Book Review: THE HANDBOOK FOR WORKING WITH DIFFICULT GROUPS

The Handbook for Working With Difficult Groups

Author:  Sandy Schuman
ISBN-13:  9780470190388

Topic:  General Business

Format:  Hardcover
Language:  English
Publication Year:  2010

REVIEW:

There are many books on working with difficult individuals. Here is the first edited collection on how to work with difficult groups. With contributions from leading group experts such as Richard Hackman, Ingrid Bens, Roger Schwarz, Sam Kaner, David Sibbett and others, this book helps readers understand what makes groups ineffective and what they can do to help them be more effective. Specific topics include how to work with multi-lingual and global groups and hostile or polarized ones; working virtually; managing multi-layers of management; dealing with quiet or verbal team members, and more.

"Beginning with a conceptual framework useful to understand effective group functioning, The Handbook for Working with Difficult Groups continues with twenty chapters, each describing a common challenge a facilitator can face, examining the research available to understand the difficulty, and then offering pragmatic interventions a facilitator can use to deal with this challenge. A must-read for any group facilitator."—David Straus, founder, Interaction Associates

"If you're looking for ways to make your team more productive, you'll find golden nuggets written just for your situation in The Handbook for Working With Difficult Groups. A compendium of research and sage advice, this book offers experienced insights into how to transform seemingly dysfunctional groups and avoid obstacles before you hit them. Should be in the library of any leader or facilitator!"—Tammy Adams, CPF, president, Chaosity LLC

"This fine book contains a rich diversity of case studies, approaches and wise counsel from leading practitioners working with groups. It will help you to understand and facilitate effectively in even the most difficult situations."—Dale Hunter, author, The Art of Facilitation: The Essentials for Leading

Great Meetings and Creating Group Synergy

"Whether you are a facilitator, leader, or member of a group, you will gain surprising insights into why a group is difficult, and more importantly, how to recognize the cause of the difficulty and how to develop an effective response to move the group forward."—Gary Rush, CPF, president, MGR Consulting; chair, International Association of Facilitators (IAF)

We've all experienced the challenges associated with working with groups, but The Handbook for Working with Difficult Groups turns the idea of "difficult groups" on its head. Rather than view groups as inherently difficult, it looks at the factors that make working with groups difficult. Individual chapters focus on challenges such as involving dissenters, building external perspectives, reducing complaining, adapting to cultural differences, incorporating diversity, facilitating inclusion, working virtually, resolving identity-based conflict, transforming unproductive behavior patterns, preventing workplace harassment, and

The book first provides a framework for thinking systemically about the many and varied ways in which working with a group can be difficult. Building on that framework, the contributors each address three basic issues:

· How the group is difficult–a description of a real group and the observable phenomena that reflect the group's difficulty.

· Why the group is difficult–an exploration of the underlying causes of the difficulty.

· What you can do about it–what you can do as a group facilitator, leader, or member to help the group.

About the Author

Sandy Schuman has been helping organizations work more effectively to solve complex problems and make critical decisions for more than thirty years. He is a group facilitator, collaborative process advocate, and storyteller. He helps groups create shared meaning, make critical choices, and build collaborative relationships. He facilitates problem-solving and decision-making processes for a wide variety of public management and policy issues and provides training in group facilitation, decision making, systems thinking, conflict management systems, and organizational communication. He is the editor of the International Association of Facilitators handbook series: The IAF Handbook of Group Facilitation, Creating a Culture of Collaboration, and Working with Difficult Groups.