THEORY BEHIND TEAMS

THEORY BEHIND TEAMS

What makes teamwork work?

Not all attempts at using teams are successful. It is therefore important to determine what makes teams function successfully and what hinders them. The value of teams comes from a kind of critical mass that takes place when a variety of experiences, abilities, ideas, and inspirations are brought to bear on a specific problem (synergy).

Synergy is a key leadership concept. In human relationships, it occurs when two or more people act together to produce results greater than the sum of their individual efforts. Synergistic results are more than the total of these separate contributions.

This is possible through collaboration. When two people collaborate, they often get a result greater than their individual efforts. Two things happen when two or more people pull together to achieve a common goal:

1.      Each person strengthens the other. Each person encourages the other, draws ideas and information from the other, and helps correct the errors and overcomes the shortcomings of the other.

2.      More than that, each person stimulates the other. As a result, new ideas emerge. As viewpoints and information are exchanged, the intellect is stimulated. Ideas are triggered that would not necessarily have been thought of isolation. This cross-pollinating of ideas can generate better solutions.

This is the “something extra,” the interaction that is greater than the sum of the individual contributions. Strengthened resources and new ideas are the multipliers that make synergy happen.

However, the individuals in this group must know how to interact with each other to avail themselves of those combined resources. In other words, they must understand how to arrive at sound decisions together. 

First, we have to make sure that teams have their boundaries clearly defined. In addition, candidates for team membership should be leaders and coworkers who have already been developed individually by their bosses. They must also have the skills specifically required for working on a team, so that the experience will be successful.

In our example, all members of the sales team must understand the mission of the group and the specific objectives they are expected to meet—in this case, lowering expenses by 20 percent. The team must break that goal down into clearly stated, identifiable objectives, such as reducing entertainment expenses, transportation costs, and lodging charges by specific percentages.

In addition, the team must determine the role and responsibilities for each person in the group. They must know how to track progress toward their goal and how to reward both collective and individual contributions to their success.

A poorly defined team, thrown together with no understanding of its purpose and function, may never gel as a true team and make collaborative decisions. Instead, it may become a loose cannon, functioning without considering the impact its actions have on the rest of the organization or its clients.

The stages of togetherness that evolve into a team

Many researchers have documented the various developmental stages a collection of individuals must go through if they are going to be effective as a team, especially teams that must function together for long periods. Teams sometimes go through prolonged and often painful trial-and-error processes as they attempt to achieve their task objectives. And they have to do it while working through relationship issues that inevitably arise when people attempt to work together.

B. W. Tuckman’s four progressive stages of behavior that team’s go through

1. The Q2 Stage—Cautious affiliation.

·         This is the first stage team members go through, an exploration period. In this early stage, members’ attachment to the team is tentative. Most employees are anxious about what the team is supposed to do and what they as individuals are supposed to contribute to the tasks ahead.

·         Team members assess other team members’ abilities and attitudes and try to determine how and where they fit into the group. They’re worried about the team’s ability to cope with group problems and conflicts.

·         Little is accomplished in this stage. Productivity is slow. Working relationships are guarded, cautious, and non-committal.

2.      The Q1 Stage—Competitiveness.

·         In this second stage of evolution, members grow impatient with the team’s lack of progress and become overly zealous. Finally, they realize that the team’s job is different from and more difficult than what they had initially imagined. The gap between expectations and reality leads to frustration and anger.

·         Consequently, there’s a lot of blaming, defensiveness, destructive disagreement, and test confrontations, especially with the leader or those vying for dominant positions. Subgroups may form, with factions competing for influence.

·         Feverishly hitting on issues of mission, goals, tasks, roles, and responsibilities, the group makes some progress toward accomplishing its objectives. Along the way, however, working relationships take a beating.

3.      The Q3 Stage—harmonious cohesiveness.

·         By the end of this stage, members have discovered that they actually like the team as an entity, as well as other members individually. They enjoy their social encounters and the sense of belonging they are beginning to feel as team members.

·         With the urgent questions of mission, goals, tasks, roles, and standards at least partially resolved, members become less dissatisfied. Animosity toward the leader and other team members decreases significantly. Previously warring factions mellow into normal, healthy, interpersonal patterns. Competitive relationships become cooperative, close, and feelings of mutual trust deepen. During this stage, individuals discover that they’re proud to be associated with the team.

·         As individual and communal skills develop, the quantity and quality work slowly increase. But the zeal for tangible results that characterize the Q1 stage may diminish and disappear, with members basking in the honeymoon-like happiness of their new, harmonious, yet non-productive, team relationships.

