I read a lot about the positive effects of the introduction of team work, but are there also negative effects? Who can tell me some from his/her experience?

-- Marieke Wageveld (wageveld@fsw.eur.nl), October 30, 2001

Answers

yes, very much!

-- Judith (deRuyter@fsw.eur.nl), October 30, 2001.

Dear Judith,

You so yes. Can you tell me some of your experiences? Thanks, Marieke.

-- Marieke Wageveld (wageveld@fsw.eur.nl), October 30, 2001.

We have been working on teams and slowly introducing teams in new areas of our plant for the last 2 years. Yes, we have seen some negatives, but the positives outweight the negs 10-1. Long term employees don't want their "playground" tampered with. Many - especially management types feared losing status, power & in some cases their jobs. A few other aspects we saw were people are very resistant to making meeting time, as well as not comitting to follow through when they went back to their work areas.

All these are able to be overcome by total committment, not backing down in the face of resistance, and someone to help them learn and use new skills.

-- Shirley Stovall (shirley@wes-tex.com), October 30, 2001.

I agree that the positive effects outweigh the negative. However, I recently experienced the negative effects by observing the communication behavior of a new employee who used a lot of 'you' messages during on line communication. This employee's communication style was not conducive to team work and ultimately she alienated herself and word got around quickly that she was difficult to work with. It was her way or no way. This probably speaks to the issue of group cohesiveness and strongly conveys this individual's lack of acceptance of group members which negatively affected the trust in the group.

-- Margot Williams (mwilliams@parkland.cc.il.us), October 30, 2001.