It’s really good to recognise people and to celebrate what’s happened. But we want to make sure that we are also looking forward and asking ‘what’s the next stage for this team? Or if someone’s leaving the team, ‘what are our plans to replace that person or to have that work done differently? Or maybe it’s that so many people have left the team that it doesn’t really exist anymore. So you’ve restructured and people are going into different teams.
- You might still have to put out the occasional fire, but on high-performing teams, leaders can generally focus on monitoring progress, measuring results and celebrating achievements.
- Your team starts to increase their productivity at this stage as they become more familiar with their teammates and their working styles.
- Tuckman asserted that each of these phases was necessary in order for a team to learn, grow, and deliver results of the highest quality.
- A member who asserts authority or is knowledgeable may be looked to take control.
- However, it’s possible for teams to undergo a serious change that causes them to revert to an earlier stage.
Usually at this stage, we don’t have a very clear idea of our goals. For example, if they were invited to join a meeting or a committee, they may not be sure about the purpose of their role. As you can probably guess this is the stage when we first start a team.
Navigating the “norming” stage
Don’t leave team conflict unchecked, but remember that a little friction can be a good thing – it might reveal inefficiencies for the group to fix together and ultimately lead to innovation. Failure to address problems here can result in long-term issues, but once this stage is passed through successfully, things will get easier. Assess resource capacity in real time — view work hours, availability, and workload at a glance. You’ll get a clear picture of your team’s workload to avoid burning out team members. In the Forming stage our team members are not too sure about what’s going to happen. There might be a sense of ‘let’s wait and see how this all goes’.
Like children, teams go through their developmental stages and can reach exciting milestones. Whether you’re building a new team or working on a specific project with cross-functional partners, it’s important to establish your team’s mission early on. Setting a goal, even before you start working together, establishes some phases of team development ground rules to focus on and ensures that everyone is on the same page and moving towards the same goal. As a team leader, it’s your goal to support and empower your team to help get their highest-impact work done. When your team members feel comfortable with each other, it’s easier to collaborate and work together.
Play to your team members’ strengths
This is because, after storming, everyone is now working together more happily towards the overall project goal. In addition to keeping communication flowing, it’s also extremely helpful to ensure that everyone knows what part of the project they are responsible for. This can reduce misunderstandings and help work to progress smoothly. A good https://www.globalcloudteam.com/ way to get any project started is with a kick off meeting. This gives everyone a chance to introduce themselves and establish roles and responsibilities that will help move the project along with ease. In this article, we’ll take a look at each stage in more detail to help you implement them and improve team development in your business.
So for example, if we’re using whole-brain thinking, we may say, ‘hey, I need to get to the blue quadrant right now’. It just gives us a common language and enables everyone to work more effectively before tackling the five stages of team development. Many dysfunctional team behaviors develop at this stage, such as lack of trust, fear of conflict, and absence of accountability. However, I always find it encouraging when my team members start conflicting with each other.
A guide to transformational leadership
When leaders allow teams to form and develop with unrealistic expectations or too little oversight, bad things can happen. Conversely, when leaders recognize that every team needs some time and TLC to grow into a functional unit, good things tend to follow. In the earlier stages of your team’s formation, establish a clear communication plan.
At the same time, you are excited – because it’s always exciting to do something new. The team has a strong sense of identity, morale is high, and team loyalty is intense. Individual team member behaviour can vary greatly during this stage. You may find that some team members are openly hostile and attempt to dominate the group, while others withdraw and remain silent.
Help your team reach their goals with strong leadership
Additionally, the role of a team leader is crucial at this stage because the roles and responsibilities of the members are still not quite clear. Therefore, it is important for you as a lead to have 1 on 1 meetings with each member at the forming stage. Behaviors during the Norming stage may include members making a conscious effort to resolve problems and achieve group harmony.
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Module 8: Groups, Teams, and Teamwork
Roles on the team may have become more fluid, with members taking on various roles and responsibilities as needed. Differences among members are appreciated and used to enhance the team’s performance. During the Norming stage, members shift their energy to the team’s goals and show an increase in productivity, in both individual and collective work.
The storming stage is characterized by competition and conflict. People already understand the tasks, as well as their own role in a team. This is a stage when dominant members of the group start to emerge. And while they feel confident, some other team members may want to stay in their comfort zone, preferring not to be confrontational or even express their thoughts.
Forming
But if you’ve got everything set up, if you’ve got the support mechanisms in place, you should be able to move through these four stages much faster. Recently, several teams in our engineering department undertook a massive, ludicrously complex, business-critical infrastructure project. The number of risks and dependencies sent these established and cohesive dev teams into a flurry of (ultimately, unproductive and/or counter-productive) activity. If your team has ever thrashed about like this, then you know what “storming” is. The forming-storming-norming-performing cycle repeats more often than you might think. In the final stage, adjourning, it’s important to provide closure and recognition for the team’s work.
