Extraordinary Groups: How Ordinary Teams Achieve Amazing Results »

Geoffrey Bellman is a recognized thought-leader on organizations, leadership, life, and change. He has written six books including The Consultant's Calling from Jossey-Bass. His private sector work has focused on renewing large, mature corporations. In recent years, he has given more of his attention to community-based organizations.

Kathleen Ryan is co-founder of The Orion Partnership, a firm that focuses on culture change, team development, executive on-boarding, and coaching. As one client has said, "She is an organizational consultant with an instinct for translating complex human behavior into practical concepts." Ryan is the coauthor of The Courageous Messenger and Driving Fear Out of the Workplace, both from Jossey-Bass.

Why are some teams described in such exceptional terms, while most are not?

In this important book, Geoffrey Bellman and Kathleen Ryan reveal that people instinctively sense when a group experience is something special, something different from the ordinary, something that surpasses their expectations in a positive, remarkable, and hard-to-describe way. These are extraordinary groups that achieve outstanding results. Members of extraordinary teams—individually or collectively—experience a profound shift in how they see their world. They are transformed.

However large or small, visible or intangible, such transformations happen because the group experience satisfies core needs that members intuitively bring to any group they join. Based on an extensive field study and filled with illustrative examples, Extraordinary Groups presents Bellman and Ryan's tested Group Needs Model. Seeing the world of groups through this elegant framework allows readers to nurture extraordinary experiences in their teams. Bellman and Ryan's model reveals six core group needs forming three pairs: One pair relates to the individual, one to the group, and the third to the world in which the group exists.

These six elements combine to form the Group Needs Model:

• Acceptance of self while moving toward one's Potential
• A Bond with others that grows while pursuing a common Purpose
• Understanding the Reality of the world while collectively making an Impact

No matter if the group or team gathers at work, at home, or within the community, when a group experience meets two or more of these needs, it will stand out as something special for all the members of the group.

Written for managers and executives, facilitators and trainers, and all others who lead or participate in groups, Extraordinary Groups is an invaluable resource to achieve outstanding team results time and time again.

I: Overview.

1 Why Small Groups Are Especially Important Now.

2 What's Different About Extraordinary Groups.

3 What Ordinary Groups Need.

II: Understanding the Group Needs Model.

4 Growing Toward Your Potential.

5 Joining for Purpose.

6 Creating Change Together.

7 The Heart of Transformation.

III: Sharing Leadership.

8 Embracing Group Differences.

9 Leading Extraordinary Groups.

10 Living the Promise of Amazing Groups.

Appendix A Applications of Practice in Using the Group Needs Model.

Appendix B Extraordinary Groups: A Nutshell.

Appendix C Practicing What We Preach.

Appendix D More Group Resources.

Acknowledgments.

About the Authors.

Index.