Today we go over in more detail a topic we have already touched on in the past: the states through which the relationship of a team moves. We will do it with some ideas taken from an article by Gina Abudi published a few years ago in the “project smart” magazine.
As mentioned in the past, each group goes through the four stages of team development: these stages are inevitable for a team to grow to the point where it works effectively together and delivers high quality results. I am sure you will recognise in the following some of the dynamics that normally develop in our company in the past or are doing so now.
The five stages are:
- Forming or building the blocks
- What team members do: As it happens in private life, the “formation” phase takes place when the team meets for the first time and team members are introduced to each other, share information about their backgrounds, interests and experiences, and form first impressions of each other. They discover the project scope, discuss the goals and start thinking about what role they will play. In reality is more “sensing” the other and try to understand how they could work together than real work .
- What you as a leader do: During this initial phase of team growth, it is important that you are very clear about the team’s goals and provide clear guidance on the project. You, as the team leader must ensure that all members are clear in determining the roles and responsibilities of the group and help them determine how they will work together The team depends on the leadership and charisma of the leader to be led not as a group of individualities but as a coordinated body.
- Storming: The fight begins
- What team members do: As the team begins working together, they move into the “storming” phase. This stage is not avoidable; each team, especially a new one that has never worked together, goes through this part of development as a whole. At this stage, members compete with each other for status and acceptance of their ideas. They have different opinions on what should be done and how it should be done – which causes conflicts within the team. As they progress through this stage, with the guidance of the team leader, they learn how to solve problems together, function independently and together as a team, and establish roles and responsibilities in the team. For team members who do not like conflict, this is a difficult phase to deal with. remember that this is not a bad moment, but just a phase to pass through.
- What you as a leader do: you should work on this phase to make it as easy as possible by ensuring that team members learn to listen to each other by respecting their differences and ideas. Your role is more the one of a “semaphore” training some team members to be more assertive and the other team members to be more capable of listening. This phase will end when the team accepts each other more and learns to work together, so all in all when they reach an equilibrium. At this point, to make everything smoother, you should begin to transfer some decisions to the team to allow them more independence, but still remain involved to resolve any conflicts as quickly as possible. Can, unfortunately happen that some teams, however, do not they go beyond this stage and the whole project is spent in managing conflict.
- Norming: defining the house of rules
- What team members do: When the team moves into the “norming” phase, its members are starting to work more effectively as a unique body: they are no longer focused on their individual goals, but rather on developing a way of working together (processes and procedures). They respect each other’s opinions and value their differences. Team members begin to trust each other and actively seek each other for assistance and input. Rather than competing against each other, they now help each other work towards a common goaland also begin to make significant progress on the project.
- What you as a leader do: At this stage, you may not be involved in decision making and problem solving as the team members work better together and can take on more responsibility in these areas. This happens because team has greater self-direction and is able to solve problems and conflicts.
- Performing by achieving the desired performance
- What team members do: In the “phase” performing “, the teams are performing at a very high level. The objectives are reached and operations run smoothly.
- What you as a leader do: you manage and keep an eye that situations are not reverting back to unwanted statuses.
