Team Building: Issues and Alternatives

Over the last few years, medical researchers have determined that psychological stress is our nation’s most predominant health problem. Stress has been correlated closely with heart disease, hypertension, alcoholism, and drug abuse. As a topic of interest and concern, stress has found its way into various professional as well as popular journals; workshops on stress management are being conducted around the country. In a recent workshop that some colleagues and I conducted, city officials responded quite positively to simple body relaxation and meditation techniques aimed at stress reduction. Participants were eager to learn about methods for coping with stress on the job as well as in non-job areas. This book considers an array of topics pertaining to stress and its management. The author devotes introductory chapters to exploring the relationship between stress and one’s work environment. A second section of the book is devoted to the psychological and physiological aspects of stress as they pertain specifically to productivity. The last section centers on transcendental meditation as a stress-reduction technique. The effects of reduced stress on turnover, productivity, interpersonal relationships, ambition, and job satisfaction are systematically considered. TM appears to have significant impact on a person’s experience of stress. The author’s data support the theory that active involvement in TM not only reduces stress but is correlated with improved productivity as judged by a person’s peers, superiors, and subordinates. The author is not trying to do a &dquo;hard sell&dquo; for TM. He offers systematic research in that area, but he also points out other ways of reducing stress. He urges his readers to choose a technique that is, above all, personally acceptable and exciting-and scientifically verifiable. Frew presents solid data that continue to build a positive case for the potency of TM.