MN7181 - People and Organisations: Principles and Practice in Global Contexts - 5

Understanding the Stages of Team Formation

Henry Ford (nd), "Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success".

Just as Henry Ford had quoted, be it resolving a company issue or to lead a company project, employees look at them in different perspectives. Their approaches, ideas, and many more differ. Each and every person have their different beliefs, egos, problems where eventually the final decision could be affected.

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When employees are called in to lead a project, employees of different backgrounds come together to work as a team to lead it. But just as Jane Austen (nd) quotes “too many cooks spoil the broth”, if all try to lead and resolve the project with all their differences, the project wouldn’t go anywhere but still at square number one. Hence all employees need to come into one page to move forward with.

As according to Bruce Wayne Tuckman, psychology professor, came up with the model "forming", "storming", "norming", and "performing", in 1965, where he used to describe the most followed path that most teams follow for higher performance. Later on a fifth stage was added, adjourning (which is also known as "mourning") to the team development process has five stages:

1. Forming
2. Storming
3. Norming
4. Performing
5. Adjourning

Forming – This is the initial step, at this stage portion of the employees who have come together would be excited with the formation as they are looking forward for the new task, while another portion would be anxious about the entire scenario. This stage is crucial as this is where all get to know each other, the project and anticipating what areas they might get themselves involved in helping to complete the task.

The team leader has a part in explaining clearly the roles or each team members’ and make the goal very clear.

Storming – As the team begins to work together, this is when all differences start to emerge. As all try to secure an important role in the team as a result many conflicts may arise during this stage. Employees who dislike conflicts will find it difficult to go through this stage without any hard feelings.

It is the role of the team leader to ensure that all members give importance to each and everyone’s ideas and give time for each to express their views. The rifts between the members would be cleared only when each member accepts each other and work as a team to achieve a common goal.

Norming – It is at this stage that all members are actually working on the project and focusing on the team goals rather than individual beliefs and goals. Now importance is showcased for the common goal hence they work hand in hand to achieve taking each other’s opinions and ideas into the betterment of the completion of the project.

At this stage the leader does not get himself/herself involved in the decision making or any sort as the team is now developed into working with each other and has a better direction than in the previous stages, however, the leader would occasionally walk in if the team gets stuck at a situation.

Performing – When reaching this stage, the team members are more reliable. They value each other’s ideas and opinions and work together in order to achieve the common goal as to why they were put into.

At this stage, the leader does not get involved as much as he/she did during the “norming stage”, as now the team is more focused in achieving the company goal. Members are given more authority to make decisions as they are more experienced than they were in the previous stages and work interdependently. However, sometimes, there may arise situations where the team falls back to “storming” if a single member starts working independently. Or, the team could fall back to “forming” if a new member happens to join the team.

Adjourning – This is the final stage. At this stage the project will come to an end and each member will be walking towards different directions to takeover new projects. At the stage the leader has to ensure that members are given the adequate time to celebrate the completion of the project, if it was a success, or to evaluate on where and what they need to improve on, if it did not success as expected. This way it gives way for all to take their time in studying the positives and the negatives for their future project takeovers.

References:

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_86.htm

https://www.projectsmart.co.uk/the-five-stages-of-team-development-a-case-study.php
https://toggl.com/stages-of-team-development/ 

Image 1: http://www.strategosinc.com/articles/teams/team_stages.htm