Five Phases of Team Development Blog Intersection of Project Leadership with Business and Technology

Team members start to develop trust and respect for each other, and they start working together as a unit. This is a productive stage, as the team is now able to start tackling tasks and achieving goals. We like to think of this as the “peak performance” stage of team development. In this stage, you’ll find teams are most productive — and they’re working quickly towards the end goal together. Such conflicts can hinder progress and even grind everything to a halt.

Behaviors during the Storming stage may be less polite than during the Forming stage, with frustration or disagreements about goals, expectations, roles and responsibilities being openly expressed. During the Storming stage, team members may argue or become critical of the team’s original mission or goals. The final stage is marked by high productivity and enthusiasm. The team is collaborating to meet the original goals and objectives, and the members are excited to be on a high-performing team. In this stage, leadership is shared as the team works toward exceeding standards and continuous improvement.

If the team is a standing committee with ongoing responsibility, members may be replaced by new people and the team can go back to a forming or storming stage and repeat the development process. If teams get through the storming stage, conflict is resolved and some degree of unity emerges. In the norming stage, consensus develops around who the leader or leaders are, and individual member’s roles.

Stage 5: The Adjourning Stage

The team is a symbiotic relationship complementing and supporting each other’s skills, communicating openly and clearly with one another and holding themselves mutually accountable. Its members respect and trust each other and strongly believe that every member brings unique skills and strengths to the team and the right competitive spirit to bring the best contribution. However, the structure of team differs depending upon its purpose, its task, its setting, the mix of professions and the formal relationship between health professionals in it. The team based practice is well understood only when the distinction between team, team work, collaboration and collaborative practices is known.

Project scheduling is a critical and crucial part of project management and planning. It’s the yellow-brick-road that, when followed, will lead you to the gleaming project closure right on time. For instance, if the team developed a new work process to improve the customer experience, one of its team members may now have responsibility for overseeing that new and improved process.

To remedy this problem, put processes in place that make it easy for designers, for example, to see how content is developing so that they can anticipate when they’ll be able to complete their updates. To accommodate your remote teams and to make sure your first project team meeting is productive, use a video conferencing platform like Zoom. This way team members can meet from anywhere and share their screen so that everyone can see the project details simultaneously. Record and store the meeting in Teamwork Projects so that team members can revisit it at any time if they need a reminder of the discussion. During the Norming stage, members shift their energy to the team’s goals and show an increase in productivity, in both individual and collective work.

Working to build a better world

Provide opportunities for employees to stretch their skill sets and use new muscles to learn and grow. You can offer team-building exercises around shared learning. The adjourning phase is when employees move on to other projects. By being part of the development process, leaders can model the learning culture they want to see in their teams by sharing their own learning journey, describing what they’re working on, the why, and how. By taking these steps, leaders can help their teams progress through the stages of group development and achieve their goals.

• A team sponsor is a person who provides the team with the goal and the resources needed to accomplish that goal.
• Leaders should consider where they can delegate decision-making on different aspects of a project.
• The adjourning stage can be difficult for team members who have become close.
• Feder JL. A health plan spurs transformation of primary care practices into better-paid medicalhomes.
• Groups are so in-sync during the performing stage that it seems to happen naturally.
• This last stage focuses on wrapping up activities rather than on task performance.
• This could be a great phase to introduce mentorship or coaching opportunities.

These teams of employees work cohesively toward a shared goal by utilizing the diversity of the team members to bring creative ideas and solutions to the project. The main purpose of this activity is to remind and reflect on what group members or participants have been through and to create a collective experience and stages of team development shared story. Every individual will gain a shared idea of what the group has been through together. Use this exercise at the end of a project or program as a way to reinforce learnings, celebrate highlights and create closure. 15% Solutions show that there is no reason to wait around, feel powerless, or fearful.

Let other members act as leaders or facilitators.

