This is the first stage of team development. This is the stage when the foundation of the team is laid. 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 your 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 to get to know one another and getting comfortable with one another.
In the Forming stage, the team comes together and members try to know each other and establish a 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 the 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 benefited far beyond just completing tasks on time. Now we will focus on different strategies for dealing with issues that may arise during the first stage, “Forming”. You'll learn strategies for selecting high-performing team members most suited for your project or team, as well as recommendations for performing proper introductions, clarifying team purpose and context, and making sure team members understand their responsibilities. As a leader, you can use several strategies during this stage to build an effective team.
Suggestions for the Team Leader/Member in this stage:
Generating Ideas using Brainstorming
The brainstorming technique was developed by Alex F. Osborn in 1957 and brainstorming means where a team of members generates a large amount of alternative fruitful ideas on a specific problem without any criticism and then evaluates each idea in terms of their pros and cons. Brainstorming techniques fall into four broad categories: visioning, exploring, modifying, and experimenting.
Evidence of the medically damaging symptoms of work stress necessitates applying the treatment of stress management. Stress management is increasingly drawing the attention to the management experts not only as a remedial measure but also as a way to resource management. If the workplace can be made a little more lovable the increase in the achievement of the organization may be much time more. If group stress can be removed by introducing group discussions and recreational facilities a long-lasting team spirit may get developed.
Stress is an essential part of our life. No one can live without stress. Stress can be beneficial as well as harmful. Stress as a positive influence adds excitement and hope while as a negative influence it can result in destructive feelings, anger, and depression. Although the general orientation to stress is to consider unfavorable outcomes, yet one must have observed that stress experiences may also facilitate the development of effective and varied coping behavior, increased personal resources, and lead to a sense of competence in development. Stress at a moderate level is not only inevitable but may be useful for physical and mental well-being.
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 article, we want to introduce you to these stages of team development and certain strategies that you can use to help the team grow and develop in each of these stages.
Teams are part of the modern organizational culture. Whether you are a team leader or a team member, having a better understanding of how teams work, and being able to identify where the team is in the process, is a critical part of ensuring the team is ultimately successful. Start with the basics and understand what a team is and what role they play in an organization.
Building Perfect Creative Team
One misconception around creativity is that creative act is essentially solitary. Most of the world's important inventions resulted not from the work of one lone genius, but from collaboration of a team with complementary skills. Managers should build teams with the ideal mix of traits to form a creative group and then establish the conditions that make creativity much more likely to occur.
“Level 5 Leadership”, this term was coined by Jim Collins in his book “Good to Great” and it is all about achieving "Greatness" as a leader. This article will explain what we mean by Level 5 Leadership and what the characteristics of a Level 5 leader are. What it takes to achieve greatness as a leader, and what are the steps and strategies that one can use to move up to this top level of leadership.
This style is characterized by leaders making decisions for others and expecting followers to follow instructions. The directive leader is adept at giving instructions, setting expectations, and establishing timelines and performance standards. However, it is possible for the same leaders to display both directive and supportive behavior as per the demands of the situation.
The development of teams is an ongoing process because the composition of the 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 the team and there has been a lot of research to identify these stages. In this article, we discuss the common theories of team development.
A manager or an employee in an organization who is experiencing a high level of stress may develop high blood pressure, ulcers, irritability, difficulty in making routine decisions, loss of appetite, accident proneness, and the like. These can be subsumed under three general categories, physiological, psychological, and behavioral symptoms. Stress can give rise to a number of changes.
© 2023 TechnoFunc, All Rights Reserved