The Four Stages Of Team Development

The main purpose of developing teams is to create a framework and be able to have the participation of the team members in planning, conflict resolving and decision making. When team members participate, that could result in a better understanding of the decisions made, increased levels of collaboration in implementing the set plans, increased levels of contribution in solving problems and decision making and higher levels of proprietorship of processes and changes. Increasing the levels of effectiveness within the organization is critical and can be achieved by developing teams into working units with main focus on the goals and objectives and through the effective advancement in each stage of team development.

Stages of team development

Usually,

Forming

In this stage, a group of people are put together for accomplishing a common objective or goal. Here, their success depends on how familiar are they to each other’s work style, their prior experience and how clear their mission is.

Storming

At this stage, tense, conflicts and disagreements may arise, where each member have a different approach for problems solving. This is due to the struggle resulted from different facts such as, getting to know each other, adapting to work together and getting familiar how to interact and communicate within a team. Based on my work experience, I could say that more than 70% of the conflicts in this stage are due to the new relationships and around 30% are due to the new tasks.

Norming

Team members, at this level, become more functional at working as a team since working relationships have been formed and members have agreed to follow the team norms.

Performing

This is the stage where work progress begins. Relationships, processes and team’s effectiveness are combined all together to have a successful and functional team with well trained, experienced and competent

Identifying the goals and clarifying them to the team members was a big aid to have all members focused on the task related aspects. Having the team focused on achieving the definitive goal makes them unite more. I have been a member in several teams before, and I am aware that without a clear defined goals and fully understood, it is almost difficult to achieve them, so the last thing I wanted here, was to have a team confused and swimming against the flow.

When I was faced with questions, I have always tried to give my full attention and show them my interest towards their ideas and feelings, also from previous experience, I know how important it is to make others feel that their ideas are valued.

Having team members from different cultures put a pressure on me not to go out of tone when speaking, but I did my best to speak slowly and clearly, so that all would understand the message I am passing and this reduced the tense and created a friendlier atmosphere. Eye contact was also a helpful technique I used when discussing with them as it shows my interest in what they are saying rather than making me appear as an intimidating team leader. Seeing all team members equal, encourage them to effectively