise in scientific collaboration. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 9(1):1–13

Csikszentmihalyi M (1999) Implications of a systems perspective for the study of creativity. In: Sternberg RJ (ed.) Handbook of creativity. Cambridge University Press. pp. 313–335

Dam Lam R, Gasparatos A, Chakraborty S, Rivera, H, Stanley T (2019). Multiple values and knowledge integration in indigenous coastal and marine social-ecological systems research: a systematic review. In: Ecosystem Services, vol. 37. Elsevier. p. 100910

Duch J, Zeng XHT, Sales-Pardo M, Radicchi F, Otis S, Woodruff TK, Nunes Amaral LA (2012) The possible role of resource requirements and academic career-choice risk on gender differences in publication rate and impact. PLoS ONE 7(12):e51332. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0051332

Article ADS CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Giuffre K (2013) Communities and networks: using social network analysis to rethink urban and community studies (1st edn.). Polity Press

Golbeck J (2015) Betweenness centrality—an overview | sciencedirect topics. in introduction to social medial investigation, a hands-on approach. Elsevier Inc. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/betweenness-centrality

Greenwood RE (1993) The case study approach. Bus Commun Q 56(4):46–48. https://doi.org/10.1177/108056999305600409

Guimerà R, Uzzi B, Spiro J, Nunes Amaral LA, Amaral LAN, Nunes Amaral LA, Guimera R, Brian U, Spiro J, Amaral LAN, Guimerà R, Uzzi B, Spiro J, Nunes Amaral LA (2005) Sociology: team assembly mechanisms determine collaboration network structure and team performance. Science 308(5722):697–702. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1106340

Hakkarainen K (2009) A knowledge-practice perspective on technology-mediated learning. Int J Comput-Support Collab Learn 4(2):213–231. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-009-9064-x

Hall KL, Vogel AL, Huang GC, Serrano KJ, Rice EL, Tsakraklides SP, Fiore SM (2018) The science of team science: a review of the empirical evidence and research gaps on collaboration in science. Am Psychol 73(4):532–548. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000319

Article PubMed Google Scholar

Hall KL, Vogel AL, Stipelman BA, Stokols D, Morgan G, Gehlert S (2012) A four-phase model of transdisciplinary team-based research: goals, team processes, and strategies. Transl Behav Med 2(4):415–430. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13142-012-0167-y

Article PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Hitziger M, Aragrande M, Berezowski JA, Canali M, Del Rio Vilas V, Hoffmann S, Igrejas G, Keune H, Lux A, Bruce M, Palenberg MA, Pohl C, Radeski M, Richter I, Abad CR, Salerno RH, Savic S, Schirmer J, Vogler BR, Rüegg SR (2019) EVOlvINC: evaluating knowledge integration capacity in multistakeholder governance. Ecol Soc 24(2):18. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10935-240236

Hitziger M, Esposito R, Canali M, Aragrande M, Häsler B, Rüegg SR (2018) Knowledge integration in one health policy formulation, implementation and evaluation. Bull World Health Organ 96(3):211–218. https://doi.org/10.2471/BLT.17.202705

Ingram J (2018) Agricultural transition: niche and regime knowledge systems’ boundary dynamics. Environ Innov Societ Transit 26:117–135. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2017.05.001

Keyton J, Ford DJ, Smith FL (2008) A mesolevel communicative model of collaboration. Commun Theory 18(3):376–406. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2008.00327.x

Klein JT, Falk-Krzesinski HJ (2017) Interdisciplinary and collaborative work: framing promotion and tenure practices and policies. Res Policy 46(6):1055–1061. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2017.03.001

Lang DJ, Wiek A, Bergmann M, Stauffacher M, Martens P, Moll P, Swilling M, Thomas CJ (2012) Transdisciplinary research in sustainability science: practice, principles, and challenges. Sustain Sci 7(SUPPL. 1):25–43. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-011-0149-x

Lehmann-Willenbrock N, Allen JA, Kauffeld S (2013) A sequential analysis of procedural meeting communication: how teams facilitate their meetings. J Appl Commun Res 41(4):365–388. https://doi.org/10.1080/00909882.2013.844847

Leone Sciabolazza V, Vacca R, Kennelly Okraku T, McCarty C (2017) Detecting and analyzing research communities in longitudinal scientific networks. PLoS ONE 12(8):e0182516. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0182516

Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Levin DZ, Cross R (2004) The strength of weak ties you can trust: the mediating role of trust in effective knowledge transfer. Manag Sci 50(11):1477–1490. https://doi.org/10.5465/apbpp.2002.7517527

Love HB, Cross JE, Fosdick B, Crooks KR, VandeWoude S, Fisher ER (2021) Interpersonal relationships drive successful team science: an exemplary case-based study. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 8(1):1–10. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00789-8

Marsden PV, Campbell KE (1984) Measuring tie strength. Soc Force 63(2):482–501. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/63.2.482

Marvasti AB (2004) Qualitative research in sociology: an introduction. SAGE Publications

Misra J, Smith-Doerr L, Dasgupta N, Weaver G, Normanly J (2017) Collaboration and gender equity among academic scientists. Soc Sci 6(1):25. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci6010025

Oliver K, Boaz A (2019) Transforming evidence for policy and practice: creating space for new conversations. In: Palgrave Communications. vol. 5, Issue 1. Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. pp. 1–10

Paavola S, Hakkarainen K (2005) The knowledge creation metaphor—an emergent epistemological approach to learning. Sci Educ 14(6):535–557. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-004-5157-0

Patton MQ (2011) Developmental evaluation: applying complexity concepts to enhance innovation and use. Guilford Press

Pearsall MJ, Ellis APJ, Evans JM (2008) Unlocking the effects of gender faultlines on team creativity: is activation the key? Am Psychol Assoc 93(1):225–234. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.93.1.225

Phelps C, Heidl R, Wadhwa A, Paris H (2012) Agenda knowledge, networks, and knowledge networks: a review and research. J Manag 38(4):1115–1166. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206311432640

Ravn I (2017) Charting the social order of meetings. Pure.Au.Dk, 1–9. https://pure.au.dk/ws/files/118956333/Ib_Ravn_Charting_the_Social_Order_of_Meetings.docx

Rawls AW, David G (2005) Accountably other: trust, reciprocity and exclusion in a context of situated practice. Hum Stud 28(4):469–497. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-005-9005-2

Read EK, O’Rourke M, Hong GS, Hanson PC, Winslow LA, Crowley S, Brewer CA, Weathers KC (2016) Building the team for team science. Ecosphere 7(3):e01291. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.1291

RStudio Team (2015) RStudio. RStudio: Integrated Development for R. RStudio, Inc. http://www.rstudio.com/

Saunders RP, Evans MH, Joshi P (2005) Developing a process-valuation plan for assessing health promotion program implementation: a how-to guide. Health Promot Pract 6(2):134–147. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524839904273387

Sawyer RK (2003) Emergence in creativity and development. In: Sawyer RK, John-Steiner V, Moran S, Sternberg RJ, Feldman DH, Nakamura J, Csikszentmihalyi M (eds.) Creativity and development. Oxford University Press. pp. 12–60

Sawyer RK (2017) Group genius: the creative power of collaboration. Basic Books

Schegloff EA (2002) Overlapping talk and the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Lang Soc 29(01). https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404500001019

Smith-Doerr L, Alegria S, Sacco T (2017) How diversity matters in the US science and engineering workforce: a critical review considering integration in teams, fields, and organizational contexts. Engag Sci Technol Soc 3(0):139. https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2017.142

Stivers T, Enfield NJ, Brown P, Englert C, Hayashi M, Heinemann T, Hoymann G, Rossano F, de Ruiter JP, Yoon K-E, Levinson SC (2009) Universals and cultural variation in turn-taking in conversation. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106(26):10587–10592. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0903616106

Article ADS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Stokols D, Misra S, Moser RP, Hall KL, Taylor BK (2008) The ecology of team science. Understanding contextual influences on transdisciplinary collaboration. Am J Prevent Med 35(2):96–115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2008.05.003

Thompson J (2009) Building collective communication competence in interdisciplinary research teams. J Appl Commun Res 37(3):278–297. https://doi.org/10.1080/00909880903025911

Uzzi B, Lancaster R (2003) Relational embeddedness and learning: the case of bank loan managers and their clients. Manag Sci 49(4):383–399. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.49.4.383.14427

Wheatley M, Frieze D (2006) Using emergence to take social innovation to scale. The Berkana Institute 9. https://secure.abcee.org/sites/abcee.org/files/cms/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/using-emergence.pdf

Woolley AW, Chabris CF, Pentland A, Hashmi N, Malone TW (2010) Evidence for a collective intelligence factor in the performance of human groups. Science 330(6004):686–688. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1193147

Article ADS CAS PubMed Google Scholar

Wooten KC, Calhoun WJ, Bhavnani S, Rose RM, Ameredes B, Brasier AR (2015) Evolution of multidisciplinary translational teams (MTTs): insights for accelerating translational innovations. Clin Transl Sci 8(5):542–552. https://doi.org/10.1111/cts.12266

Wooten KC, Rose RM, Ostir GV, Calhoun WJ, Ameredes BT, Brasier AR (2014) Assessing and evaluating multidisciplinary translational teams: a mixed methods approach. Eval Health Prof 37(1):33–49. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163278713504433

Wuchty S, Jones BF, Uzzi B (2007) The increasing dominance of teams in production of knowledge. Science 316(5827):1036–1039. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1136099

Zeng XHT, Duch J, Sales-Pardo M, Moreira JAGG, Radicchi F, Ribeiro HV, Woodruff TK, Amaral LANN (2016) Differences in collaboration patterns across discipline, career stage, and gender. PLoS Biol 14(11):e1002573. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002573

Zhang J, Hong HY, Scardamalia M, Teo CL, Morley EA (2011) Sustaining knowledge building as a principle-based innovation at an elementary school. J Learn Sci 20(2):262–307. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2011.528317

Zhang J, Scardamalia M, Reeve R, Messina R (2009) Designs for collective cognitive responsibility in knowledge-building communities. J Learn Sci [Internet] 18(1):7–44. Available from: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10508400802581676

Download references

Acknowledgements

The research reported in this publication was supported by Colorado State University’s Office of the Vice President for Research through the Catalyst for Innovative Partnerships Program. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Office of the Vice President for Research. Supported by Office of Vice President for Research, Colorado State University and NIH/NCATS Colorado CTSA Grant Number UL1 TR002535. Contents are the authors’ sole responsibility and do not necessarily represent official NIH views.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Divergent Science LLC, Fort Collins, CO, USA

Hannah B. Love

Department of Sociology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

Hannah B. Love & Jennifer E. Cross

Department of Statistics, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

Bailey K. Fosdick & Elizabeth Tofany

Office of the Vice President for Research, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

Meghan Suter & Dinaida Egan

Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA

Ellen R. Fisher

Department of Chemistry, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hannah B. Love .