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The group is learning about the objectives and goals – getting a feel for the work that must be done together. People tend to focus on practical details – who, what, when and where and work reasonably independently at this stage – while they learn where they and everyone else fits into the team. With a large group of people, lots of unique problems can arise that slow down the teamwork process and keep the team leader distracted from the most important parts of project management.

Don’t try to avoid conflict. It is normal and can be healthy.

The link between the management of employees and patient mortality in acute hospitals. Final report on the state of the health care system of Canada. Give employees more autonomy and responsibility in terms of planning, directing, and controlling their own performance. Provides a quick (60-90 minute) read about a successful agile transformation at a multinational entertainment and media company, told from the author’s perspective as an agile coach. Thriving in today’s marketplace frequently depends on making a transformation to become more agile. Those successful in the transition enjoy faster delivery speed and ROI, higher satisfaction, continuous improvement, and additional benefits.

To effectively move forward with team development, a group first needs to understand their purpose and overall goals. Frustration or conflict can arise if the group doesn’t agree on or understand the reason for the team’s existence and how success will be measured. Being sure the team is aligned on team goals early on means that you can develop as a group swiftly and efficiently. Effective relationships between team members goes beyond work. To truly get to know your colleagues and build strong relationships requires honest self-appraisal, deeper sharing, and clear communication. This activity is a great way of quickly and efficiently helping a team share themselves with the group and go beyond the scope of some standard activities.

Team development stages

Regardless of the tools used for team development, the process must be maintained through long-term awareness. Team effectiveness is enhanced by a team’s commitment to reflection and on-going evaluation. In addition to evaluating accomplishments in terms of meeting specific goals, for teams to be high-performing it is essential for them to understand their development as a team. The end of a project is naturally a great time to reflect, collect final learning points and think about what you might improve or do differently in the future.

Building a Strong Team: The Stages of Team Development

Prospection is the ability within each of us to think about the future and envision what’s possible. It takes a combination of optimism, pragmatism, and the ability to think through potential outcomes. Have productive meetings your team can be proud of with a clear meeting agenda for every event in your calendar. It means you should never make statements that include assumptions about the motivations behind someone’s behavior. Instead, you should stay on your side of the net and talk only about what you’re observing and your own reactions and feelings.

For instance, if the team develops a new work process for improving the customer experience, members may be asked to oversee the new and improved process. It’s also known as the transforming process and happens after the team accomplishes what it set out to do. Afterward, it starts to dismantle itself in readiness for other tasks. The adjourning stage is a time for both mourning and celebration. Mourning because team members are paring after forging deep relationships during the project and celebration for a job well done.

How Can Leaders Help at the Norming Stage?

Some groups may avoid the phase altogether, but for those who do not, the duration, intensity and destructiveness of the “storms” can be varied. Tolerance of each team member and their differences should be emphasized; without tolerance and patience the team will fail. This phase can become destructive to the team and will lower motivation if allowed to get out of control. Some teams will never develop past this stage; however, disagreements within the team can make members stronger, more versatile, and able to work more effectively together. Supervisors during this phase may be more accessible, but tend to remain directive in their guidance of decision-making and professional behaviour. The team members will therefore resolve their differences and members will be able to participate with one another more comfortably.

For some groups, the idea of getting to know you activities elicits a collective groan. Overly prescriptive or unimaginative exercises can frustrate a team, particularly if it’s not their first rodeo. In this activity from Hyper Island, group members create their own questions on post-its and trade them with other group members as they mingle and break the ice. In virtual teams, the need for activities to help teams get to know each other is even greater, as some of the usual spaces for mingling and forming bonds are unlikely to be unavailable to them. Let’s take a look at some activities designed to help teams get to know each other in the Forming Stage.

But, it is important to remember that most teams experience conflict. If you are the leader, remind members that disagreements are normal. In the storming stage, the reality and weight of completing the task at hand have now hit everyone. The initial feelings of excitement and the need to be polite have likely worn off. But, because this stage focuses more on the people than on the work, your team probably won’t be very productive yet.