Posts

Showing posts from January, 2019

Card games

Image
Many sports require special equipment and dedicated playing fields, leading to the involvement of a community much larger than the group of players. A city or town may set aside such resources for the organization of sports leagues.                                               Popular sports may have spectators who are entertained just by watching games. A community will often align itself with a local sports team that supposedly represents it (even if the team or most of its players only recently moved in); they often align themselves against their opponents or have traditional rivalries. The concept of fandom began with sports fans.                                              Stanley Fish cited[citation needed] the balls and strikes of baseball as a...

Rules and aims

Image
Whereas games are often characterized by their tools, they are often defined by their rules. While rules are subject to variations and changes, enough change in the rules usually results in a "new" game. For instance, baseball can be played with "real" baseballs or with wiffleballs.                                                However, if the players decide to play with only three bases, they are arguably playing a different game. There are exceptions to this in that some games deliberately involve the changing of their own rules, but even then there are often immutable meta-rules. Rules generally determine the time-keeping system, the rights and responsibilities of the players, and each player's goals. Player rights may include when they may spend resources or move tokens. The rules of a game are to be distinguished from its aims. For most competitive games...

Board games

Image
A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements. However, the distinction is not clear-cut, and many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (such as jigsaw puzzles or games involving an artistic layout such as Mahjong, solitaire, or some video games).                                                       Games are sometimes played purely for entertainment, sometimes for achievement or reward as well. They can be played alone, in teams, or online; by amateurs or by professionals. The players may have an audience of non-players, such as when people are entertain...

Teamwork

Image
Teamwork is the collaborative effort of a team to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way.This concept is seen within the greater framework of a team, which is a group of interdependent individuals who work together towards a common goal. Basic requirements for effective teamwork are an adequate team size (about 6-8 members), available resources for the team to make use of (i.e. meeting space and time, guidance from a supervisor, support from the organization, etc.), and clearly defined roles within the team in order for everyone to have a clear purpose. Teamwork is present in any context where a group of people are working together to achieve a common goal. These contexts include an industrial organization (formal work teams), athletics (sports teams), a school (classmates working on a project), and the healthcare system (operating room teams). In each of these settings, the level of teamwork and interdependence can vary from low...

Team

Image
A team is a group of individuals (usually four or more people) working together to achieve a goal. A group does not necessarily constitute a team. Teams normally have members with complementary skills and generate synergy through a coordinated effort which allows each member to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. Team members need to learn how to help one another, help other team members realize their true potential, and create an environment that allows everyone to go beyond his or her limitations. Teams can be broken down into from a huge team or one big group of people, even if these smaller secondary teams are temporary. A team becomes more than just a collection of people when a strong sense of mutual commitment creates synergy, thus generating performance greater than the sum of the performance of its individual members. Thus teams of game players can form (and re-form) to practise their craft/sport. Transport logistics executives can select tea...

Team size, composition, and formation

Image
Team size and team composition affect team processes and team outcomes. The optimal size (and composition) of teams is debated and will vary depending on the task at hand. At least one study of problem-solving in groups showed an optimal size of groups at four members. Other works estimate the optimal size between 5-12 members or a number of members that can consume two pizzas.The following extract is taken from Chong (2007). The interest in teams gained momentum in the 1980s with the publication of Belbin’s (1981) work on successful teams. The research into teams and teamwork followed two lines of inquiry. Writers such as Belbin (1981, 1993),Woodcock (1989),Margerison and McCann (1990), Davis et al. (1992),Parker (1990), and Spencer and Pruss (1992) focused on team roles and how these affected team performance. These studies suggested that team performance was a function of the number and type of roles team members played. The number of roles for optimal performance v...

Training to improve teamwork

Image
Overall, teamwork and performance can be enhanced through specific training that targets the individual team members and the team as a whole.Bruce Tuckman proposed a team developmental model that separated the stages of a team's lifespan and the level of teamwork for each stage: Forming This stage is described by approach/avoidance issues, as well as internal conflicts about being independent vs. wanting to be a part of the team. Team members usually tend to 'play it safe' and minimize their risk taking in case something goes wrong. Teamwork in this stage is at its lowest levels. Storming The second stage is characterized by a competition for power and authority, which is the source of most of the conflicts and doubts about the success of the team. If teamwork is low in this stage, it is very unlikely that the team will get past their conflicts. If there is a high degree of teamwork and willingness to collaborate, then the team might have a brighter...

Team building

Image
Team building is a collective term for various types of activities used to enhance social relations and define roles within teams, often involving collaborative tasks. It is distinct from team training, which is designed by a combine of business managers, learning and development/OD (Internal or external) and an HR Business Partner (if the role exists) to improve the efficiency, rather than interpersonal relations. Many team-building exercises aim to expose and address interpersonal problems within the group. Over time, these activities are intended to improve performance in a team-based environment.Team building is one of the foundations of organizational development that can be applied to groups such as sports teams, school classes, military units or flight crews. The formal definition of team-building includes: aligning around goals building effective working relationships reducing team members' role ambiguity finding solutions to team problems Team ...