Ethics declarations

Competing interests.

HBL, BF, and ET declare no competing interests. ERF, JC were members of teams. ERF, MS, and DE were administrators involved in the management of the team-based program described herein.

Ethical approval

All data collection methods followed Institutional Review Board protocol #19-8622H.

Informed consent

All data collection methods were performed with the informed consent of the participants and followed Institutional Review Board protocol #19-8622H.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary tables, supplemental figure 1, supplemental figure 2, supplemental figure 3, rights and permissions.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Love, H.B., Fosdick, B.K., Cross, J.E. et al. Towards understanding the characteristics of successful and unsuccessful collaborations: a case-based team science study. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 9 , 371 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01388-x

Download citation

Received : 17 February 2022

Accepted : 28 September 2022

Published : 14 October 2022

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01388-x

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

This article is cited by

Escalating uncertainties require institutional transformation to support epistemological pluralism.

Jennifer F. Brewer
Holly M. Hapke

npj Ocean Sustainability (2024)

Quick links

Explore articles by subject
Guide to authors
Editorial policies

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Case Study #1

Erika pribanic-smith, department of communication, project description.

My goal was to determine if interventions to improve team cohesion through interpersonal communication would result in better team performance as measured by presentation cohesiveness on the final project. I conducted this assessment in a required course for all majors in the Department of Communication. Initial enrollment for the course was 123 students; four withdrew before the semester ended, and nine additional students stopped attending class but did not drop.

Each semester, students self-select into teams of 6-7 students on the first day of class. Students work in these teams throughout the semester on discussion exercises after lecture, team quizzes, and ultimately, a team presentation. In previous semesters, teams that communicated well with each other delivered excellent presentations, but most delivered the dreaded “patchwork project”; team members independently completed their tasks and then cobbled everything together at the last minute without knowing what others on the team were doing. Furthermore, Student Feedback Surveys indicated that a few students loved the team aspect of the course, but many hated it.

Employing team cohesion literature as well as Decision Emergence and Social Penetration theories, I hypothesized that developing stronger interpersonal ties among teammates via self-disclosure would assist in developing team cohesion, which in turn would motivate students to achieve team goals as a unit and keep each other accountable. I encouraged self-disclosure by developing discussion exercises that required students to come up with examples from their own lives for theoretical application. The disclosures grew more personal over the first half of the semester, starting with “Describe a situation in which you were misunderstood” (General Semantics Theory) and progressing to “Describe a situation in which someone shared your secret or you shared someone else’s” (Communication Privacy Management). A second intervention I employed to improve communication involved guided in-class team meetings, in which I assigned specific tasks related to the presentation assignment and provided instruction on the teamwork behaviors that should be exhibited at that stage of the project.

To measure team cohesion, students completed a team cohesion assessment survey (adapted from a Group Communication textbook’s team cohesion index) at four points during the semester: Week 2, Week 6, Week 10, and Week 14; the index consisted of 20 Likert-scale questions and one open-response question (“Is there anything you’d like to add?”). A Toastmasters list of criteria for group presentation cohesiveness was converted into a rubric for analyzing team performance on the final presentation.

Project Evaluation

Overall, the team cohesion assessment revealed a steady decline in team cohesion from the Week 2 survey to the Week 10 survey, then a spike between the Week 10 and Week 14 surveys. However, the literature recommends assessing team cohesion at both the individual level and the group level, and each level of analysis told a slightly different story in this project. The assessment survey included both individual-level and group-level questions, such that most individual-level questions (e.g., “I identify with the team and its members”) had a group-level counterpart (e.g., “Members of the team identify with the team”). The index of questions that gauged individual team members’ level of connection and commitment to the team demonstrated a relatively even measure of cohesion across the first three surveys with a slight bump in the second survey; the individual-level index rose sharply for the fourth survey. However, the index of questions that asked students to assess their fellow team members’ level of connection and commitment to the team sharply declined from Week 2 to Week 6, stayed nearly the same from Week 6 to Week 10, and then sharply rose by Week 14. In each survey, the individual-level index was higher than the group-level index, though the two indices were closer at Weeks 2 and 14 than in Weeks 6 and 10. (See figure below.)

Significantly, the Week 6 survey coincided with a presentation progress report deadline, and the Week 10 survey occurred around the deadline for teams’ presentation outlines. The open-ended responses at Week 10 in particular indicated that tensions were running high on teams in which students perceived their teammates were not doing their parts to complete the work. The Week 14 survey fell in the middle of presentations, and the overwhelming success of the presentations seems to have generated good will among most of the respondents.

Only one out of the 20 teams failed to score 100 percent on the presentation cohesiveness rubric, for an overall average of 96.4 percent (per Blackboard statistics). Nearly all of the presentations had good flow, consistent visuals (design of each PowerPoint slide), and consistent voice. In most cases, each teammate demonstrated knowledge of what each other teammate was doing. The presentations were tight and well-rehearsed. In short, most teams met the criteria for presentation cohesiveness. However, some went well beyond the Toastmasters criteria. Some teams coordinated their wardrobes; a few even coordinated the size and color of their notecards. Overall, with only one exception, the presentations were engaging and informative. Anecdotally speaking, they were the best presentations I have seen in my seven years teaching theory at UTA. A few even drew enthusiastic ovations from their peers.

Therefore, the class achieved the ultimate goal of cohesive team presentations, and despite dips in the middle, team cohesion was higher at the end of the semester than at the start. I do not believe the self-disclosure intervention affected team cohesion as anticipated, however. Reflections submitted the last week of the semester revealed that several students learned communication is a crucial part of effective teamwork, and some students even indicated that getting to know their teammates made a difference. I think much of that communication and bonding occurred outside of class, though. More significantly, because the team cohesion index increased amid successful presentations, team achievement affected team cohesion more than team cohesion affected team performance. I believe improved communication affected presentation cohesiveness directly rather than affecting team cohesion as a mediating factor .

Though a few students stubbornly insist that teamwork is terrible and they do better work on their own, the end-of-semester reflection responses were overwhelmingly positive, demonstrating that students found the teamwork experience this semester to be not only valuable but also enjoyable. Several students indicated they made close friends or at least expanded their campus network, and some said they loved the class because of their teams. (See responses to the teamwork reflection in Appendix A.)

In sum, I believe the project was successful, not only at improving the team presentations but also at improving most of my students’ ability to work in teams and their view of teamwork in an academic setting.

Despite the successes outlined above, some issues arose that limited the development of team cohesion in some teams and specifically hampered the self-disclosure intervention. These are issues I hope to address in future semesters:

Several students were absent the first class, and a handful missed the whole first week. Therefore, some students were placed into groups that already had formed and were not able to self-select into teams, and a few of those students were vocal about disliking the teams to which I assigned them. Significantly, the one team that consisted entirely of people who first attended on the second day of class had a disastrous presentation, and direct communication with some of the students on that team revealed they never gelled.
Attendance throughout the semester became an issue for multiple teams. Based on open-ended survey responses, some students who missed a lot of class did not bond with their teammates as much as students who did attend, and those students also missed a lot of the decision-making and task-planning for the presentation, so they were not as involved or invested in the project as other team members.
Some teams did not fully and properly engage in the self-disclosure exercises. I eventually discovered that some teams skipped the discussion altogether and just had the person who was providing the real-life example write out the discussion report due at the end of class to save time. Therefore, the members of those teams weren’t learning about each other at all; they just treated the exercise as something they had to turn in for a participation grade. Furthermore, although a different person was supposed to provide an example each time so that everyone was disclosing about themselves, some groups had the same person sharing an example every time.
Attrition occurred on a handful of teams as some students officially dropped the class or simply stopped coming. Two teams suffered severely; both began the semester with seven members, but one presented with three members at the semester’s end, and another ended the term with only two members. Those few teammates certainly bonded, but their view of the team experience was negative.

Future Direction

Given the general success of this project, I will continue emphasizing communication in future semesters. However, to overcome some of the issues I encountered this semester, I will make a few changes.

