ABSTRACT
Every person reading this chapter has experience working in teams of one type or another. This experience may include project teams, committees, study groups, or even sports teams. Moreover, it is probably easy for you to recall teams that you have participated in or that you have observed that performed well and teams that performed poorly. When we think back about these teams, we usually recall the persons who comprised the teams and we often define these persons in trait terms. That is, we may remember effective teams as composed of dependable, hardworking, and cooperative team members, and remember ineffective teams as composed of irresponsible, indolent, and self-oriented team members.
