Case 5-1

This case is talking about an executive retreat. It was introduced by John Matthews who was a executive had been selected to attend the two-and-a-half-week retreat. The retreat was more like a competition about academic and athletic. The team members should not only get know each other and cooperate with teammates but also need to compete with others. The whole participants were broken into five groups and their aim was to win the competition. There are several sessions about academic and athletic that the participants should complete. After the introduction part the case showed the experience of John. Before the group meeting John was wondering and worried about this retreat. When he was taking the first group meeting, he tried to learn the backgrounds of other team members. And the he paid more attention to learn about his team leader. Besides introducing the team leader the case also showed the retreat’s theme was Think-Communicate-Cooperate. It meaned people who attend this retreat should think less about themselves and try to communicate and assistant to others. And then John showed his recollections of the members in his group individually. There are twelve members in his group. Everyone in his group had different characteristics. After group meeting they set up four basic goals about this retreat. In the second part of this case was a chart of first day’s seating arrangement and their performance of the first few days. Even though the first days’ results were not very good, the whole group still worked on their original goals. In the last part of the case was another chart that showed the last few days seating arrangement and the group performance about this whole retreat. Their goals made before the retreat almost all defeated. Even though John thought he improved, the whole group failed. Question 1 Wally was the first leader. He had no formal training, so it made him reluctant. Then he treated everyone carefully. His behavior showed that he may be a