Team Players and Teamwork (Jossey-Bass Business & Management Series) [Paperback]

Glenn M. Parker (Author)

Book Description

Series: Jossey-Bass Business & Management Series | Publication Date: January 16, 1996

A quick, clear way to learn about teamwork, with a useful framework for identifying critical roles of team players.
--Peter Block

This handbook will help you focus on what makes a good team player. It draws on stories of more than fifty team-driven organizations?including Xerox, Honeywell, General Motors, and 3M?to give you proven evidence of the qualities of high performing teams.

You'll discover:

• Four styles of team players critical to an effective, dynamic team
• The right balance of styles to create a productive team
• How to get team members to support, challenge, and inspire one another to achieve stellar results
• A useful framework for identifying team roles

Here's a practical guide for your team leaders and members who need to maintain their competitive advantage through teamwork.

Editorial Reviews

Review

One of the Top Ten Business Books (Tom Brown, American Public Radio's Marketplace)

A quick, clear way to learn about teamwork, with a useful framework for identifying critical roles of team players. (Peter Block, author of The Empowered Manager)

From the Inside Flap

Explores the important role of the individual team member in making teamwork an effective way to do business. Highlights four different kinds of players essential to the success of any team. Shows how to recognize the different kinds of team player, meld diverse members into a cohesive team, and encourage the most productive contribution from each type.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass (January 16, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787901857
• ISBN-13: 978-0787901851
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #743,851 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

As a consultant for more than 30 years, Glenn Parker has helped create high-performing teams at hundreds of organizations including Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Merck & Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Philips-Van Heusen, Telcordia Technologies, BOC Gases, and the U. S. Coast Guard. He is a internationally recognized workshop facilitator, organizational consultant and conference speaker in the area of teamwork and team meetings. Glenn has drawn upon his experience in the field to author some 16 books including several best-sellers such as Team Players and Teamwork, Rewarding Teams: Lessons from the Trenches and Cross Functional Teams: Working with Allies, Enemies and other Strangers; widely used instruments such as the Parker Team Player Survey and manuals for practitioners such as 50 Activities for Team Building and Team Depot: A Warehouse of 585 Tools to Reassess, Rejuvenate and Rehabilitate Your Team. His seminal work on team player styles was featured in the best-selling CRM video, Team Building II: What Makes A Good Team Player? Glenn is one of only 75 management thinkers recognized in the recent book, The Guru Guide. His latest books are Meeting Excellence: 33 Tools to Lead Meetings That Get Results(2006) and Team Players and Teamwork:New Strategies for Developing Successful Collaboration, Completely Updated and Revised 2nd Edition (2008), both published by Wiley. He is currently creating the Parker Team Series: 10 practical booklets on various aspects of successful teamwork, published by HRD Press.

Glenn is the father of three grown children and currently lives in the Princeton, NJ area with his wife, Judy. In his spare time he is an active volunteer with the American Cancer Society where he helped create RUN FOR DAD, a Father's Day event designed to raise awareness about prostate cancer which, in 2009, just its seventh year, drew more than 1,000 participants.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Insights on Teamwork, November 14, 2008

By 

Emil J. Sadloch (Yardley, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Team Players and Teamwork, Completely Updated and Revised: New Strategies for Developing Successful Collaboration (Hardcover)

Glenn Parker's book, Team Players and Teamwork (second edition: 2008) offers a variety of insights and ideas to help organizations and teams succeed in a world of cross-functional teams. While the first edition of this book provided valuable information for internal and external team-builders, the second edition offers even more for "people who see teamwork as a business strategy and want it to come alive."

The book presents data from 51 organizations that have used teamwork in a strategic manner and achieved desired results. Correctly, Parker sees teamwork as a way for forward-thinking organizations to improve results, enhance productivity, generate innovations, build collaboration, maximize diverse contributions, and improve service.

The book is about "team players," and continues his exploration of the four styles of the team player that are identified in the Parker Team Player Survey (PTPS): Contributor, Collaborator, Communicator, and Challenger. This book delves more deeply into the typical characteristics of these team player styles and examines the virtues of those who possess more than one prominent style. Further, this book applies the positive actions of each type of team player to Tuckman's "stages of team development." This helps team players know the actions they can take at the various stages to support their team in its development. This content will be very valuable for trainers and facilitators who work with the PTPS in team development interventions.

The book also adds emphasis to the leader role's in team success. This edition takes the style concept and broadens the ways that team leaders can know themselves and bring their best as team leaders. In addition, Parker presents 12 characteristics of an effective team, relating the team leadership styles directly to several of these characteristics: planning, communication, risk-taking, problem-solving, and decision-making. This chapter will be very helpful for team leaders who want to apply the team leadership concepts directly in these important roles.

Finally, I found great value in the data presented in the "Resources" section of the book. It presents more data on the distribution of team player styles in organizations, in some cases broken out by industry sector. Since I use the PTPS in team development workshops, this added data will strengthen understanding of one's own style and appreciation of others'. Team Players and Teamwork will help readers see the strategic value of team development, the elements to address, and the important role of "style" in helping teams perform at high levels.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still Rings True, December 31, 2008

By 

Sue Kirkland (Princeton, NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Team Players and Teamwork, Completely Updated and Revised: New Strategies for Developing Successful Collaboration (Hardcover)

I was lucky enough to discover this book when it was first published. Since then I've frequently gone back to it and always find useful "gems." Now that we're more virtual, the new edition helps translate team principles to the current reality and its challenges. I not only recommend this book, I also suggest you look at Mr. Parker's "Team Player Survey."

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A First Rate Revision, November 12, 2008

By 

Ira G. Asherman (New York City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Team Players and Teamwork, Completely Updated and Revised: New Strategies for Developing Successful Collaboration (Hardcover)

Parker has penned a first rate revision of his earlier book.The current edition reflects the changing nature of teams and the challenges team players face in todays rapidly changing and virtual business environment. Parker makes appropriate use of theory but also includes relevant examples to aid the reader to understand and apply the points he is making. He explores the factors critical to team effectiveness and to being an effective team player and places it all in an easy to read and understandable context.

As one who has made extensive use of Parkers earlier work and his Team Player Survey in my consulting with teams, I know the current edition will become a valuable addition to my bookshelf. Team Players and Teamwork is not only a resource for the consultant concerned with enhancing team performance but todays team players who are searching for approaches to enhance their own and their teams performance.

In summary I found this to be a well written and useful update to Parkers earlier volume.