The Destructive I mpact of a Positive Team-Building Intervention

Abstract

Team-building interventions seek to build competent, collaborative, and creative work teams by removing the barriers to effective group functioning and by helping participants better understand and utilize the group processes associated with effective group behavior. This article examines a confron tation-team-building intervention that was highly successful in building the supervisors into a cohesive, trusting, and unified group. However, the team became the most important variable, with little consideration given to the rest of the organization. As a result, the whole organization was severely crippled and had to be completely rebuilt. Lessons are drawn from this excellent example of a lopsided intervention.