Team Players and Teamwork Hardcover – January 23, 2008

Very valuable information if you are aspiring to become a team leader.

necessary reading for anyone in a work force regardless of position -- probably required high school reading!

The book was in excellent shape. The transaction went well. I got it in good time before my class and I'm very pleased. I would buy from this seller again!

Glenn Parker is a consultant and trainer and the style of this book seems strongly effected by presentations he has given in these roles. Specifically, this book feels like it was composed by mashing together several PowerPoint slide decks on the subject of teaming. It's hard to read two paragraphs without encountering a bulleted list of items, which may never be discussed. Even when the author isn't using bullets, his writing reads like bullets - thoughts connected by a category but not always connected to each other. When good advice is dispensed, it's often so abbreviated and digested that it's not useful - like a CliffsNotes of better more complete work.The major contribution of this work is the team player styles the author describes in Chapter 3 and uses as the foundation for later chapters. The gist is that different kinds of people contribute to a team and understanding how people contribute can help you build and nurture a better team. "The Parker Team Player Survey" is used to determine a teaming style and Parker describes positive and negative qualities of people based on their style(s). The process is somewhat reminiscent of a Cosmo magazine survey and about as scientific. The problem with Parker's approach is that it is absurdly reductionist and arbitrary. People aren't this simple; labeling people is unhelpful at best and harmful at worst. I'm familiar with a class that used this book and in a toxic application of this book's teaming styles, team members began parroting the negative qualities of their "styles" as described in the book as evidence to discount each other. Even using the positive qualities of a style as assigned by Parker as a mechanism for understanding and working with people seems misguided and about as helpful as using an individual's horoscope to understand how they might interact in a team.In short, I would urge you to avoid this book. There are much better books on communication (e.g.,  Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most ), leadership (e.g.,  It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership ), and team/project management (e.g.  The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right ).

This book is a great read. It's easy to understand the concept of teams for any environment. If you have never had any exposure to teams form and function this is a great book to start with.

I recently attending an offsite meeting of my organization and we used this book for team building. we all loved it. Suggest anyone wanting to try team building read this book.

the book is an excellent material and very rich.

This is am okay book but a little outdated. A good resource and the data is sound and backed up by more recent and interesting studies and books.