Group Dynamics

Vignette: You are a leader of a team of writers and artists at an animation studio. This is a great group of highly talented and creative people but not an easy team to lead. Team members are individualistic, idiosyncratic, and temperamental, to mention just a few of their personality traits. You have been able to organize them into a project team and facilitate their interpersonal issues, and the team has succeeded in producing a successful short film.

You feel lucky that your team was successful in the last project. It is now time to start over with a newly composed team. Whether you organize a new team or use the previous team, it is difficult to get a team to work together creatively. What you really want to do is to set up a mechanism to encourage continuous creativity. It is more than just hiring creative people – you want to use teamwork as a way to make creative projects a regular occurrence in the organization.

Answer the following questions:

1) What are the benefits and problems with using a team approach to creative work?

2) How can teamwork be used to encourage creative work?

3) How can you (a team leader) use teams to ensure creative projects keep flowing from organization?