After a brief review of team effectiveness models is presented, Stohl and Schell’s concept of farrago—a confusing group member who becomes the relational focus of a dysfunctional group—is reconfigured into primary and secondary provokers. It was hypothesized that a group’s dysfunction is caused by the primary provoker’s confusing behavior. Behaving at one anchor of a behavioral dimension and then at the other, the primary provoker pulls other group members into a web of confusing communication, causing them to become secondary provokers. The dysfunction that results replaces the task focus of the team. This assumption was tested in two studies of organizational work groups. Results indicate that confusion on only one dimension—the friendly-unfriendly—distinguishes dysfunctional from effective groups.
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