Building Effective Teams

Managers today face a new environment, where teams must form and produce results quickly, where members are separated by greater distances, and where the boundaries of membership and accountability are blurred. They also find themselves leading new types of teams--cross-functional, ad-hoc, peer, global--where issues of identity, authority, strategic alignment, culture, and coordination further complicate their work.

As a manager, your ability to help your teams rapidly become effective is a strategic must for your organization. In fact, your career advancement might very well depend on how well you can build and manage a collaborative force. "Leading from the Center: Building Effective Teams" provides a concise, expert primer that will help you update your skills quickly.

Based on the research and teachings of the Duke Corporate Education faculty, this guide incorporates the latest best practices to show you how to:

-Assemble a team whose members come from different departments, different locations, or different cultures and countries.

-Ensure your team's work is aligned with your organization's larger strategy.

-Develop clear goals and priorities for team members.

-Assess and discuss how the team is performing against its key challenges and responsibilities.

-Ensure that internal team dynamics are facilitating rather than hindering their efforts.

-Collaborate across boundaries--both functional and organizational.

Plentiful real-life case examples and checklists illustrate the practical steps you can take to build and motivate a team to achieve its best.

"BuildingEffective Teams" is one of the first books in the dynamic new "Leading from the Center" series from Dearborn Trade Publishing and Duke Corporate Education. Other books in the series include "Influencing and Collaborating for Results" and "Translating Strategy into Action,"