The paper examines the joint interactive process of top-level administrative leadership teams of colleges or universities, with emphasis on the team's collective thinking. It focuses on how individual team members, who report directly to the president, make sense of their own and each other's activities on the team (for example, by constructing certain types or roles) rather than on the nature of effects of the activities themselves. Seventy administrators at 15 campuses were interviewed concerning the administrative team's organization, functions, and internal dynamics. Analysis revealed the following typical roles: (1) definer (creating the team's reality), (2) analyst (exploring and mapping the team's reality), (3) interpreter (predicting what others are likely to see), (4) critic (redefining, reanalyzing, and reinterpreting the team's reality), (5) synthesizer (orchestrating what the team knows), (6) disparity monitor (gauging what outsiders think), (7) task monitor (keeping the team on course), and (8) emotional monitor (remembering emotions). Teams were also analyzed on the basis of how clearly cognitive roles were articulated in the areas of: role content and quality of role performance, stage of team development and team integration, role prevalence, role configuration, cognitive differentiation and cognitive complexity, and management of cognitive differentiation. Contains 50 references. (DB)