Acknowledgments





The week of May 8, 1993 was the start of it. The magical little community of Tiburon, California, served as the site of a seminar I co-led for Union Institute Ph.D. learners studying organization behavior and/or organization development. I wear several hats, one as an organizational development practitioner, another as a faculty member for the Union Institute. Once each year I am responsible for leading a five-day seminar for Union learners, and in 1993 that was the Tiburon seminar.

My co-leader was a Union learner, Alexandra Kovats. Alexandra is a Dominican nun who worked with Matthew Fox. Fox's eclectic approach to spirit in all of life would become an important subtext for my work in the area of team spirit. I proposed to Alexandra that we collaborate to do this seminar. I would bring my experience as an organization development consultant and my familiarity with a leading team development process (the Team Performance System, developed by Allan Drexler). Alexandra would bring her spiritual awareness and facilitation gifts from her work and affiliation with Matthew Fox. Together we would create something special: a seminar on team spirit.

Little did I know that the seminar would be such a transforming event. I had not considered how I might unite formerly separate worlds, and I was thrilled with the idea. I have always thought spirit was present in my work with groups. A mentor friend of mine in Vermont, Tony Stone, had suggested I am a "spiritual sneak." I like that idea. But something profound happened to me in Tiburon. The wonderful insight and perspective of the 18 learners, many of whom were practitioners and scholars of organization behavior, opened me to a totally new possibility -- team spirit.

This book is dedicated to those Union Institute learners and to Alexandra. It is dedicated to my understanding family and my brilliant team leader and wife, Kipra. It is also dedicated to the nearly 200 certified Consultant/Facilitators of Team Spirit, and to the Consultant/Facilitators and organization clients who show up for regular meetings of the Friends of Team Spirit to discuss experiences and approaches at the intersection of spirit and team development.

I wish to acknowledge Gerald Pavloff who has generously provided me consulting support on how to bring Team Spirit to the world; Richard Smith of the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership for his always seminal thinking about appropriate metaphors to express my work with spirit in organizations; Stan Sword, Coach of the AT&T GIS (Now NCR) Professional Services Organization Development Team, who used Team Spirit to brilliantly develop a high-performing organization and who is now fostering the use of Team Spirit at AT&T Solutions as Resource Director, Outsourcing Practice; and to the following persons for their contribution to particular activities used in this volume: Barbara Czestochowa for the Molding Clay: Letting-Go Metaphor activity and the Meeting your Inner Servant guidedvisualizationn; Skipper Young for the Spirit Walk activity; and Linda Tobey for the Keys to the Kingdom activity. I wish also to acknowledge my good friends Murray Cohen, Bob Ross, Gordon Cowperthwaite, Karen and Roger Fortman, and Peter and Rosemary Jones who always call me to my best in my life and in my relationship with my wife and family. (Karen, Peter, and Rosemary are also Team Spirit Facilitator/Consultants.)

Thanks also to Alyse McConnell, John Waterhouse, Jim Stuart, Diane and Roy Moody, George Barclay, Mary Jo Wetterich, Joe Payne, Peggy Egan, David Schoeff, John Hogan, Basil Zabek, Mary Fay Boyer, Karen Grove, Jonathan Brown, Dick Genardi, Gayle Gyure, Susan Harrington, Skipper Young, Teri and Bill Garcia, Rich Glenn, Rod Goelz, Murray Cohen, Mitch Coleman, Nancy White, Tom Cox, Larry Fidelius, Roger Bourdon, Alex Patakkos, Robert Hernandez, James Ray, Merril Anderson, Sharon Trekell, Katie Buckley, Joe Lawrence, Stacy Fahlsung, Tamara Stuchlak, Cindy Manis, Diane Edelman, Susan Edwards, Nancy Conway, Wendy Appel, Mike Gunther, Julie Raskin, Joleen Jackson, Steve Houchin, Joan Bicocchi, Tammy McNew, Milan Savan, Bob Sweiterman, Karen Ash, Rachel Holstine, Bruce Bertell, Marilyn Spiegel, Jeff Imber, Marcella Balin, Elizabeth David, Joan Cook, Karen Witt, Hardy Hassenfuss, Tanya King, Cheryl Lossie, Carol Rossi, Darlene Weener, Teri Cassady, Chuck Mallue, Luis Marrero, David Mercier, Celine O'Neil, Nancy Henson, Joe Lambright, Fred Schu, Richard SMith, Larry SPears, John Renesch, Linda Garrett, Ted Baxendale, Linda TObey, Karin Cadwell, Dianna Crowell, Hank Lindborg, Karen Mousain, George O'Brien, Katie Pynn, Angela Smith, Maribeth Quinn, Stu Cart and Barry Ballard, the latter for editorial support. Thanks, too, to my editor, Richard Narramore, and my publicist, Kathryn Hall, for their wonderful support.

I am especially grateful, and wish to dedicate this book, to my associate Barbara Czestochowa, who has worked tirelessly in the creation of this volume, and to Fred Bartenstein who has so generously given himself to the review of this manuscript and other manuscripts that I have written about Team Spirit. Blessings to all of you.

Barry Heerman