4.      The Q4 Stage-Collaborative teamwork.

·         During this phase, a group of individuals becomes a truly collaborative team. Structured processes and procedures emerge to allocate resources, resolve personal conflicts, deal with the larger organization, give warranted positive feedback, and discipline members for unacceptable behavior. Members begin to define high standards for evaluating team individual performance.

·         The team makes decisions about approaching their task and the process for carrying it out. They diagnose and solve (or anticipate and prevent) problems, and go about choosing and implementing actions and changes. Members freely share and pool viewpoints and information to make sound decisions.

·         During this Q4 stage, team members are motivated by pride in their accomplishments and a sense of ownership and belonging. Individual and coordinated task expertise leads to peak performance levels.

Of course, for any particular team in real life, these stages do not occur in a neat and tidy progression. Although the implicit goal of all teams should be to get to the final Q4 stage as quickly as possible, many teams do not reach the collaborative level of being productive, efficient, and effective. Some stall and lose their way. Others regress to earlier stages of team development. In fact, some groups that call themselves teams are little more than loose collections of individuals with nothing more than working for the same company or having their names on a team roster.

Of the few teams that do reach the Q4 stage—collaborative teamwork—many do so after painful months or years of hit-or-miss struggle. They fluctuate—at times attending to business at the expense of relationships, and at other times focusing on relationships while compromising production.

Lefton and Buzzotta’s behavior model

This model consists of two dimensions: getting things done and building relationships. This model reflects greater or lesser amounts of these two general categories of behaviors commonly exhibited by teams:

1.      Teams set direction, plan, organize, and structure their activities to get things done (the vertical axis)

2.      Teams work to build strong relationships by fostering open communication and by getting involvement and commitment, whether they’re making decisions, conducting meetings, or resolving conflicts (the horizontal axis).

This dimensional model of teamwork patterns is shown in Figure 1.

Without guidance or direction, a naturally evolving team might zigzag among the four quadrants before reaching the Q4 stage and the true teamwork pattern. However, a direct pathway to true teamwork is possible. Such a path respects the natural evolutionary development of most teams by first addressing issues related to task accomplishment; that is, setting direction, providing structure, organizing to get results.

However, there is a critical difference between free-form team development and a guided development process. In a guided process, while teams address purely task-oriented issues, they develop communication, involvement, and commitment. When team members get things done while building strong relationships (for instance, when they make decisions while confronting conflict during meetings), they merge the Q1 and Q3 stages and reach the Q4 stage more efficiently.

Relationships Unimportant	Getting Results		Maintain Good Relationship
	Q1—Authoritarian ·         Dominated by one or two members ·         Over-structured, with tight control ·         Overly competitive, defensive ·         Frustration, anger, and resistance to goals ·         One-way communication	Q4—True Teamwork ·         Work done collaboratively ·         Clarified relationships and expectations ·         Participation by all members ·         Ability to prevent or work through contention ·         Open, direct, businesslike communication
	Q2—Reactive ·         Doesn’t act unless forced to ·         Impersonal, watchful, and guarded ·         Tendency to avoid others ·         Anxiety about the task ahead ·         Very little real communication	Q3—Casual ·         High concern for member needs ·         Avoidance of conflict ·         Focus on harmony and conformity ·         Sense of team cohesion ·         Unfocussed, irrelevant, overly friendly communication
	Letting Things Happen

  

Figure 1: Dimensional Model of Teamwork Patterns

An organization can fail to realize the hoped-for results in teamwork if there is inadequate preparation and poor implementation. 

When two or more people pull together to achieve a common goal, each person strengthens the other; and, each person stimulates the other. This is called synergy, which occurs when two or more people act together to produce results greater than the sum of their individual efforts.

Team development is not a one-shot proposition. It must be ongoing. Team members’ interpersonal skills must be developed to be effective in team situations.

Development of teams is an ongoing process because the composition of team may keep on changing. The new members may join and the old members may leave the team. The team members pass through several stages for the development of team and there has been a lot of research to identify these stages. In this lesson, we discuss the common theories of team development.

Team is formed as a result of interactions and influence of members who strive for the achievement of common goal. After the formation the teams take time to develop and usually follow some easily recognizable stages, as the team-members transition from being a group of strangers to becoming a unified integrated team chasing a common goal. In this process, the team members try to understand others’ behavior, realize the appropriateness of the behavior and the roles of the team members. A team is not formed merely by declaring some individuals as a team. A lot of research has been done on group formation and development, and different theories of group development have been suggested. Given below is a list of commonly known theories on team/group development:

·         Bennis & Shepard, 1956;

·         Bion, 1961;

·         Gibb, 1964;

·         Schutz, 1958, 1982;

·         Tuckman, 1965;

·         Tuckman & Jensen, 1977;

·         Yalom, 1970;

·         Kormanski & Mozenter, 1987;

We’ll look at two of these theories.

