Team Member Preparation
As mentioned above, teams are a powerful force in organizations. They are assembled to tackle complex and strategic issues within a company. Often the membership is a select group of people from different departments, each with special skills or talents to solve a particular problem. However; what is often lacking is training in the core competencies of working on a team. "In order for a team to be successful, it is essential that members know the basics of conflict resolution, delegation, and consensus building" (Convey, 1994, p. 13). Without these skills, each member must rely on whatever they've learned on their own, or the facilitator's skills in moving the team through these struggles. This is not an ideal way to manage teams, and reduces the synergistic benefits of team-based activities.
Every organization or group should develop a strategy for training and preparing team members for group process. One example that I found to be a good model was an initiative at Monmouth University (Gahr, 1995). It involved the Student Life organization -the Program Director, the staff, the administration, and the students. They used training to proactively manage conflict, and the results were positive. Here's a brief overview of the training phases they used: