Most organizational theorists use the athletic team as a metaphor for the effective work group - specific players motivated to give their best performance in pursuit of a common goal. This book offers a different model, focusing instead on the complex ways that members of a leadership team interact, wield power, use language and create meaning. The authors describe the team as a culture and argue that effective team leadership depends on expecting, understanding and appreciating the differences among individuals. Based on interviews with members of administrative teams on 15 campuses - including research universities, public colleges, private colleges and community colleges - the book examines teamwork as an essentially human activity. It considers how and why people on leadership teams think and act as they do, how they learn and communicate (or neglect to do so), and how they bring their deepest values, beliefs and aspirations into play in the conduct of administrative work. The authors describe how administrative leaders shape and maintain effective teams, and how the teams address diversity and conflict.
Emphasizing the importance of inclusiveness, the authors identify a number of hidden dynamics related to gender, race and power inequity. The book contains a number of quotes from team participants.