Six Secrets of Powerful Teams: A Practical Guide to the Magic of Motivating and Influencing Teams (3 page)

The following chapters discuss team behavior models. There are many models for team building and team behavior, not all of them provide the basis for practical guidelines on how to transform a team. The chosen two models, that are detailed below provide a well-rounded foundation on which we can elaborate and add practical advice.

Tuckman and Jensen describe four principal stages of team development and interaction as occurring in a fairly linear process: forming, storming, norming, and performing; in 1977, a fifth stage was added: adjourning. The model claimed that teams evolve and mature from stage to stage.

The specific stage has typical team behaviors and interactions. Later work by experienced experts in teamwork claimed that the stages tend to overlap one another.

The illustrative behavior of this stage is the initial search for commonalities among team members and a false sense of harmony.

The first stage in the Tuckman and Jensen Model is
forming
. This initial stage is a time during which the team members become acquainted with one another. They need to agree on purpose and goals and begin setting “ground rules” for the task and for the team’s interactions and accepted behaviors. You might recall your own experience when you met your future colleagues for the first time.

Remember!
The forming stage of team development is characterized by a high degree of ambiguity and insecurity as members get to know each other, determine the group's roles and goals, and decide who will be the team leader if one has not been appointed.

At this point, mutual trust might be relatively low, team members tend to behave quite independently, and some team members might be holding back to see who takes charge and how. When there isn’t an assigned project manager or team leader, a leader will eventually emerge and fill the group's need for leadership and direction.

Leading the Forming Stage

Leaders usually need to be directive and supportive during the forming stage, they can help facilitate this initial stage by providing a time and place (e.g., a discussion workspace) for team members to engage in introductory social interactions, such as icebreaker activities. Icebreakers help participants become acquainted with one another and begin building trust within their small group. The following are icebreaker ideas for powerful teams to enable team building in the forming stage.

Exercise Ice Breaker #1: “Stranded
”

This is a good icebreaker for collocated teams: Suppose you are stranded on a remote island. Collectively decide what items you would have brought with you, had you known that you were going to be stranded for an extended period. Note: Each team is only allowed one item per person. So, the number of items will vary depending on the total number of participants per team. This exercise helps teams to learn about one another's values and it promotes teamwork and fosters collaborative problem solving.

Exercise Ice Breaker #2: Virtual Team Interviews

This exercise initiates the forming process as team members learn about one another. Once teams are divided, the members should interview each other by asking questions about a designated topic. Example starter topics, include

• Tell me about your past or present job(s).
  
• Share a hobby.
  
• Find a mutual hobby.
  
• If you could choose any job in the world, what would it be, and why?
  
• What are your career goals?
  
• Where is your favorite vacation destination and why?
  

This is a good icebreaker for virtual teams, and there are a few variations on how it can be structured.

• Ask team members to share a favorite travel photo but not name the place. Team members ask questions and try to figure out where the photo was taken.
  
• Ask team members to share their favorite photo and teammates engage in dialogue about the picture.
  
• Ask team members to post a current photo of themselves and engage in dialogue with one another about the photo.
  

Have each person complete one of these sentences (or come-up with other sentences):

• The best job I ever had was...
  
• I always like to...
  
• The riskiest thing I ever did was...
  
• I wish I were on vacation in…
  
• Please help me when I…
  

 

The illustrative behavior of this stage is the breaking away of the false harmony into individual power displays, leading to rifts among team members.

The second stage of team development is the
storming
stage. Although dissatisfaction might arise at any time during the team’s life, the storming stage is characterized by the emergence of individual personalities and/or conflicts that disrupt the team.
This tension between unity and individualism is the essence of what a team is about; the precise balance between these two elements is the basis of a powerful team.
This can be construed as how much a person gives of themselves to become part of the team and how much a person retains of themselves as a functioning individual.

Different ideas compete for consideration as team members confront each other's ideas and perspectives. Individuals might question their roles, team procedures, and how they fit into the team structure.

A power struggle (big or small) might begin. The team might disagree on who will be performing what role or task and who will be leading the way. Members might begin to argue, resulting in
storming
turbulence or negative emotions to the degree that some members might become uncomfortable interacting with one another. Subgroups might form, and "sidebar" conversations might occur between or among a few members, resulting in some type of unwanted disorder.

Time may be a factor in the storming stage because time is of the essence yet may often be constrained. Consequently, dissatisfaction or conflict can arise because the team does not have sufficient time to orient itself properly to role or requirements or enough time to understand the knowledge and skills that need to be used to get the job done.