I feel self-selection works great for the most part. However, I will shift team selection to the second day of class to reduce the number of students who are absent at the time of selection and do not get to select their own teams.
I will monitor the self-disclosure exercises more closely to ensure that teams are a) actually discussing and b) distributing the self-disclosure across team members more evenly. Though it will make attendance record-keeping more difficult and eliminate a valuable check on students’ understanding of the concepts, I will consider doing away with the written report so that students are more focused on the discussion and not just submitting something for a grade.
I will have more in-class team meetings. We only had three this semester, and they were in the last half-hour of quiz days because I knew most students would be present for the quizzes. Some students stated in their open-ended responses that coordinating schedules outside of class was difficult, though, and they wished we had some full class periods designated for team work. Therefore, I will work some full-class work days into the schedule next time. Deadline stress and failure of teammates to contribute seemed to hamper team cohesion more than anything else, but hopefully having more time to work together in person will increase participation in the project and decrease tension. Doing so in class also will give me more opportunity to guide their communication and teamwork behaviors.
Some students still will skip class and fail to become a true part of the team or contribute meaningfully to the project. Therefore, I will do more to monitor and alleviate those situations earlier in the semester. Some teams exercised their ability to “fire” team members after the outline, but others didn’t realize or remember that was an option and complained that they presented with teammates who hadn’t contributed to the research and writing. Furthermore, teams only exercised the firing option after the outline was due; none did so earlier in the semester. I believe completing a large component of the project with dead weight increased tension and decreased team cohesion. I will make sure at every checkpoint that students remember they can remove teammates who are not participating in the project, and I will increase the number of peer evaluations students complete to facilitate this process. After they present, students complete a peer evaluation that evaluates each teammates’ cooperation, timeliness of contribution, preparation (research, writing, selecting/producing visuals), and presentation performance. I considered implementing a modified version of that evaluation at each checkpoint but decided against it because I didn’t want students to confuse the peer evaluations with the team cohesion assessments or become overwhelmed with paperwork. I will discontinue the team cohesion assessments, though, and have students complete peer evaluations more frequently instead. These will alert me to issues earlier while encouraging students to think critically about their teammates’ contributions throughout the process and take action as needed. Hopefully issues coming to light sooner will enable me to combine teams that may end up with few members well before the presentation.

Reflection: What is the most important thing you learned about teamwork this semester? (unedited responses)

Be flexible when working with everyone’s schedules

Being ahead of the curve.

being flexible and allowing others to contribute

Coming together in person can make a lot of things a lot simpler as opposed to doing it all online

Communication is the key for a successful team environment.

Communication so the team can adjust to fit everyones’ needs.

Don’t let negativity ruin a good presentation.

Everybody has to work together toward the team’s goals. One person can’t carry the team effectively and if one or more people don’t do their work it make the rest of the team’s jobs much harder and more frustrating. With that said, when people do actually participate it helps to bond those members together and make a better, cohesive, end project.

How to collaborate

How to communicate & get things done on time by planning as a team.

How without fail, working as a team is awful.

I didn’t learn it because I already knew it, but the most important thing I already know is that I work better alone and I still really don’t like group work with random people.

I know now to be here the first day of class, so I can pick my own group members considering I have to pay over a thousand dollars a class.

I learned how to better understand people’s opinions and what they had to say about the issues we were talking about.

I learned that a lot of the time someone on the team will not put in as much effort and will just float along in which the other members will have to carry the extra weight.

I learned that if everyone is on the same page and at least somewhat dedicated to the end goal, the group work will be successful and maybe even enjoyable, which contradicted my previous ideas of group work.

I learned that if you set up expectations for how you want your team to work, it will be more successful.

I learned that most people are not willing to work on teams no matter how old they are or the level of education they have.

I learned that working on big teams is difficult and its important to find meeting times.

I learned that you cannot expect the same amount of effort from each team member, but that oftentimes other members of the team will step up and fill the gaps made. The best strategy for success is to work well with those who demonstrate a willingness to give their time and effort to making the project the best it can be.

If you don’t get to know the people you are in a group with, it makes it hard to work with them.

It definitely takes a lot of work to make your team effective. You must always put in effort to try to restructure your schedule so everyone can meet. You also have to trust and depend on one another.

It is tough to have all team members focus on a task and be organized, especially when we each have much more going on in our lives, but as long as we all communicate well the job can definitely be done. Communication is key, for sure.

Leaders shape the future, and every team needs a strong leader to succeed.

Learning to speak up and state my own opinion even when I’m not entirely confident. Communication and openness is key in order to fully thrive in a group project. I enjoyed my group and the time we spent working together. I consider them my friends.

making new friends 🙂

Making sacrifices to achieve the big picture the team set out to attain.

Most people do things last minuet and you can’t make anyone do anything on your time frame.

Not everyone is going to do their part, but what counts is that the other members have the integrity to step up and cover the people who are slacking.

Organization is important

Planning and communication are key

Sometimes, you gotta pick it up and be leader.

Start the team project ahead of time and not wait until last minute because then you might get some team members that do not contribute.

Teams hold me down and block me from my shine I learned I don’t work well well with others. But the assignment was cool. Groups make my head hurt

that communication is very important

That everyone needs to do their part to make the team run smoothly. Also, communication is key.

That google docs saves lives. It is very easy for everyone to be working on the same slides at once and that automatically save once you stop typing so nothing gets lost.

That some people are disrespectful. I also learned that others are extremely respectful. Projects definitely can’t be pushed back to the last minute. I also learned that understanding concepts after a lesson were much easier to understand working in a group because we were able to apply them to things we knew in real life.

That time is a key concept in getting things done in the time allotted, giving us the opportunity to finish our work thoroughly to where we have time to go over it a second time.

That time managing is essential to being prepared.

That we all have busy lives and we all work differently but we all trusted each other and that we would get all of our parts done, not micro manage each other and it would all workout.

The important thing I learn is that communication is one of the most important things to make a team successful. We kicked a few people out of our team because they did not execute their role as agreed. Once they were notified they were kicked out they were offended because the rest of the team did not understand their personal life situations, nonetheless, they never spoke about the problems they had at all to maybe find an alternate way as a team to complete each task as we had agreed to. We could not help them at the end nor feel empathic because they were not communicating with us how they said they were. Everyone was open about their situations they had going on outside of class, either school related, work or even personal but those people never did. They would agree to everything and say they would do it but at the end they did not and we did not feel compassionate about it because they never once did communicate anything about the possible encounters they could have or had been facing.

The longer we worked together the more stuff we had in common and accomplished our goals.

The most important thing I learned about being on a team is that unplanned circumstances happen and you have to be ready for them.

The most important thing I learned about working in a team is that sometimes, you can’t count on everyone to keep their word.

The most important thing I learned about working with a team this semester was planning and working around difficult schedules, improvising to get the job done.

The most important thing I learned from working in a team, was mostly time management and working together to achieve the same goal. Our theory had a lot to do with how our team functioned so it was nice to incorporate the two together.

The most important thing I learned on this team is that its best to not be last minute about things but to be ahead of things.

The most important thing I learned this semester about working in a team is how busy schedules can impact your plans. This led to working even harder in finding the best solution, where sometimes it meant dividing up who meets up on one day and who the other, with some meeting both days. Figuring out schedules can be the most daunting task but it can easily have a solution if you begin making a plan.

The work gets done when everyone is involved!

Things move better when you work together

This has been one of my favorite classes yet and I am thrilled to have gotten to meet every member in my group. I personally believe we will all never forget each other.

This semester i learned that even in a college setting where everyone is here to learn and get a good grade you may still encounter other that don’t play well. Sometimes it takes someone to be the bigger person and groom the team to just understand that we are all here just to get the job done.

To be more assertive in all aspects of my life.

To listen more than anything because there are so many things to learn and value about one another. We all come different places but somehow we all ended up in the same group! I love my team!!

To make sure that I am available to the team and to organize my time around the team’s schedule so as to make sure we get everything done.

to properly plan and create timetables for the group assignment.

We’re all different and unique, but yet we all think as one, all have the same mindset in order to reach our goal for this semester.

When everyone puts out and carries their own responsibilities like they should, the team can take ideas and form them into what we need, be it for an assignment or anything else.

Working in a big team is difficult but if at least most of the members coordinate to work towards the same goal then the team can create a fantastic piece of work.

Working in a team requires a lot of organization and patience. Now that we are in college, we all have different schedules and sometimes is hard to contact each member of the group however it’s not impossible. I have seen many people with busy schedules and still made the effort to contribute to the team. I have learn that we must be willing to work hard, have patience, and organization in order to have a strong contributing team. I am glad this class requires to grade our members because in that way I can show the great or minimal effort that each member did on the project.

You have to be willingly to sacrifice your schedule in order to work effectively with a team.

You need to be patient with people, but you can’t be a pushover.

Teamwork: An Open Access Practical Guide - Instructor Companion Copyright © 2020 by Andrew M. Clark and Justin T. Dellinger is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

SUGGESTED TOPICS
The Magazine
Newsletters
Managing Yourself
Managing Teams
Work-life Balance
The Big Idea
Data & Visuals
Case Selections
HBR Learning
Topic Feeds
Account Settings
Email Preferences

Collaboration and teams

Business management
Business communication
Corporate communications
Corporate governance
Crisis management

A Study of West Point Shows How Women Help Each Other Advance

Nick Huntington Klein
Elaina Rose
November 26, 2018

Don't Let Hybrid Work Set Back Your DEI Efforts

Alexandra Samuel
Tara Robertson
October 13, 2021

How to Network When There Are No Networking Events

Dorie Clark
June 23, 2020

Are Your D&I Efforts Helping Employees Feel Like They Belong?

