Team Talk: The Power of Language in Team Dynamics

Donnellon argues that the gap between the ideal and the reality of team work is due to the failure to recognize and address the paradoxes that team work poses for individuals, teams, managers, and organizations. The central paradox is that teams require both the preservation of differences among its members as well as the integration of those differences into a single working unit. The way team members talk reflects and shapes the way they resolve these tensions. Using a sociolinguistic framework for analyzing team conversations, Donnellon draws on interviews and transcripts of team meetings that she gathered from product development teams in Fortune 200 companies. Her research shows that if organizations are to use teams effectively, they must remove the contradictions and barriers that impede team work. To realize the full potential of teams, organizations and managers must accommodate themselves to the requirements of real team process. Donnellon offers practical suggestions for managing these challenges. She identifies key dimensions for diagnosing team interaction and exposes the organizational and individual roots of team problems.