5 Stages Of Team Development

That allowed David to search for a new VP with the talent planning, acquisition, and development capabilities needed to strengthen the lower levels of the sales and marketing organizations. David used a mix of these approaches to change the composition of his team. He concluded that Carlos, the VP of surgical sales, was undermining effectiveness and needed to leave. After consulting with senior management and corporate HR, David offered him a generous early retirement package, eliminated his role, and restructured the sales groups under a single VP. He appointed Carlos’s counterpart in interventional sales, Lois, to lead the unified sales organization. To help Lois succeed in the bigger role, David asked HR to enroll her in an intensive leadership development program that included coaching.

In terms of the dating metaphor, this stage is akin to a couple’s first fight, a disagreement over something silly like a comment over a movie or a mess in the sink. Though a team leader’s first instinct may be to play peacekeeper and sidestep an argument, navigating conflict resolution is an essential step in a team’s growth. Learning how to handle dissonance early strengthens a team and readies teammates to overcome more complex challenges with grace. Skipping this crucial development stage can stunt a team’s growth and delay true harmony. Building on their assessment and reshaping work, leaders need to energize team members with some early wins. As David knew from experience, this increases people’s confidence in their capabilities and reinforces the value of their new rules and processes.

Understanding the team building stages helps a leader guide groups through the team development process. Norms result from the interaction of team members during the development process. Initially, during the forming and storming stages, norms focus on expectations for https://globalcloudteam.com/ attendance and commitment. Later, during the norming and performing stages, norms focus on relationships and levels of performance. Performance norms are very important because they define the level of work effort and standards that determine the success of the team.

This will help you establish a meeting cadence that works, both for the team as a whole and for any subteams. While all phases of team building are important, many leaders consider storming to be the most important stage of team development. During the storming stage, team members encounter initial obstacles and master conflict resolution. This is one of the most crucial points for building trust and forming resilient relationships. If teams get through the storming stage, conflict is resolved and some degree of unity emerges.

With remote work opportunities expected to expand and evolve, Calendly’s leadership expects to continue its leading role in developing scheduling software and meeting lifecycle management. The challenge here is that the team may only arrive at the “performing” stage towards the end of the piece of work, sometimes never. This article explains how to get to the performing stage, ideally on the first day that the team is assembled. These stages are steps in the team building process and are similar to team building best practices.

Accelerating The Teams Development

From day one you will have a lot of demands on your time and attention, and those will only grow, so efficient team assessment is key. A team building exercise must have a logical goal behind it, whether it is a 5 minute activity or full day activity. Activity objectives of the exercise must be properly communicated to the team and not just in the head of the team leader.

Teams usually develop norms that guide the activities of team members. Team norms set a standard for behavior, attitude, and performance that all team members are expected to follow. Norms are effective because team members want to support the team and preserve relationships in the team, and when norms are violated, there is peer pressure or sanctions to enforce compliance. Once the team had those successes in place, it kept building on them.

Members may disagree on team goals, and subgroups and cliques may form around strong personalities or areas of agreement. To get through this stage, members must work to overcome obstacles, to accept individual differences, and to work through conflicting ideas on team tasks and goals. Most high-performing teams go through five stages of team development.

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In such situations, assessment and management would focus more on individual performance and less on ability to work together. David, however, had a team of functional leaders who were quite interdependent. For example, he needed his VPs of sales, marketing, and communications to work closely together on refining and executing go-to-market strategies for the two products. So he had to gauge their relationships and collaborative capabilities. Strategic meetings concern the biggest decisions that need to be made—about business models, vision, strategy, organizational configurations, and so on. Though they tend to be relatively infrequent, they require time for in-depth discussion.

In the norming stage, consensus develops around who the leader or leaders are, and individual member’s roles. Interpersonal differences begin to be resolved, team building is considered part of which stage of team development and a sense of cohesion and unity emerges. Team performance increases during this stage as members learn to cooperate and begin to focus on team goals.

• In such situations, assessment and management would focus more on individual performance and less on ability to work together.
• Teams face many challenges on their journey in order to deliver on their commitments.
• How did you know what behaviors were acceptable or what level of performance was required?
• Calendly takes the hiring process very seriously and says that recruiters review all applications.
• The manager, as the team sponsor, must understand how to support the team at each stage for it to succeed.
• Team members are asking such questions as “What does the team offer me?

In a quest to determine why so many teams failed to achieve their goals, team development became a hot topic. The differences between successful and unsuccessful teams were studied, and organizations gradually learned to manage teams more effectively through all the stages of development and contribution. In the adjourning stage, most of the team’s goals have been accomplished. The emphasis is on wrapping up final tasks and documenting the effort and results. As the work load is diminished, individual members may be reassigned to other teams, and the team disbands.