Michael Slepian
August 19, 2020

The Toxic Handler: Organizational Hero—and Casualty

Peter J. Frost
Sandra L. Robinson
From the July–August 1999 Issue

Getting the Most Out of Your Team

From the September 2001 Issue

A Leadership Lesson from My Mother-in-Law

John Baldoni
December 23, 2008

The Right Way to Use the Wisdom of Crowds

Brad DeWees
Julia A Minson
December 20, 2018

When Failure Isn’t an Option

Elizabeth K. Allen
Ray Evernham
From the July–August 2005 Issue

Why Change Programs Don’t Produce Change

Russell Eisenstat
Bert Spector
Michael Beer
From the November–December 1990 Issue

The Eight Archetypes of Leadership

Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries
December 18, 2013

Don't Let Lazy Managers Drive Away Your Top Performers

Mark C Bolino
Anthony C. Klotz
November 21, 2018

How the Best Teams Keep Good Ideas Alive

Patricia Satterstrom
Michaela J Kerrissey
Julia DiBenigno
May 18, 2022

To Seize the Future, Create a Leadership Circle

Joseph Pistrui
June 23, 2016

In the Age of Loneliness, Connections at Work Matter

Tim Leberecht
September 18, 2015

Are Peer Reviews the Future of Performance Evaluations?

Alessandro Di Fiore
Marcio Souza
January 12, 2021

Research: How Virtual Teams Can Better Share Knowledge

Jason Sandvik
Richard Saouma
Nathan Seegert
Christopher Stanton
November 02, 2020

5 Reasons Your Employees Don’t Understand Your Company’s Vision

Sabina Nawaz
September 07, 2021

5 Types of Stories Leaders Need to Tell

Nick Westergaard
September 22, 2023

Your Brain Is Hooked on Being Right

Judith E. Glaser
February 28, 2013

Why Companies Should Consolidate Tech Roles in the C-Suite

Thomas H. Davenport
Saurabh Gupta
September 13, 2024

Research: How to Delegate Decision-Making Strategically

Hayley Blunden
Mary Steffel
September 10, 2024

New Rules for Teamwork

Angus Dawson
Katy George
From the September–October 2024 Issue

Tom Brady on the Art of Leading Teammates

Nitin Nohria

Teamwork at the Top

Gregory LeStage
Sara Nilsson DeHanas
Pete Gerend

Why Leadership Teams Fail

Thomas Keil
Marianna Zangrillo

Build Better Teams

September 01, 2024

A New Approach to Knowledge-Sharing Within Organizations

Martin Reeves
Jack Fuller
August 29, 2024

Finding Joy as a Manager — Even on Bad Days

Daisy Auger-Domínguez
August 22, 2024

When a New Hire Feels Like They Weren’t Your First Choice

Samir Nurmohamed
Zoe Schwingel-Sauer
August 16, 2024

The Strongest U.S. Healthcare Organizations Invest in Social Capital

Thomas H. Lee
Nell Buhlman
August 09, 2024

Breaking Down Barriers to Belonging for Women of Color in Tech

Are You a Micromanager or Too Hands-Off?

Carole-Ann Penney
August 02, 2024

What Sets Genius Teams Apart

Merete Wedell-Wedellsborg
July 08, 2024

Toward Healthier B2B Relationships

Bryan Hochstein
Clay Voorhees
Ross Johnson
Vijay Mehrotra
From the July–August 2024 Issue

How CEOs Build Confidence in Their Leadership

Claudius A. Hildebrand
Jason Baumgarten
Mahesh Madhavan

The Psychology of CEO Succession

Adam Bryant
Rebecca Slan Jerusalim
July 01, 2024

3 Ways to Build a Culture That Lets High Performers Thrive

Lindsay McGregor
June 28, 2024

Why Cross-Functional Collaboration Stalls, and How to Fix It

Sharon Cantor Ceurvorst
Kristina LaRocca-Cerrone
Aparajita Mazumdar
June 24, 2024

Hybrid Work Has Changed Meetings Forever

Mike Tolliver
Jonathan Sass
June 17, 2024

Executive Decision Making at General Motors

David A. Garvin
Lynne C. Levesque
December 21, 2004

Lisa Thomas at LaMont Engineering

Boris Groysberg
Carrie A. Blair
February 15, 2019

HBR Guide to Unlocking Creativity

Harvard Business Review
June 20, 2023

Roll Back Malaria and BCG: the Change Initiative

Nava Ashraf
Rachel Gordon
Catherine Ross
March 04, 2010

Senior Leadership Teams: What it Takes to Make Them Great

Ruth Wageman
Debra A. Nunes
James A. Burruss
J. Richard Hackman
January 24, 2008

Mapping Your Network

David A. Thomas
May 18, 2009

Flexibility at Genentech: Developing Versatile Domain Experts and Deploying Flexible Resources at One U.S. Medical Affairs Unit

Homa Bahrami
Stuart Evans
October 01, 2016

Texas Instruments: Cost of Quality (A)

Robert S. Kaplan
Christopher D. Ittner
August 18, 1988

Anti-Racist Leadership: How to Transform Corporate Culture in a Race-Conscious World

James D. White
Krista White
March 22, 2022

Embracing Digital: ING's Pioneering Journey to Agile (Part 2)

Lucia del Carpio
Maria Guadalupe
Nancy J. Brandwein
November 30, 2018

NASCAR and the Confederate Flag (B)

R. Edward Freeman
December 12, 2021

Virtual Teams at Ivey

Derrick Neufeld
Jake Santora
August 13, 2013

W. L. Gore & Associates

Joseph Harder
D. Reid Townsend
May 01, 2000

Embracing Digital: ING's Journey to a New Way of Working - Supplement 5: The COO

Managing Teams in the Hybrid Age: The HBR Guides Collection (8 Books)

June 13, 2023

South River Elementary School

Gerry Yemen
Michael J. Salmonowicz
Mark Keeler
January 24, 2007

Being the Boss, with a New Preface: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader

Linda A. Hill
Kent Lineback
March 19, 2019

MBA Entrepreneurs: Crowdfunding Wipebook (B) Year Two: Growth and Obstacles

Franck Bares
September 01, 2016

Taking Charge of Your Career (HBR Women at Work Series)

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox
Stacy Abrams
Lara Hodgson
December 13, 2022

Flextronics: Deciding on a Shop Floor System for Producing the Microsoft Xbox

Jeffrey T. Polzer
Alison Berkley Wagonfeld
February 12, 2003

Hands-off? Lessons from high-touch professionals about going virtual

Sarah Lord Ferguson
Claudia Smith
Jan Kietzmann
May 14, 2022

16 Team Building Case Studies and Training Case Studies

From corporate groups to remote employees and everything in between, the key to a strong business is creating a close-knit team. in this comprehensive case study, we look at how real-world organizations benefited from team building, training, and coaching programs tailored to their exact needs. .

Updated: December 21, 2021

We’re big believers in the benefits of team building , training and development , and coaching and consulting programs. That’s why our passion for helping teams achieve their goals is at the core of everything we do.

At Outback Team Building & Training, our brand promis e is to be recommended , flexible, and fast. Because we understand that when it comes to building a stronger and more close-knit team, there’s no one-size-fits-all formula. Each of our customers have a unique set of challenges, goals, and definitions of success.

And they look to us to support them in three key ways: making their lives easy by taking on the complexities of organizing a team building or training event; acting fast so that they can get their event planned and refocus on all the other tasks they have on their plates, and giving them the confidence that they’ll get an event their team will benefit from – and enjoy.

In this definitive team building case study , we’ll do a deep dive into real-world solutions we provided for our customers.

4 Unique Team Building Events & Training Programs Custom-Tailored for Customer Needs

1. a custom charity event for the bill & melinda gates foundation , 2. how principia built a stronger company culture even with its remote employees working hundreds of miles apart , 3. custom change management program for the royal canadian mint, 4. greenfield global uses express team building to boost morale and camaraderie during a challenging project, 5 virtual team building activities to help remote teams reconnect, 1. how myzone used virtual team building to boost employee morale during covid-19, 2. americorps equips 90 temporary staff members for success with midyear virtual group training sessions, 3. how microsoft’s azure team used virtual team building to lift spirits during the covid-19 pandemic, 4. helping the indiana cpa society host a virtual team building activity that even the most “zoom fatigued” guests would love, 5. stemcell brightens up the holiday season for its cross-departmental team with a virtually-hosted team building activity, 3 momentum-driving events for legacy customers, 1. how a satellite employee “garnered the reputation” as her team’s pro event planner, 2. why plentyoffish continues to choose ‘the amazing race’ for their company retreat, 3. how team building helped microsoft employees donate a truckload of food, 4 successful activities executed on extremely tight timelines, 1. finding a last-minute activity over a holiday, 2. from inquiry to custom call in under 30 minutes, 3. a perfect group activity organized in one business day, 4. delivering team building for charity in under one week.

two colleagues assembling bookshelves for kids with a bookworm builders team building activity

We know that every team has different needs and goals which is why we are adept at being flexible and have mastered the craft of creating custom events for any specifications.

five colleagues doing a custom charity team building event together at a table

When the Seattle, Washington -based head office of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – a world-renowned philanthropic organization – approached us in search of a unique charity event, we knew we needed to deliver something epic. Understanding that their team had effectively done it all when it comes to charity events, it was important for them to be able to get together as a team and give back in new ways .

Our team decided the best way to do this was to create a brand-new event for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which had never been executed before. We created an entirely new charitable event – Bookworm Builders – for them and their team loved it! It allowed them to give back to their community, collaborate, get creative, and work together for a common goal. Bookworm Builders has since gone on to become a staple activity for tons of other Outback Team Building & Training customers!

To learn more about how it all came together, read the case study: A Custom Charity Event for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation .

nine colleagues sitting around a table doing an emotional intelligence group skills training program

Who said hosting an impactful training program means having your full team in the same place at the same time? Principia refused to let distance prevent them from having a great team, so they contacted us to help them find a solution. Their goals were to find better ways of working together and to create a closer-knit company culture among their 20 employees and contractors living in various parts of the country.