Tuckman’s five stage team development model:

Psychologist Bruce Tuckman first came up with the memorable phrase “forming, storming, norming, and performing” back in 1965. The “Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing” model of group development maintained that these phases are all necessary and inevitable in order for the team to grow, to face up to challenges, to tackle problems, to find solutions, to plan work, and to deliver results. This model has become the basis for subsequent models. He used it to describe the path to high-performance that most teams follow. Later, he added a fifth stage that he called "adjourning." Let us learn the five stages briefly:

Forming: This is the first stage of team development. In this stage the members try to explore and understand the behavior of fellow team members. They make their efforts in understanding the expectations of the team members. At this stage they are polite and try to find out how to fit into the team.

Storming: In the second stage, members start competing for status, leadership and control in the group. Individuals understand others behavior and assert their role in the group. As a result inter-personal conflict starts. Members try to resolve the issues related to the task and working relations. They also resolve the issues related to the role of the individual in the group.

Norming: The members start moving in a cohesive manner. They establish a balance among various conflicting forces. They develop group norms and consensus for the achievement of the group goal. At this stage, cooperative feelings develop among the team members.

Performing: In this stage, the team makes effort for the performance of task and accomplishment of objectives. The established pattern of relationships improves coordination and helps in resolving conflicts. Members trust each other and extend their full cooperation for the achievement of the group goal.

Adjourning: The team is formed for a purpose. When this purpose is fulfilled, the team may be adjourned. Thus, the breaking up of the team is referred to adjournment.

How a team leader can make a difference: 

The Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing stages are seemingly obvious but are in fact difficult as they take their own course before the team actually becomes effective. There is a tendency in the participants wanting to move to the Performing Stage without passing through the first three stages. The Forming stage is relatively easy but as it establishes the foundation the leader needs to be proactive to set the basics right. The Storming stage is difficult and many times becomes the cause of the team’s failure. Performing seems easy once the storming process is complete. To take your team to performing stage as soon as possible, you will need to change your approach at each stage. Given below are the steps required to ensure that you are doing the right thing at each of the stages. 

1.       Identify which stage of the team development your team is at.

2.      Identify how you can accelerate the process of moving the team towards the Performing Stage.

3.      Once you understand these stages and the behaviors expected, schedule regular reviews of where your team is, and adjust your behavior and leadership approach to suit the stage your team has reached.  

Establishing team foundation in forming stage

During the Forming stage, team members have a high dependence on their leader for guidance. Learn the practical strategies you can use during this stage to help the team develop into a highly effective performing team.

Good team development begins on day one and forming is the “Getting to Know You” stage. You can compare this stage with your first day at school as a child, or perhaps with your first day on a new job. Some obvious behaviors are; everyone is polite, overly cautious, and generally doesn't know what to expect. This is the first stage of group development – Forming where the team members are trying getting to know one another and getting comfortable with one another. 

The team comes together and members try to know each other and establish common understanding and formulate roles and responsibilities. Team members may be excited and enthusiastic, but they may also be anxious. In this stage the members try to explore and understand the behavior of the team members. They make their efforts in understanding the expectations of the peer team members, are polite and exploring how to gain acceptability and fitment into the team. Because everything is new there is a fair amount of confusion and anxiety as members are naturally trying to understand their own roles, the roles of the other team members and their purpose in the group. This is entirely natural and to be expected. People are unsure, suspicious and nervous. Productivity might be low as people try to put their best foot forward. 

It takes time for any new team to become a cohesive unit, “Forming” starts with lots of exploration as group members get to know one another. Think of this stage as an exploration period in which individual roles and responsibilities are being sorted out. In this stage, team members are generally enthusiastic and motivated by a desire to be accepted. They're typically very polite to each other, and trying to figure out similarities and differences with others. First impressions play a key role as people try to figure out the similarities and differences. Issues that may arise are questions of whether each person feels like they belong to the group, whether other members can be trusted and who is in charge. 

Orientation is the most important task in the forming stage and members are looking towards the leader to provide required direction. During the Forming stage, team members have a high dependence on their leader for guidance and the leader's task is directing, so that the group can get coordinated in their efforts. 

