A641.5.3.RB - ICT at the Team Level

The U.S. Women’s National Team is by far the most successful country in Olympic women’s soccer history, having won four gold medals and one silver medal in the five competitions that have held so far. The USA is 23-2-3 all-time in the Olympics, having lost only in the gold medal game in 2000 and the opening match of the 2008 tournament, both to Norway.

The 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece, the birthplace of the Olympics, it was essentially considered a given that the United States would win gold in men’s basketball. Ever since NBA players had begun playing in the Olympics, the team had not only won three golds, but had not lost a single game. American NBA players were undefeated at the Olympics. There was no reason to believe anything but another gold was coming America’s way.

Transformation at the group level can be catalyzed and facilitated by formal or informal positive emotional leadership in the group. To be successful, it is important to identify and communicate a clear understanding of what is to be accomplished. This is the biggest difference between these two team. The women’s team understood this, the men’s team expected it and thought it was a given, taking it for granted.

To individually and collectively increase awareness, understanding and to develop new perspectives, groups should engage in learning together to better understand an experience, situation, system, issue, or opportunity, as well as understand different, and potentially competing, perspectives. Teams need to engage in learning to identify and/or refine ideas that could inform planning, design, or implementation; this might include generative discussions about solutions and possible actions. Teams engage in learning to reach consensus or agreement on a path forward. Developing and communicating a clear goal not only helps determine what kind of learning experience will be most appropriate and effective, but it also lets participants know what will be expected of them.

Intentionality and shared ideals are the drivers of change and group transformation. A series of discontinuous discoveries leads group and its members in various iterations of change; each iteration is bound in the positive emotional attractor. Positive emotion thus, becomes critical for intentional group development. It is activated by the group's drawing its primary motivation from visions of its ideal.

In each iteration of ICT at the group level, alternating activation of positive and negative emotional attractors, earlier in this issue) is also critical for the group's intentional change, when each iteration of intentional change is rooted in positive emotion. Each iteration of ICT expands the group's conscious awareness, or mindfulness, the salience, as well as the coherence of this ideal. (Boyatzis, 2006)

Works Cited

Akrivou, K., Boyatzis , R., & McLeod, P. (2006). The evolving group: towards a prescriptive theory of intentional group development. Journal of Management Development.

Boyatzis, R. (2006). An overview of intentional change from a complexity perspective. Journal of Management Development.