We worked with Principia to host an Emotional Intelligence skill development training event customized to work perfectly for their remote team. The result was a massive positive impact for the company. They found they experienced improved employee alignment with a focus on company culture, as well as more emotionally aware and positive day-to-day interactions. In fact, the team made a 100% unanimous decision to bring back Outback for additional training sessions.

To learn more about this unique situation, read the full case study: How Principia Built a Stronger Company Culture Even with its Remote Employees Working Hundreds of Miles Apart .

We know that employee training that is tailored to your organization can make the difference between an effective program and a waste of company time. That’s why our team jumped at the opportunity to facilitate a series of custom development sessions to help the Royal Canadian Mint discover the tools they needed to manage a large change within their organization.

We hosted three custom sessions to help the organization recognize the changes that needed to be made, gain the necessary skills to effectively manage the change, and define a strategy to implement the change:

Session One: The first session was held in November and focused on preparing over 65 employees for change within the company.
Session Two: In December, the Mint’s leadership team participated in a program that provided the skills and mindset required to lead employees through change.
Session Three: The final session in February provided another group of 65 employees with guidance on how to implement the change.

To learn more, read the full case study: Custom Change Management Program for the Royal Canadian Mint .

Greenfield Global Uses Express Team Building to Boost Morale and Camaraderie During a Challenging Project

When Greenfield Global gathered a team of its A-Players to undertake a massive, challenging project, they knew it was important to build rapports among colleagues, encourage collaboration, and have some fun together.

So, we helped them host an Express Clue Murder Mystery event where their team used their unique individual strengths and problem-solving approaches in order to collaboratively solve challenges.

To learn more, read the full case study: Greenfield Global Uses Express Team Building to Boost Morale and Camaraderie During a Challenging Project .

a group of colleagues participating in a virtual team building activity using zoom video conferencing

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, we were proud to be able to continue supporting our customers’ goals with virtual team building activities and group training sessions.

a group of 25 teammates doing a virtual team building activity together on zoom

With remote work being mandated as self-quarantine requirements are enforced on a global scale, companies began seeking ways to keep their newly-remote teams engaged and ensure morale remained as high as possible.

And MyZone was no exception. When the company found themselves feeling the effects of low employee morale and engagement, they noticed a decrease in productivity and motivation.

To make matters even more difficult, MyZone’s team works remotely with employees all over the world. This physical distancing makes it challenging for them to build a strong rapport, reinforce team dynamics, and boost morale and engagement.

The company was actively searching for an activity to help bring their employees closer together during this challenging time but kept running into a consistent issue: the majority of the team building activities they could find were meant to be done in person.

They reached out to Outback Team Building and Training and we were able to help them achieve their goals with a Virtual Clue Murder Mystery team building activity.

four colleagues taking part in a virtual group skills training program

AmeriCorps members are dedicated to relieving the suffering of those who have been impacted by natural disasters. And to do so, they rely on the support of a team of temporary staff members who work one-year terms with the organization. These staff focus on disseminating emergency preparedness information and even providing immediate assistance to victims of a disaster.

During its annual midyear training period, AmeriCorps gathers its entire team of temporary staff for a week of professional development seminars aimed at both helping them during their term with the company as well as equipping them with skills they can use when they leave AmeriCorps.

But when the COVID-19 pandemic got underway, AmeriCorps was forced to quickly re-evaluate the feasibility of its midyear training sessions.

That’s when they reached out to Outback. Rather than having to cancel their midyear training entirely, we were able to help them achieve their desired results with four virtual group training sessions: Clear Communication , Performance Management Fundamentals , Emotional Intelligence , and Practical Time Management .

Find all the details in the full case study: AmeriCorps Equips 90 Temporary Staff Members for Success with Midyear Virtual Training Sessions.

How Microsofts Azure Team Used Virtual Team Building to Lift Spirits During the COVID 19 Pandemic

With the COVID-19 pandemic taking a significant toll on the morale of its employees, Microsoft’s Azure team knew they were overdue for an uplifting event.

It was critical for their team building event to help staff reconnect and reengage with one another. But since the team was working remotely, the activity needed to be hosted virtually and still be fun, engaging, and light-hearted.

When they reached out to Outback Team Building and Training, we discussed the team’s goals and quickly identified a Virtual Clue Murder Mystery as the perfect activity to help their team get together online and have some fun together.

For more information, check out the entire case study: How Microsoft’s Azure Team Used Virtual Team Building to Lift Spirits During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Helping the Indiana CPA Society Host a Virtual Team Building Activity That Even the Most Zoom Fatigued Guests Would Love

The Indiana CPA Society is the go-to resource for the state’s certified public accountants. The organization supports CPAs with everything from continuing education to networking events and even advocacy or potential legislation issues that could affect them.

But as the time approached for one of INCPAS’ annual Thanksgiving event, the Indiana CPA Society’s Social Committee needed to plan a modified, pandemic-friendly event for a group of people who were burnt out my online meetings and experiencing Zoom fatigue.

So, we helped the team with a Self-Hosted Virtual Code Break team building activity that INCPAS staff loved so much, the organization decided to host a second event for its Young Pros and volunteers.

For INCPAS’ Social Committee, the pressure to put on an event that everyone will enjoy is something that’s always on their mind when planning out activities. And their event lived up to their hopes.

For more information, check out the entire case study: Helping the Indiana CPA Society Host a Virtual Team Building Activity That Even the Most “Zoom Fatigued” Guests Would Love .

Stemcell Brightens Up the Holiday Season for its Cross Departmental Team with a Virtually Hosted Team Building Activity

When Stemcell was looking for a way to celebrate the holidays, lift its team members’ spirits, and help connect cross-departmental teams during the pandemic, they contacted us to help host the perfect team building activity.

They tasked us with finding an event that would help team members connect, get in the holiday spirit, and learn more about the business from one another during the midst of a stressful and challenging time.

So, we helped them host a festive, virtually-hosted Holiday Hijinks team building activity for employees from across the company.

For more information, check out the entire case study: Stemcell Brightens Up the Holiday Season for its Cross-Departmental Team with a Virtually-Hosted Team Building Activity .

a workgroup assembling a gift box to be sent to those in need with a philanthropic team building activity

We take pride in being recommended by more than 14,000 corporate groups because it means that we’ve earned their trust through delivering impactful results.

We’ve been in this business for a long time, and we know that not everybody who’s planning a corporate event is a professional event planner. But no matter if it’s their first time planning an event or their tenth, we love to help make our customers look good in front of their team. And when an employee at Satellite Healthcare was tasked with planning a team building event for 15 of her colleagues, she reached out to us – and we set out to do just that!

Our customer needed a collaborative activity that would help a diverse group of participants get to know each other, take her little to no time to plan, and would resonate with the entire group.

With that in mind, we helped her facilitate a Military Support Mission . The event was a huge success and her colleagues loved it. In fact, she has now garnered a reputation as the team member who knows how to put together an awesome team building event.

To learn more, read the case study here: How a Satellite Employee “Garnered the Reputation” as Her Team’s Pro Event Planner .

three colleagues grouped together outdoors doing an amazing race team building activity at their company retreat

In 2013, international dating service POF (formerly known as PlentyOfFish) reached out to us in search of an exciting outdoor team building activity that they could easily put to work at their annual retreat in Whistler, B.C . An innovative and creative company, they were in search of an activity that could help their 60 staff get to know each other better. They also wanted the event to be hosted so that they could sit back and enjoy the fun.

The solution? We helped them host their first-ever Amazing Race team building event.

Our event was so successful that POF has now hosted The Amazing Race at their annual retreat for five consecutive years .

To learn more, check out our full case study: Why PlentyOfFish Continues to Choose ‘The Amazing Race’ for Their Company Retreat .

a large number of colleagues loading non perishable food items into a truck to be donated to charity as a result of their charitable team building activity

As one of our longest-standing and most frequent collaborators, we know that Microsoft is always in search of new and innovative ways to bring their teams closer together. With a well-known reputation for being avid advocates of corporate social responsibility, Microsoft challenged us with putting together a charitable team building activity that would help their team bond outside the office and would be equal parts fun, interactive, and philanthropic.

We analyzed which of our six charitable team building activities would be the best fit for their needs, and we landed on the perfect one: End-Hunger Games. In this event, the Microsoft team broke out into small groups, tackled challenges like relay races and target practice, and earned points in the form of non-perishable food items. Then, they used their cans and boxes of food to try and build the most impressive structure possible in a final, collaborative contest. As a result, they were able to donate a truckload of goods to the local food bank.

For more details, check out the comprehensive case study: How Team Building Helped Microsoft Employees Donate a Truckload of Food .

Time isn’t always a luxury that’s available to our customers when it comes to planning a great team activity which is why we make sure we are fast, agile, and can accommodate any timeline.

Finding a Last Minute Team Building Activity Over a Holiday

Nothing dampens your enjoyment of a holiday more than having to worry about work – even if it’s something fun like a team building event. But for one T-Mobile employee, this was shaping up to be the case. That’s because, on the day before the holiday weekend, she found out that she needed to organize a last-minute activity for the day after July Fourth.

So, she reached out to Outback Team Building & Training to see if there was anything we could do to help – in less than three business days. We were happy to be able to help offer her some peace of mind over her holiday weekend by recommending a quick and easy solution: a Code Break team building activity. It was ready to go in less than three days, the activity organized was stress-free during her Fourth of July weekend, and, most importantly, all employees had a great experience.

For more details, check out the full story here: Finding a Last-Minute Activity Over a Holiday .

