Interpersonal Relationships, Teams, and Team Building

Abstract

R&D organizations are driven by a wide range of challenges, which requires diverse skills, expertise, and experience. Teams enable these characteristics to facilitate rapid, flexible, and adaptive responses of R&D organizations. The chapter begins with a brief introduction of teams and an evaluation on the role of interdisciplinary teams and cross-functional teams in R&D setups. Further, we have attempted to view the role of team members and their paradoxical behavior ranging from affection, belief, and consequences. Understanding these behaviors is very important to facilitate cooperation and collaboration in R&D organizations. Teams in R&D face conflicts under the influence of power, multiple goals, and varied interests. Hence, to understand and deal with these conflicts, behavioral modification is necessary. Thus, the present chapter attempts to cover behavioral modification techniques to enhance communication interdependency and team efficiency. Finally, the chapter concludes with the role of communication and types in facilitating team collaboration and cooperation.

Learning Objectives: To understand the types of teams, team development models, team member roles, categorization on effective and ineffective team characteristics and team performance models; to explore team-building interventions; to present a detailed picture on communication in R&D and various aspects related to it; to describe conflicts, various levels of conflicts, and types of conflicts in an organization.