Top Ten List of Group Problems

Problem	How to minimize
1.- Floundering	Make sure the mission is clear and everyone understands what is needed to move forward
2.- Overbearing experts	Have an agreement among team members that there are no sacred cows and that all team members have the right to explore all areas
3.- Dominating participants	List ‘balance participation’ as a goal and evaluate regularly. Practice ‘gate keeping’ to limit dominant participant
4.- Reluctant participant	Ask opinions of quiet members and encourage by validation. Require individual assignments and reports.
5.-Unquestioned acceptance of Opinion	Ask for supporting data and reasoning. Accept and encourage conflicting ideas.
6.-Rush to accomplishment	Confront those doing the rushing and remind them not to compromise the best solution. Make sure a consensus is reached
7.-Attribution of motives to others	Reaffirm agreement that the group sticks to the scientific approach. Ask for confirmation of data
8.-Discounting or Ignoring group members’ statement	Promote effective listening. Support the discounted person. Talk off-line with anyone who continually discounts other team members
9.-Wanderlust:digression and tangents	Follow an agenda with time estimates. Keep the topics in full view of the team and direct the conversation back to the topic
10.-Feuding team members	Focus on ideas, not personalities. Get adversaries to discuss the issues off-line or get them to agree to a standard behavior during meetings.

Fogler and LeBlanc, Prentice Hall

-Each member should take the initiative to make it work.