From Inquiry to Custom Call in Under 30 Minutes

At Outback Team Building & Training, we know our customers don’t always have time on their side when it comes to planning and executing an event. Sometimes, they need answers right away so they can get to work on creating an unforgettable experience for their colleagues.

This was exactly the case when Black & McDonald approached us about a learning and development session that would meet the needs of their unique group, and not take too much time to plan. At 10:20 a.m., the organization reached out with an online inquiry. By 10:50 a.m., they had been connected with one of our training facilitators for a more in-depth conversation regarding their objectives.

Three weeks later, a group of 14 Toronto, Ontario -based Black & McDonald employees took part in a half-day tailor-made training program that was built around the objectives of the group, including topics such as emotional intelligence and influence, communication styles, and the value of vulnerability in a leader.

To learn more about how this event was able to come together so quickly, check out the full story: From Inquiry to Custom Call in Under 30 Minutes .

A Perfect Group Activity Organized in One Business Day

When Conexus Credit Union contacted us on a Friday afternoon asking if we could facilitate a team building event for six employees the following Monday morning, we said, “Absolutely!”

The team at Conexus Credit Union were looking for an activity that would get the group’s mind going and promote collaboration between colleagues. And we knew just what to recommend: Code Break Express – an activity filled with brainteasers, puzzles, and riddles designed to test the group’s mental strength.

The Express version of Code Break was ideal for Conexus Credit Union’s shorter time frame because our Express activities have fewer challenges and can be completed in an hour or less. They’re self-hosted, so the company’s group organizer was able to easily and efficiently run the activity on their own.

To learn more about how we were able to come together and make this awesome event happen, take a look at our case study: A Perfect Group Activity Organized in One Business Day .

Delivering Team Building for Charity in Under One Week

We’ve been lucky enough to work with Accenture – a company which has appeared on FORTUNE’s list of “World’s Most Admired Companies” for 14 years in a row – on a number of team building activities in the past.

The organization approached us with a request to facilitate a philanthropic team building activity for 15 employees. The hitch? They needed the event to be planned, organized, and executed within one week.

Staying true to our brand promise of being fast to act on behalf of our customers, our team got to work planning Accenture’s event. We immediately put to work the experience of our Employee Engagement Consultants, the flexibility of our solutions, and the organization of our event coordinators. And six days later, Accenture’s group was hard at work on a Charity Bike Buildathon , building bikes for kids in need.

To learn more about how we helped Accenture do some good in a short amount of time, read the full case study: Delivering Team Building for Charity in Under One Week .

Learn More About Team Building, Training and Development, and Coaching and Consulting Solutions

For more information about how Outback Team Building & Training can help you host unforgettable team activities to meet your specific goals and needs on virtually any time frame and budget, just reach out to our Employee Engagement Consultants.

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

And stay updated, related articles.

The 5 Best Remote Teamwork Tactics to Implement in 2024

How to Create an Engaging And Productive Virtual Internship Program

How to Develop an Employee Volunteer Training Program

From corporate groups to remote employees and everything in between, the key to a strong business is creating a close-knit team. That’s why you need to do team-building sessions as much as you can.

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

We're Hiring!
Help Center

Download Free PDF

Successful teamwork:A case study

Related papers

In many professional and managerial areas interpersonal and teamwork skilIs are essential competencies which help deliver effectiveness in practice. Yet many tertiary programs fail to give extensive training in these skills. One program which gives such emphasis is the postgraduate project management course conducted at the Queensland University of Technology. This article indicates the balance given in training both to the academic requirements and to the development of "the reflective practitioner" approach in the project management learning context. Reference is made in particular to the program of in-class experiential and self-development exercises and to the off-campus wilderness and action-adventure camps developed as part of the route to building interpersonal and teamwork skills and attitudes. Much of the success of the program has been due to the cross-School and cross disciplinary contribution and expertise from the host School of Construction Management and fro...

Journal of Educational Technology Systems, 1996

Journal of Marketing Education, 2002

As team projects become ever more common in business and in the marketing classroom, an increased understanding of factors contributing to team effectiveness is necessary for instructors to assist students in realizing the potential benefits of this pedagogical tool. Drawing from a wide base of literature on team research, the authors develop an input-process-output model of team effectiveness. Using data from 85 teams from marketing classes, this model was tested. Results support the positive and direct role of cohesion as an input variable on the process variable of team work. Additional relationships are explored, and the implications of the research findings are discussed with practical suggestions for the marketing classroom.

If teamwork is the key to organizational learning, productivity and growth, then, why do some teams succeed in achieving these, while others falter at different stages? Building teams in higher education institutions has been a challenge and an open-ended constructivist approach was considered on an experimental basis for this study to address this challenge. For this research, teams of students from the MBA program were chosen to study the effect of teamwork in learning, the motivation levels among student team members, and the effect of collaboration in achieving team goals. The teams were built on shared vision and goals, cohesion was ensured, positive induction in the form of faculty mentoring was provided for each participating team and the results have been presented with conclusions and suggestions.

Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association, 2013

Collaborative learning is an often used pedagogical approach for achieving goals such as knowledge construction, product development and teamwork skills acquisition. In such cases, team effectiveness is conditional for both team performance and learning quality which in turn requires the learning-team to develop from a group of individual students into a functioning team. Since students often have little to say about team composition and learning task, and only collaborate for restricted periods of time on collaborative assignments, learning-teams in higher education are often not effective. To remedy this, we need to determine and understand the variables that influence learning-team effectiveness; the main goal of this research. Based on work-team effectiveness models, a conceptual framework was developed with key variables mediating learning-team effectiveness in either face-to-face or online settings within the perspective of learning-team evolution and maturation. Core aspects ...

Proceedings of the Design Society, 2022

2011 Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), 2011

Assessment Update, 2016

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 2017

Educational …, 2011

Deakin Learning Futures Teacher Resources, 2013

Headache, 2017

IEEE Transactions on Education, 2007

2000 Annual Conference Proceedings

Learning and Instruction, 2006

Journal of Engineering Education, 1998

Journal of Computing and Information Technology, 2005

New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 2008

2014 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 2014

Studies in Higher Education, 2018

Effective Team Building Case Studies & Insights

If you think team building is just a corporate icebreaker, think again. Nearly 75% of employers say teamwork and collaboration are vital.

However, only 18% of staff are evaluated on communication during reviews. This gap highlights a big chance to better team building in companies.

As a Team Building Facilitator on workplace culture, I’ve seen how team building case studies can change how a team works.

Indeed, stories of team building success often begin by highlighting the need for trust and good communication. This is especially true when teams shift from working remotely to being in the office.

But what about real outcomes? Are these efforts making a real difference? That’s what results from team building activities want to show us.

By looking at real examples, their wins, and the planning behind them, companies can use these powerful approaches. They can improve how their teams talk, work together, and get things done.

holiday-team-building-activities

Key Takeaways

The importance of team building is underscored by the gap between employer expectations and employee evaluations.
In-depth team building case studies demonstrate the transformative potential of well-engineered team building activities.
Corporate team building success stories often emphasize the role of trust and truthful communication in a cohesive workplace culture.
Quantifying team building activities results is crucial for understanding their true impact on an organization’s performance.
Strategic insights from case studies can guide companies in creating more effective team building experiences.
Focusing on these insights helps businesses transition smoothly from virtual to physical workspaces while maintaining team integrity.

The Link Between Truth-Telling and Trust in Team Building

Teams today often switch between meeting in person and working online. This makes a trustworthy atmosphere more important than ever. Gossip and backbiting can hurt team performance.

This is especially true after working from home. Understanding how truth-telling and trust work together is key for team success.

The Problem: Gossip and Backbiting in Post-Remote Work Environments

Returning to shared workspaces can bring back workplace negativity, like gossip. In these times, clear communication is crucial. Gossip can damage the process of building a strong team .

The Trust Model: A Foundation for Effective Team Building

On the other hand, truth-telling is vital for building a good team. Leaders who are open and honest create a culture of trust. This trust is crucial for the team to work well together.

Companies that embrace honesty see great teamwork and success.

Truth-telling in the workplace is not just a moral imperative but a strategic one that has a profound effect on team alignment and overall business health. – Based on corporate leadership observations

The table below shows how trust can make teams work better:

Trust Factor	Impact on Team Building	Implementation Strategy
Transparent Communication	Reduces misunderstandings, focuses on clear and open dialogue	Regular with agenda-free discussions
Accountability	Creates a sense of responsibility amongst team members	Setting specific, measurable objectives for individual and team performance
Shared Goals	Encourages collaboration towards a common purpose	Co-creation of team targets and recognition of milestones

Embracing the values of the trust model can change workplace culture. This shift is crucial for the long-term success of any team.

Exploring Self-Awareness in Leadership Development Programs

As I explore self-awareness in leadership development programs , I see its huge impact. It’s more than just looking inward; it opens the door to better team interactions.

In essence, it strengthens team building case studies for companies . It’s amazing to see how personal insight and team work together, boosting performance.

>>>> Click here for fun team building games to boost morale.

Leaders who focus on self-awareness make their teams stronger and more united. They handle tough situations better, thanks to empathy and smart planning.

I have found evidence showing the big difference self-aware leaders make. Here’s a brief overview:

	Impact on Team Dynamics	Overall Performance
High Self-Awareness	Increased trust, openness, and collaboration	Enhanced problem-solving, productivity, and adaptability
Low Self-Awareness	Conflicts, ambiguity in roles, and misaligned expectations	Decrement in morale, innovation, and efficacy

Being self-aware is crucial not just for personal growth. It helps leaders create a positive team environment. This makes team members feel important and understood.

