Four Stages of Team Building
If you really want to create an outstanding culture and a great team and have people working for you and signing up to help you take your business where you want it to go, then one of the things that’s really important is to understand the natural phases of that development of your team. You might be wanting them to be a high performing team, but they might be a relatively new combination. If that’s the case, then anytime you change the dynamic, every time you lose an employee or bring a new one in, it totally transfers that dynamic and alters it again. So, I want you to think about the four fundamental stages of team development. This is Fortune 500 methodology.
If you understand this, this’ll really help you psychologically to prepare and realize and see the journey unfolding in your business. Step 1 is the Forming Phase.
Stage #1 Forming
In the Forming Phase, people are getting to know each other. They don’t necessarily perform particularly well together. Everyone’s polite, everyone treats each other nicely, but when it’s all said and done, they’re just really dancing around the edges. They’re not necessarily a highly productive team at this point.
In step 2, the second stage is a Storming Phase.
Stage #2 Storming
In the Storming Phase, people aren’t quite sure what the operational effectiveness is, how to work with each other, the dynamics of each other. They start to butt heads, they start to test each other’s opinions and it can be a fairly tumultuous time. If you understand that it’s simply a chapter that they’re going through, you shouldn’t, therefore, be overwhelmed. New people come in, everyone’s polite, and then suddenly, you enter the Storming Phase. Now when you do that, it is what it is.
Don’t be frustrated or overwhelmed with it. It will pass if you just stick to the proper principles of effective leadership. In the third stage, we’re talking about Norming.
Stage #3 Norming
And Norming, that’s not the old Norm with the beer can in the cartoon about “Life. Be in it.” We’re talking about people stop fighting. They start to understand each other. They start looking forward to working together more effectively because they get each other. They also get the nature and the roles and responsibilities and start to respect the contribution that everybody brings. So as you start to norm, people settle down.
Things stabilize. It’s far less turbulent and it’s starting to look far more optimistic. The final stage is the Performing Stage.
Stage #4 Performing
When you hit the performing stage, a wonderful thing happens. People understand each other, they know their roles and responsibilities, they’ve gotten on, they’ve worked out all their differences, and they really start to be more effective. At this point, you can set some really high objectives and high targets together if you do it the right way and you’ll find that people will be excited about achieving those things together if they understand the journey ahead. So Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing.
1 – Forming 2 – Storming 3 – Norming 4 – Performing
Realize that we all want to be at thePerforming Stage, but you have to go through all three. You can’t shortcut it, don’t be frustrated by it, live it and breathe through that journey and recognize what’s happening and you’ll eventually hit the Performing Stage and it’ll get really exciting. That’s all for now. I’ll talk to you again soon.