Then establish ground rules and processes to sustain desired behaviors, and revisit those periodically. The norming stage of team development is like a months-old couple that accepts each other’s quirks and flaws. Team members adjust to teammate behaviors and devise strategies to overcome differences.

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The forming stage involves a period of orientation and getting acquainted. Uncertainty is high during this stage, and people are looking for leadership and authority. A member who asserts authority or is knowledgeable may be looked to take control.

By that time, however, David’s team had achieved a dominant position in the market, and it was ready to launch new products of its own. To conduct an effective assessment, you’ll hold a mix of one-on-one and team meetings, supplementing with input from key stakeholders such as customers, suppliers, and colleagues outside the team. You’ll also look at team members’ individual track records and performance evaluations.

Adjourning

However, the harmony is precarious, and if disagreements re-emerge the team can slide back into storming. Teammates move beyond the introductory forming stage and start putting plans into action. At this point, teammates have built up enough trust to feel safe sharing honest opinions with the others.

So the long-term stakes were high, and the team wasn’t exactly humming. Stories about missed opportunities and hints of a toxic culture had drifted upward to senior management. The group development process is important because the system allows leaders to identify the correct stage of development and accurately assess the level of teamwork. The leader can then concoct an improvement plan to move team members through the development phases. How did you know what behaviors were acceptable or what level of performance was required?

The manager, as the team sponsor, must understand how to support the team at each stage for it to succeed. All this highlights the importance of figuring out how to work effectively with a team you have inherited. Fraught with trade-offs, the process is like repairing an airplane in midflight. You can’t just shut down the plane’s engines while you rebuild them—at least not without causing a crash. Leaders who are taking over and transforming a team need guidance on how to navigate the transition and improve performance. An inexperienced or unprepared person can really turn the exercise into catastrophe.

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He and his team started by setting challenging goals for the next three months’ sales; then they set about delivering. Your expectations for team members will also be shaped by how essential their roles are to meeting your goals. People in critical positions will be assessed with greater urgency and higher standards. David Benet had two sales leaders, both deemed critical because their groups had to drive cardiologists’ awareness of the new products. They both needed to be immediately effective at communicating the products’ benefits to opinion leaders.

Stages Of Team Development

Team members are asking such questions as “What does the team offer me? ” Most interactions are social as members get to know each other. David was careful to revisit these principles and processes when his new VP of HR joined the team. Revisiting and reinforcing behavioral expectations should be standard practice any time there is a change in team membership or mission. It’s also valuable to schedule a regular review of how the team is functioning and whether the principles are being upheld. Review available personnel history, performance data, and appraisals.

Next, they must reshape the team according to what’s needed—looking with fresh eyes at its membership, sense of purpose and direction, operating model, and behavioral patterns. Finally, they can accelerate team development and improve performance by identifying opportunities for early wins and making plans to secure them. Teams face many challenges on their journey in order to deliver on their commitments. David recognized key interdependencies among sales, marketing, and communications, so he set up a subteam of leaders from those functions.

As you might expect, leaders play an important part in establishing productive norms by acting as role models and by rewarding desired behaviors. Another factor to consider is to what degree your reports need to work as a team, and on what tasks. Ask yourself, “Will the people I supervise have to collaborate a lot, or is it OK if they operate mostly independently? ” The answer will help determine how important it is for you to cultivate teamwork. Think of the people who typically report to a corporate treasurer, such as the heads of tax, cash management, and M&A analysis. These individuals should strive to operate as a high-performing group of managers who run their departments independently and effectively.

Those didn’t turn up any immediate red flags for David—but he knew the team had underperformed. Like most leaders, you may have a “gut” sense of what you typically look for in people. But different situations and challenges call for different strengths. This exercise will help you better understand and articulate your priorities each time you inherit a team. Act quickly to size up the personnel you’ve inherited, systematically gathering data from one-on-one chats, team meetings, and other sources.

The head of HR was a vital role, too—serious midlevel talent weaknesses in sales and marketing had to be addressed soon. The second area of frustration concerns the “norms.” When are team meetings to be held? Do team members have personal requirements that the rest of the team can support? Clarifying all these questions can take care of issues before they start to create frustration and enables the team to jump through all the stages of team development in one go. Organizations have used teams for years with some more successful than others.

At each stage, the behavior of the leader must adapt to the changing and developing needs of the group. An effective leader, who other members of the team want to follow, is indispensable. Susan Heathfield is an HR and management consultant with an MS degree.

Any of these tactics can revitalize people who have become stale in their jobs, but few leaders think of trying alternative ways of allocating work. Indeed, most newly appointed leaders have limited familiarity with their teams at the outset and can’t immediately swap in new people to help grow or transform the business. Sometimes they lack the necessary political power or resources to rapidly replace personnel, or the culture does not allow it. Often, existing team members are essential for running the business in the short term but not the right people to lead it into the future.