In studying leadership development programs , I stress this point: teaching leaders to know themselves benefits the whole organization. It leads to big achievements and success stories.

Assessing Team Building Outcomes with Case Studies for Companies

In my study of team building’s impact, I looked at different kinds. I found many cases showing team building’s big benefits for groups. These examples highlight how well-planned team activities can boost teamwork and spark innovation.

Teaming Strategies in Large Corporations

Big companies like Google and Amazon have shared their experiences. They’ve used team building to improve their complex systems. They aim to overcome department barriers and increase communication across different teams.

Their efforts enhanced teamwork and raised productivity. This gave them an edge in their markets.

Case Studies: Family Firms and Start-Up Dynamics

Family businesses and startups may be smaller but face big challenges. Studies on team building in these setups show it’s very useful. They use specific team activities to connect generations and unite everyone’s goals.

This leads to a smoother and more flexible way of working.

These examples prove investing in team building is essential. It drives long-term success and keeps employees committed.

Dissecting the Five Stages of Team Development

Exploring team evolution reveals the value of the five-stage model. It guides a group from individuals to a united force. This journey is key to facing corporate challenges together.

Case Study: The Storming Phase in Action

The storming phase is crucial in team development . Facing conflicts here promotes open communication. It helps in crafting team building success stories by aligning individual strengths towards a common goal.

Success Stories and Pitfalls

After storming, successful teams reach the norming stage. They set rules and move smoothly into performing. Here, effective team building activities highlight their worth in achieving project success.

Stage of Development	Characteristics	Activities & Outcomes
Forming	Members are polite and positive, but uncertain.	Icebreakers and introductions to build rapport.
Storming	Tensions emerge; individuals express concerns.	Conflict resolution exercises to define team norms.
Norming	Team establishes rules and values for collaboration.	Development of a collective mission or project charter.
Performing	The team works effectively toward common goals.	Strategic planning sessions to optimize performance.
Adjourning	Reflection on achievements and learnings.	Celebrations and retrospectives to capture success.

Team building success stories always highlight the structured development’s importance. They offer valuable lessons to organizations. These insights help build teams that exceed business goals.

Addressing Inter-Team Conflict with Proven Team Building Activities

In my search to solve inter-team conflict, I’ve learned something important. Team building activities are key to keeping teams together. Such activities help set the right standards and improve how we talk within the group.

The Importance of Normative Behavior for Team Cohesion

Following set behaviors is crucial for a good team vibe. For instance, in our team-building efforts, we emphasize behaviors that match our company values. This guides everyone towards working better together, reducing tension.

Insights into Communication Styles and Conflict Resolution

Team-building exercises are great for checking out different ways to talk to each other. They teach us to chat better and fix disagreements in a peaceful way. It’s the small changes in how we communicate that help a team go from okay to great.

Workshop on Active Listening – Helps us grasp the value of listening well in a team.
Role-playing Scenarios – Lets members try out fixing conflicts in a safe space.
Feedback Circles – Makes us more open and honest in sharing thoughts, improving how we solve problems together.

Let’s look at two examples where these approaches made a big difference:

Scenario	Issue Addressed	Action Taken	Outcome
Communication Workshop	Misunderstandings impeding project advancement	Implemented an active listening workshop	Improved team rapport and project delivery times
Conflict Management Training	Frequent disagreements within the team	Conducted role-playing exercises for conflict resolution	Decreased conflicts and expedited decision-making

The workshops and training discussed show how carefully chosen team building can build trust and efficiency. It’s all about picking the right activities to match the team’s needs.

The Role of Transformation in Team Building

Transformation in teams is vital for organizations to succeed in changing markets. My research highlights the crucial role of team building impact analysis in understanding transformation.

It shows how teams can reach their full potential through team building activities results .

Teams that partake in structured team building become more adaptable and resilient. This adaptability is essential in today’s fast-paced work environment.

Adapting to Rapid Change: A Case Study

A tech firm once faced a huge industry shift. By analyzing team building impact, they pinpointed innovation blocks. Strategic team building activities then led to major improvements.

These actions revolutionized the company’s adaptability. It showed how transformation and team dynamics are key for survival and growth.

Surviving and Thriving through Team Transformation

Survival alone isn’t enough for teams. They must also flourish in times of change. Teams need to transform, becoming stronger and more united.

This change isn’t solely for survival. It’s for gaining a competitive advantage. Team building activities are crucial in this transformation journey.

Pre-Transformation Attributes	Post-Transformation Outcomes
Rigid Hierarchical Structures	Flexible Team Configurations
Top-Down Communication	Open and Collaborative Discourse
Aversion to Risk	Calculated Risk-Taking
Limited Employee Autonomy	Empowered Decision-Makers
Fixed Skill Sets	Continuous Learning and Development

> Click here for fun team building games to boost morale.

In summary, combining team building analysis with real transformation stories shows the importance of adaptability.

The tech firm’s story proves that welcoming change leads to organizational success. Right team building activities turn challenges into opportunities for growth.

Creating Effective Team Building Experiences Across Global Corporations

I work to improve team dynamics in global companies. I’ve learned that cultural differences matter in team building. It’s tough to bring teams together from different parts of the world. They must understand how culture affects communication and teamwork.

Cultural Considerations in Team Dynamics

I’ve looked at many team building cases. It’s clear we must consider each team’s culture. This means more than just language. We must respect social norms and business practices that vary globally. This respect is key to inclusivity and success.

Global Team Building Success: Diverse Approaches and Outcomes

Looking at case studies shows no single way to build a team. Tailoring activities to the team’s diverse needs boosts creativity and team spirit. Mixing social events with business tasks helps create strong bonds.

The key to global team building is valuing each person’s unique input. Building activities that embrace diversity drives innovation. It helps companies stay ahead in the world.

Tailored Team Building for Specific Challenges and Opportunities

Identifying a company’s unique needs and crafting special team building plans is key. It’s amazing how focusing on specific challenges changes team dynamics. This leads to great project results.

Case Example: Overcoming Interdepartmental Silos

Looking at case studies of companies overcoming interdepartmental barriers is enlightening. One effective approach involved cross-training sessions .

These sessions let employees learn about their colleagues’ roles in other departments.

Understanding each other’s work brought employees closer. It created a feeling of unity and shared goals.

Strategies for High-Stakes Project Teams

High-stakes projects need exactness, hard work, and everyone working smoothly together. Including team building activities throughout the project helps improve efficiency. Meeting tight deadlines becomes easier without sacrificing quality.

For example, team retreats with workshops on communication and stress relief boost team performance under stress. I’ve seen these retreats make a big difference in how a team handles pressure.

Challenge	Strategy	Outcome
Interdepartmental Silos	Cross-Training Sessions	Enhanced Interdepartmental Communication and Collaboration
High-Stakes Projects	Targeted Retreats and Workshops	Improved Performance and Stress Management

In my work with various industries, I’ve seen first-hand how these approaches bring strong benefits. Proactively using these strategies significantly boosts team dynamics and project success.

Truly, grasping the unique challenges of a team is crucial for effective team building.

Benefits of Team Building in Organizations Based on Research

My research into team building shows it’s very valuable for companies. These activities boost teamwork and make the workplace better.

Wondering if these efforts matter? Many studies show they do. They lead to:

Improved Communication: Post-team building, employees often report clearer and more open lines of dialogue with their peers.
Enhanced Productivity: A strong team is like a well-oiled machine—coordinated efforts often result in greater output and efficiency.
Better Employee Morale: When staff feel connected and valued, their satisfaction and enthusiasm for work soar.

Team building starts a cycle of improvements. Better morale boosts productivity. In turn, this improves how teams communicate. It’s a cycle that starts with team building.

Team building isn’t just for the moment. It brings long-term changes to a company’s culture. Leaders say it’s key for success.

Here are some stats to show it. I’ve looked at studies to see the real effects of team building.

Aspect	Before Team Building	After Team Building
Communication Quality	Moderate/Inconsistent	High/Consistent
Productivity Index	Average	Increased by 20%
Employee Satisfaction	Low	High

All the evidence shows team building works. It leads to a stronger, more innovative workplace. This sets a company up for success.

Team Building Case Studies

In the world of corporate growth, I’ve seen a key fact. The real proof of successful team building is in the details of team building activities results . Studying team building impact analysis teaches us a lot.

It’s not just about reaching a goal but how the team changes along the way.

At first glance, team building’s effects may seem hard to measure. But, looking closer at case studies shows us numbers and facts.

A comparative table below shows how different team building activities have helped organizations. It links the activities directly with their results.

Activity	Objective	Immediate Impact	Long-Term Benefits
Cross-Functional Collaboration Workshop	Break down silos between departments	Enhanced interdepartmental communication	Sustained increases in project efficiency
Outdoor Team Challenges	and solidarity	Improved relationships and camaraderie	Decreased employee turnover
Problem-Solving	Enhance critical thinking and collaboration	Sharpened problem-solving skills	More innovative approaches to challenges
Leadership and Trust Retreats	Strengthen trust and leadership skills	Increased trust in leadership	More engaged and empowered teams

The difference between short-term effects and long-term gains shows why team building impact analysis is vital. It ensures that team unity lasts long in a company’s culture .

I’ve seen how well-planned team building can change the work environment. It transforms competitive individuals into team players who trust and depend on each other.

When we talk about team building activities results , let’s think about not just now but the future.

After all, isn’t that the goal of a great team effort?

Verbal communication

Leveraging Insights Tool for Enhanced Team Effectiveness

In my work with team building, the Insights tool has been a game-changer. It helps uncover what teams like and the challenges they face.

What’s great about the Insights tool is its ability to show teams how they work together. This helps them make better decisions for success.

