This session is designed to help teams improve their ability to work together and accomplish their goals. It focuses on the elements of team functioning. Participants work with a hypothetical team to learn how to apply these elements to a particular situation.

This session should be paired with the Enhancing Team Functioning video, which focuses on strategies and tools to enhance team functioning. Neither of these sessions stands on its own. Materials used in this session will also be used in the sixth, so it is important that facilitators keep chart notes and that participants keep their materials. The same small groups will continue the work they began in this session with the hypothetical team scenario as they work together in the later sixth session.

Sessions 5 and 6 may be presented during a day-long training (for example, 5 in the morning and 6 in the afternoon), or presented separately over shorter periods (for example, presented in half-day sessions a week apart).

Sister Act, a comedy starring Whoopi Goldberg, is produced by Touchstone Pictures. Facilitators should acquire the movie and review the segment to be shown before presenting the session. The segment to be shown begins 45 minutes into the movie. Whoopi’s character has left the convent, gone to a bar, and been caught by the Mother Superior. Start the DVD where Whoopi’s character and the Mother Superior are talking, and Whoopi says, “You really care about them, don’t you?” Stop the tape 13 minutes later, after the choir has sung a very upbeat song at Mass and the congregation is applauding. Be sure to cue the DVD to the right starting place before the session begins.

It is important that facilitators represent different roles, have experience working with teams, and understand group facilitation. Facilitators should thoroughly review the key points for the large group share-back for this session, called “Identifying Areas to Improve Team Functioning,” to be sure that all of them are mentioned.