Many teams stall in this stage because power struggles or politics are occurring, which might cause turmoil (e.g., procrastination, lack of communication, etc.) or might result in covert or overt rebellion. This stage might be short or repetitive, depending on the goal, clarity, commitment, and maturity of the members. As a result, morale and productivity can be challenged.

Morale
is concerned with the team’s commitment, motivation, and sense of well-being or support, which typically depends on enthusiasm, optimism, cooperation, and shared leadership toward the task.

Productivity
is the team's ability to work together to achieve results. Productivity depends on knowledge, skills, goal setting, and effective team decision making.

While the conflict that occurs during the storming stage might seem undesirable to many, most observers of the team process tend to agree that some forms of conflict are beneficial—as long as the conflict is refocused onto task and purpose rather than focused on personality. Too little conflict can lead members to suppress their differences without resolving them, only to find that the differences resurface later, throwing the team back into the storming stage. Conversely, too much conflict can destroy social relationships, resulting in team members unable to work together.

The storming stage, therefore, is necessary to the growth of the team, even though it might be unpleasant and even painful for members who dislike conflict. Tolerance of each other and of differences must be emphasized if the team is to succeed.

An effective, well-facilitated storming process fosters the discussion of key differences among members and results in more depth and breadth of understanding, better planning, and the building of needed compromise and consensus.

I am sure you have been in teams that never progressed from the storming stage onward; these tend to be in an eternal state of storming and conflict. The trust, morale, and productivity of these teams are low. The team leader hasn’t stepped up to his/her role and provided the needed direction and support to the team members, helping them balance between the team as a harmonic unity and the individual needs of each member.

When the team cannot facilitate itself adequately (Tuckman & Jensen, 1977) and to prevent the storming stage from becoming
destructive
to the team, the leader might need to be directive, guiding decision making and norms of behavior.

The illustrative behavior of this stage is the consensus between team members and the strict admonition of occasional rule breaking. The balance is once more shifting to the “us” focus; individual needs are suppressed and a fear of conflict based on individualities is in the background—a powerful fear from reverting to conflict laden interactions. The team is delivering the requested results, but not necessarily the desired ones, i.e., being efficient rather than effective.

During the
norming
stage of team development, conflicts have typically been resolved, relationships emerge, and a sense of belonging begins to develop among the team members as they unite, which often results in harmony. The main concern for individuals is "What do the others expect of me?" while the team concern is "Can we agree on roles and work as a team?"

Team
norms
,
or
informal
rules the team follows, are also adopted during the norming stage.
Norms
provide social cues and regulate behavior for individuals and the team as a whole.

For instance, if someone is late in responding to email correspondence, one of the team members might send out a message to the entire team encouraging everyone to check their messages frequently and respond within 24 hours—an act that can easily resolve the problem by modifying the offending member's behavior, but does so without blaming.

Thinking Alert
: It's during this third stage of
norming
that a
WE
rather than a
ME
mentality emerges as team members become
cohesive
.
Cohesiveness
is defined as a strong sense of connectedness among team members that causes them to work together to attain an objective. Research suggests that a high degree of cohesiveness is desirable during teamwork because stronger bonds influence team members to work harder to achieve collective goals.

A potentially adverse side effect of teamwork is the possibility of groupthink. Groupthink occurs when everyone on the team agrees in order to avoid or minimize conflict. Pressure to conform within the team interferes with that team’s analysis of a problem. They may reach consensus, but it's without critically analyzing and evaluating ideas. Groupthink, thus, causes poor team decision making. Individual creativity, uniqueness, and independent thinking are lost in the pursuit of team cohesiveness.

A variety of conflict-avoiding motives for this can exist: a desire to avoid being seen as foolish, a desire to avoid embarrassing or angering other members of the team, or a desire to be seen as a “team player.” In any case, groupthink can cause teams to make hasty, irrational decisions, where individual doubts are set aside for fear of upsetting the team’s balance. As a result, members might be dissatisfied with the results of their teamwork. Good facilitation can help avoid this trap for a team.

As indicated, in the norming stage of development, team members adjust their behavior and begin to trust one another becoming a more cohesive unit. They establish implicit or explicit norms about how they will achieve goals, thereby solidifying ground rules, communication methods, behavior, timelines, working tools, and even taboos. As a result, the leader can be less directive and yet continue providing support to the team, emphasizing unity and helping the team solidify norms, goals, and values.

Cohesiveness is also fostered in this stage by keeping team sizes small, by ensuring that performance standards are clearly defined, and by encouraging interaction and cooperation among the team members. Channeling each team member's special talents toward the common goal, reinforcing each member's contributions, and emphasizing each person's task serve the common good of the team.

The norming stage typically doesn't last very long, and it might even overlap into the fourth stage as teams begin performing
.