Case Study: Discovering Team Preferences and Blockers

A tech company had trouble with its developers and sales teams communicating. They used the Insights tool and saw they had different ways of talking.

The sales people were fast-paced, while the developers were more detailed. Knowing this, the company started workshops to help both teams understand each other better.

Improving Performance Through Team Preferences Alignment

Another story is about a consumer goods company facing low morale. The Insights tool showed a big difference between what the team liked and the company’s culture.

The leaders changed the workspaces and schedules to match the team’s preferences better. This made employees happier and more likely to stay.

After making changes from what they learned from the Insights tool, the consumer goods company saw a 25% increase in how well the teams did and fewer employees left.

This shows how important it is to match work with personal preferences for success.

These examples show how useful tools like Insights are in solving team issues. By really understanding what each team needs, companies can overcome problems. This leads to better results for teams in all kinds of work.

Innovative Team Building Activities That Work

In my experience, innovative team building exercises improve team connections. They add a fresh twist to usual activities.

For example, The Chocolate Challenge uses hands-on tasks to boost teamwork and think ahead. MBTI tools help with self-knowledge and valuing team variety.

Hands-On Learning: The Chocolate Challenge

The Chocolate Challenge is a great team-building activity. Teams make chocolate products together. This boosts engagement and promotes teamwork and learning.

It lets participants connect in meaningful ways. Here’s what The Chocolate Challenge does for teams:

Activity Aspect	Skills Enhanced
Creative Design	Innovation, Artistic Collaboration
Time Management	Efficiency, Prioritization, Strategic Planning
Role Allocation	Leadership, Responsibility Sharing, Resource Allocation
Product Marketing	Communication, Sales Strategy, Branding

Unlocking Creativity with Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Programs

MBTI workshops are great for team building. They help teams understand their personality types. This boosts creativity and team work.

MBTI makes teams more cohesive by:

Improving communication and reducing conflicts through understanding differences.
Encouraging innovative problem-solving by valuing unique perspectives.
Focusing on personal development to increase team performance and happiness.

Activities like The Chocolate Challenge and MBTI workshops mix fun, creativity, and growth.

They’re not just original. They blend play with purpose. This helps teams become strong and ready to face any challenge together.

Got Team Building Games? – PRESS PLAY #funatwork #gameshows #boostmorale

Book a live game show experience today! Contact us for further details. For Immediate assistance by text – 917-670-4689 No deposit required. We plan and facilitate all activities

Overcoming Challenges with Tailored Team Building Solutions

Looking closely at team dynamics shows that general solutions don’t always work. A deep insight into each company’s culture is essential.

By understanding what makes each team unique, we apply the most effective team building best practices . This is something many team building case studies have shown to be true.

When a team’s core values are part of their daily routine, they handle problems better. These challenges then help the team grow and innovate together. Team building isn’t just for solving issues. It’s about turning these issues into chances for improvement.

Take a global company dealing with communication problems due to cultural differences. Creating team building activities that value everyone’s background can improve work relationships. It makes cultural diversity a key benefit to the company.

In small businesses, personal conflicts can really hold back progress. Tailored team building that teaches conflict resolution and understanding makes teams stronger.

This way, they can be creative and solve not only current problems but also future ones. This strategy has been proven by many team building case studies .

But, it’s crucial to check if these strategies actually work. We look at feedback, performance data, and team behavior before and after team building. This ensures lasting improvements in teamwork and strength.

In summary, addressing team challenges with specific solutions proves most effective. Giving teams the right tools for their unique needs improves their work and motivation. When done right, the impact on performance and team spirit is incredible.

Measuring Impact and Success of Team Building Interventions

Exploring the real impact of team building in companies is fascinating. We see clear benefits from these efforts. These benefits range from better performance to improved team dynamics.

IMAGES

(PDF) Successful teamwork: A case study
SOLUTION: Successful Teamwork Case Study
Successful teamwork A case study
Case study on effective teamwork
[PDF] Successful teamwork:A case study.
Successful Teamwork: A Case Study

VIDEO

"Teamwork: Together We Achieve More " #shorts
🔑 to successful teamwork 🤣 #gaming #funny
Unlocking Effective Teamwork: The Crucial Insights You Need
Teamwork Case 580 ST + JCB 531.70 Loadall
Meet The Client
High Performance Teamwork Case Study Part 1

COMMENTS

Successful teamwork: A case study
A case study is used to investigate two teams of final year multimedia students completing a project-based unit, in which teamwork was an essential ingredient and immersed in an authentic context ...
Successful teamwork: A case study
A case study is used to investigate two teams of final year multimedia students completing a project-based unit, in which teamwork was an essential ingredient and immersed in an authentic context. Attributes gleaned from the literature for successful teamwork was used to compare the two diverse teams. Keywords: Teamwork, higher education ...
Successful teamwork:A case study.
A case study is used to investigate two teams of final year multimedia students completing a project-based unit, in which teamwork was an essential ingredient and immersed in an authentic context. Attributes gleaned from the literature for successful teamwork was used to compare the two diverse teams.
Successful teamwork:A case study.
A case study is used to investigate two teams of final year multimedia students completing a project-based unit, in which teamwork was an essential ingredient and immersed in an authentic context. Attributes gleaned from the literature for successful teamwork was used to compare the two diverse teams.
Successful teamwork A case study
This study compared how well two teams performed by comparing attributes identified for successful teamwork, as shown in Table 1. From the results it is evident that these attributes played an important role in determining the success of these teams.
Successful teamwork: A case study
A case study is used to investigate two teams of final year multimedia students completing a project-based unit, in which teamwork was an essential ingredient and immersed in an authentic context. Attributes gleaned from the literature for successful teamwork was used to compare the two diverse teams. Keywords: Teamwork, higher education ...
"Successful teamwork: A case study" by Pina Tarricone and Joseph Luca
A case study is used to investigate two teams of final year multimedia students completing a project-based unit, in which teamwork was an essential ingredient and immersed in an authentic context. Attributes gleaned from the literature for successful teamwork was used to compare the two diverse teams.
Teams That Changed The World (Team Case Studies)
Studies have also shown that when people work in high performing teams, in contrast to working alone, they are more productive and report greater job satisfaction. Working in a team results faster innovation, quicker mistake detection and correction, better problem-solving, and greater performance according to research findings.
What makes teams work?
Taskwork is the work that teams must do to complete a mission or assignment. Teamwork, by contrast, is the interrelated thoughts, feelings and behaviors of team members—comparable to the ABCs—that enable them to work effectively together.
The Science of Teamwork
The science of teamwork has been extensively studied, 1 and with good reason. Successful teams improve business outcomes, including revenue and performance. 2 Many organizations are intentionally fostering a collaborative team-based culture, 2 and feeling like a part of a team is a primary driver of employee engagement. 3 Prior to the pandemic ...
Real Life Examples of Successful Teamwork [9 Cases]
We decided to find real life examples of successful teamwork so we asked everyday entrepreneurs, CEOs, and HR managers how did they improve teamwork.
Successful teamwork: A case study
A case study is used to investigate two teams of final year multimedia students completing a project-based unit, in which teamwork was an essential ingredient and immersed in an authentic context. Attributes gleaned from the literature for successful teamwork was used to compare the two diverse teams.
The Secrets of Great Teamwork
The Secrets of Great Teamwork. Collaboration has become more complex, but success still depends on the fundamentals. by. Martine Haas. and. Mark Mortensen. From the Magazine (June 2016) RW13 (Fair ...
Towards understanding the characteristics of successful and
This case-based study represents an early step to more effectively communicate how teams form and produce successful outcomes and increase their capacity for knowledge integration.
Enhancing the Effectiveness of Work Groups and Teams: A Reflection
Teamwork has been at the core of human accomplishment across the millennia, and it was a focus of social psychological inquiry on small group behavior for nearly half a century. However, as organizations world-wide reorganized work around teams over the past two decades, the nature of teamwork and factors influencing it became a central focus of research in organizational psychology and ...
"The Dream Team:" A Case Study of Teamwork in Higher Education
PDF | The integration of collaborative practices in essay writing within higher education constitutes a pivotal advantage, frequently producing outcomes... | Find, read and cite all the research ...
Case Study #1
To measure team cohesion, students completed a team cohesion assessment survey (adapted from a Group Communication textbook's team cohesion index) at four points during the semester: Week 2, Week 6, Week 10, and Week 14; the index consisted of 20 Likert-scale questions and one open-response question ("Is there anything you'd like to add?").
Collaboration and teams
Find new ideas and classic advice for global leaders from the world's best business and management experts.
Successful teamwork: A case study ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦9
A case study is used to investigate two teams of final year multimedia students completing a project-based unit, in which teamwork was an essential ingredient and immersed in an authentic context. Attributes gleaned from the literature for successful teamwork was used to compare the two diverse teams.
16 Team Building Case Studies and Training Case Studies
Check out our team building case study round-up of 16 corporate teams we helped to improve morale, collaboration, and relationships.
Successful teamwork:A case study
A case study is used to investigate two teams of final year multimedia students completing a project-based unit, in which teamwork was an essential ingredient and immersed in an authentic context. Attributes gleaned from the literature for successful teamwork was used to compare the two diverse teams.
Effective Team Building Case Studies & Insights
Explore impactful team building case studies showcasing strategies and outcomes that enhance collaboration and productivity in the workplace.
Getting the Group to Work as a Team: A Mini Case Study
Getting the Group to Work as a Team: A Mini Case Study. Categories: engaging teams, Leadership, project leadership, team development. Martha has been assigned a team of 10 people to help her plan a major customer appreciation event. They have been working together for over a month now and they just haven't really come together as a team.