IFSM 380 DISC 7&8

Download Principles of Management for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected].

Team Development Over Time

2. How do teams develop over time?

If you have been a part of a team—as most of us have—then you intuitively have felt that there

are different “stages” of team development. Teams and team members often start from a position

of friendliness and excitement about a project or endeavor, but the mood can sour and the team

dynamics can go south very quickly once the real work begins. In 1965, educational psychologist

Bruce Tuckman at Ohio State University developed a four-stage model to explain the

complexities that he had witnessed in team development. The original model was called

Tuckman’s Stages of Group Development, and he added the fifth stage of “Adjourning” in 1977

to explain the disbanding of a team at the end of a project. The four stages of the Tuckman model

are:3

 Forming  Storming  Norming  Performing  Adjourning

The Forming stage begins with the introduction of team members. This is known as the “polite

stage” in which the team is mainly focused on similarities and the group looks to the leader for

structure and direction. The team members at this point are enthusiastic, and issues are still being

discussed on a global, ambiguous level. This is when the informal pecking order begins to

develop, but the team is still friendly.

Exhibit 15.3 Tuckman’s Model of Team Development Attribution: Copyright

Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license

Download Principles of Management for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected].

The Storming stage begins as team members begin vying for leadership and testing the group

processes. This is known as the “win-lose” stage, as members clash for control of the group and

people begin to choose sides. The attitude about the team and the project begins to shift to

negative, and there is frustration around goals, tasks, and progress.

After what can be a very long and

painful Storming process for the team,

slowly the Norming stage may start to

take root. During Norming, the team is

starting to work well together, and buy-

in to group goals occurs. The team is

establishing and maintaining ground

rules and boundaries, and there is

willingness to share responsibility and

control. At this point in the team

formation, members begin to value and

respect each other and their

contributions.

Finally, as the team builds momentum

and starts to get results, it is entering

the Performing stage. The team is

completely self-directed and requires

little management direction. The team

has confidence, pride, and enthusiasm,

Exhibit 15.4 The Storming Stage In the storming stage,

protracted competition vying for leadership of the group

can hinder progress. You are likely to encounter this in your

coursework when a group assignment requires forming a

team. (Credit: Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy/ flickr/

Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0))

Exhibit 15.5 Team Performance Curve (Attribution: Copyright Rice University,

OpenStax, under CC-BY 4.0 license)

Download Principles of Management for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected].

and there is a congruence of vision, team, and self. As the team continues to perform, it may

even succeed in becoming a high-performing team. High-performing teams have optimized both

task and people relationships—they are maximizing performance and team effectiveness.

Katzenberg and Smith, in their study of teams, have created a “team performance curve” that

graphs the journey of a team from a working group to a high-performing team. The team

performance curve is illustrated in Exhibit 15.5.

The process of becoming a high-performance team is not a linear process. Similarly, the four

stages of team development in the Tuckman model are not linear, and there are also factors that

may cause the team to regress to an earlier stage of development. When a team member is added

to the group, this may change the dynamic enough and be disruptive enough to cause a

backwards slide to an earlier stage. Similarly, if a new project task is introduced that causes

confusion or anxiety for the group, then this may also cause a backwards slide to an earlier stage

of development. Think of your own experiences with project teams and the backslide that the

group may have taken when another team member was introduced. You may have personally

found the same to be true when a leader or project sponsor changes the scope or adds a new

project task. The team has to re-group and will likely re-Storm and re-Form before getting back

to Performing as a team.

Catching the Entrepreneurial Spirit

Starting the Startup Team

Nothing is more exciting than a startup business. The enthusiasm is high, and people are excited

about the new venture and the prospects that await. Depending on the situation, there may be

funding that the startup has received from investors, or the startup could be growing and

powering itself organically. Either way, the startup faces many different questions in the

beginning, which will have a tremendous impact on its growth potential and performance down

the road. One of the most critical questions that faces a startup —or any business for that

matter—is the question of who should be on the team. Human capital is the greatest asset that

any company can have, and it is an especially critical decision in a startup environment when

you have limited resources and those resources will be responsible for building the company

from ground up.

In Noam Wasserman’s January 2012 HBSP article “Assembling the Startup Team,” Wasserman

asserts:

“Nothing can bedevil a high-potential startup more than its people problems. In research on

startup performance, venture capitalists attributed 65% of portfolio company failures to

problems within the startup’s management team. Another study asked investors to identify

problems that might occur at their portfolio companies; 61% of the problems involved team

issues. These problems typically result from choices that founders make as they add team

members…”

These statistics are based on people problems in startups, and it isn’t quite clear what percent of

larger company failures could be directly or indirectly attributed to people and team issues. I

Download Principles of Management for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected].

would imagine that the percentage is also significant. The impact of people problems and team

issues in a startup organization that is just getting its footing and trying to make the right

connections and decisions can be very significant. If you know anyone who has a company in

startup mode, you may have noticed that some of the early team members who are selected to

join the team are trusted family members, friends, or former colleagues. Once a startup company

grows to a certain level, then it may acquire an experienced CEO to take the helm. In any case,

the startup is faced early on with important questions on how to build the team in a way that will

maximize the chance of success.

In “Assembling the Startup Team,” the author refers to the three Rs: relationships, roles, and

rewards as being key elements that must be managed effectively in order to avoid problems in

the long term. Relationships refers to the actual team members that are chosen, and there are

several caveats to keep in mind. Hiring relatives or close friends because they are trusted may

seem like the right idea in the beginning, but the long-term hazards (per current research)

outweigh the benefits. Family and friends may think too similarly, and the team misses the

benefit of other perspectives and connections. Roles are important because you have to think

about the division of labor and skills, as well as who is in the right roles for decision-making.

The startup team needs to think through the implications of assigning people to specific roles, as

that may dictate their decision power and status. Finally, defining the rewards can be difficult for

the startup team because it essentially means that they are splitting the pie—i.e., both short-term

and long-term compensation. For startup founders, this can be a very difficult decision when they

have to weigh the balance of giving something away versus gaining human capital that may

ultimately help the business to succeed. Thinking through the tradeoffs and keeping alignment

between the “three Rs” is important because it challenges the startup team to think of the long-

term consequences of some of their early decisions. It is easy to bring family and friends into the

startup equation due to trust factors, but a careful analysis of the “three Rs” will help a startup

leadership team make decisions that will pay off in the long term.

Discussion Questions

1. Why might it be a bad decision to hire someone for a key startup role based only on the fact that the person is close family or a friend? What are the potential tradeoffs to the business?

2. What does it mean for the “three Rs” to be in alignment? What is the potential risk of these not being in alignment? What could go wrong?

Concept Check

1. What are the four stages of team development? 2. What can cause a team to regress in its development?

This work "Team Development Over Time" is a derivative of Team Development Over Time by OpenStax used under

a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. "Team Development Over Time" by UMGC is licensed under Creative

Commons Attribution 4.0 License .