This is also a good time to look at how the group is organized, because the group has not yet molded into a strong, effective unit, therefore it's still relatively easy to reorganize the group if required. It's also helpful to set group ground rules, which are expectations about how work will be done, decisions will be made, and how people will treat each other. In short, the leader has a wonderful opportunity to be sure that the right people are in the right place using the right process. “Forming” stage is usually short, and sometimes may only last for a single meeting where the team members get introduced. 

Forming an effective and cohesive team is fundamental to the overall success of the team and pulling the right team together from the start has benefits far beyond just completing tasks on time.

Tips for forming stage - leaders: 

Suggestions for the Team Leader/Member in this stage: 

1. Search out the people in your organization with the necessary skills and the time to be part of your team
2. Provide team structure
3. Ensure that members feel comfortable and knowledgeable about the team/group
4. Give clear information on the project and goal or ask for clarity
5. Clarify roles and responsibilities
6. Clarify the team’s goals and outline the planned schedule
7. Clarify the individual role and how they will be contributing to overall accomplishment
8. Build enthusiasm by talking about why the group will be successful
9. Promote an open and supportive environment
10. Encourage relationship building
11. Practice constructive team behaviors
12. Educate about phases of team development – this will make it easier to move out of more difficult phases. 

Characteristics of the Forming Stage

·      Exploration - Trying to know each other

·      Focused - Trying to understand similarities and differences

·      Confusion/Anxiety - Trying to gain acceptability

·      Lower productivity – Everyone trying to put their best foot forward

·      Leadership – Generally directive to set the tone

·      Risk: Avoidance of conflict

·      Learning: Gaining understanding about opportunities and challenges

·      Excitement: Motivation and excitement about the project.

Kormanski & Mozenter (1987) Stages of Team Development:

Kormanski & Mozenter (1987) integrated the various theories and suggested the following stages of team development. These stages are sequential (each stage is followed by the next one). Each stage has a task outcome and a relationships outcome. Kormanski and Mozenter have identified following stages of team development:

1. Awareness
2. Conflict
3. Cooperation
4. Productivity, and
5. Separation

1. Awareness: At this stage individuals get to know each other. By knowing the goals of the team they commit themselves to the goals. The members get to know and accept to work together for a goal about which they have enough knowledge.

2. Conflict: At the first stage (awareness) the members know the team goals and accept to work together; but this is at the surface level. At the second stage they search and begin to ask questions. As a result several matters are clarified. They also fight with each and in this process of interaction resolve any hostilities they may have, resulting in the feeling of belonging to the group.

3. Cooperation: In the third stage the members own the team goals and get involved in those goals. Having resolved feelings, they also support each other.

4. Productivity: This is the stage of real achievement of the goals/outcomes, and the team members achieving these objectives feel proud of their achievement.

5. Separation: Having accomplished the goals or the outcomes, some task-specific teams may decide to get dissolved, or a time-bound time comes to a close. The excellent work done by the members is recognized, and the team members have a high sense of satisfaction of working with each other. This is the stage of closure of the team, or closure of one task on which the team was working.

The following table provides a summary of task outcomes and relationships outcomes at each stage as defined in the model:

A Model of Team Building
Stage	Theme	Task Outcome	Relationship Outcome
One	Awareness	Commitment	Acceptance
Two	Conflict	Clarification	Belonging
Three	Cooperation	Involvement	Support
Four	Productivity	Achievement	Pride
Five	Separation	Recognition	Satisfaction

 

Phases of Team Development

All the teams are dynamic in nature and they take time to come together, they form, develop, and grow in stages, over a period of time. Teams go through five progressive stages: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning. In this lesson, we introduce these stages of team development and certain strategies that you can use to help the team grow and develop in each of these stages. 

Need for understanding the development phases 

Team leaders need to understand group behavior and team concepts as effective team building requires a team leader to follow a systematic planning and implementation process. As a leader, you need to be flexible as the expectations from your role as a leader will change as the team passes through these various stages of development.

Leading successful teams is an art, and team leaders can face many challenges when trying to optimize team performance. Teams go through five progressive stages: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning. Not all teams progress to the end stages. Some teams may be simply ineffective and might not get organized or cohesive enough to move beyond the Storming or Norming stages. Each stage of team development presents its own special challenges as the group is striving to work together successfully as a cohesive team. The leader can take specific actions at each stage of team development to support the team’s success in accomplishing the team mission. At each stage, the behavior of the leader must be adapted to the changing and developing needs of the group. 

Whether you are a team member or team leader or just someone who is looking to develop his skills as a team leader, you need to know certain things about how teams function and what it takes to develop a high-performance team.