Question 3

A number of models have been developed for team development by various researchers.
Moreover, what has been realised is the fact that they usually agree that the process of team
building goes through several stages. They also emphasized that both the leaders and team
members need to be aware of these stages which should facilitate team building and improve
team dynamics.

Tuckman’s model has become the most predominantly referred to and mostly used widely
recognised. Bruce W. Tuckman developed his model in 1965 and he revised it 1977 in
partnership with Mary Ann Conover Jensenk. This model describes how a team evolves in
terms of maturity and capability where they transform from being a group into becoming a
team. It looks at factors such as leadership styles, relationships being built and how the teams
mature through various stages (Bonebright,2010). In order to understand how this model,
work he created the following stages namely forming, storming, norming, performing and
adjourning.

Forming: This is the first stage of the model which is based on testing and dependencies. It is
usually the first time where team members get a chance to interact with one another and
majority of them are unaware of their roles and responsibilities. During this stage the group
become oriented to the task, ground rules are created and boundaries for interpersonal and
task behaviour are created(Raina,2018).

The main purpose of this stage is to develop understanding awareness about team members
who are part of the group. This stage also highlights the skills, roles and responsibilities of
each team member. The core result of this stage is to ensure that team members are
committed to their assigned roles and to team members they will work with. They also need
accept other team members and respect the role they are assigned to.

During this stage a leader needs to be able create an atmosphere of confidence and optimism.
He/she need to be able provide structure and task direction. This will help a team to have
confidence in their appointed leadership and the one communication from a leader to the
team. By just forming, a team is not good enough, the team members must know what are
their objectives. So with them understanding their objectives, it will make easier for a team to
transform from a group to a team(Wilson,2017).
Being part of a team is like being a partner in a marriage-both require individuals to give up
some of their individual desires and aspirations in service to the group. As a team leader you
can reinforce routines that are designed to signal that the group is entering “team” mode and
to put their individual goals to the side.

At TA Telecom, Amr has introduced the culture of team work by ensuring that staff
members work in an open plan environment. The Staff at TA Telecom were encouraged
to sit anywhere they like, as a result, that allowed the team to continually interact with
new and diverse staff, promoting a sense of dynamism and creativity in the space, which
also promote the spirit of team work.

Storming This is still a stage about team members getting to know one another. But on this
stage really work start and differences among team members arises due to different
perceptions, knowledge and skills set. This stage is also characterised by lack of unity and
division around interpersonal issues. So the main purpose of this stage is to ensure that the
leader and group members have ability to manage disagreement and conflict among the team.
Emotionally responses are less visible within the group as they work towards impersonal and
intellectual task but resistance still visible(Raina,2018).

So the team need to ensure that clarification of any doubt regarding roles responsibilities of
team members is done during this stage. There is also need to develop a sense of belonging
during this stage as this is the stage that can make or break the team.

To maintain the focus on the collective team endeavour, always remind your team its
purpose. Reminding the team why your team exists is a fundamental way to establish and re-
establish team focus. Everything team members do from the behaviours needed to achieve
team success, to the goals and objectives they strive to achieve, to the processes they create
for high quality output, should all come from the team’s purpose. This is also true for each
decision made and the roles and responsibilities assigned. In short, team purpose informs
everything your team does. Team purpose reminds your team that their collective endeavour
is not about them as individuals as much as it is about the team as a whole and the benefit it
provides to others.
Amr believed that his company’s success was relying on bringing in a certain type of
person with strong values and good intentions. The only common factor among our
employees, was that they all have good hearts. Moreover, Amr believed in creating a
value-based team which will not only benefit TA Telecom but also trickles down to how
they affect society as a whole. TA Telecom’s main business was the SMS messaging;
however, through team collaborations and interactions.

Norming: This is the stage where social cohesion occurs. Team members start understanding
each other and consensus start forming among members. Team members start supporting
each other in achieving the objective which develops commitments and team dynamics.
Team confidence is very high which makes the team to be more creative (Bone bright ,2010).
During this stage a team becomes an entity as members develop in-group feeling and seek to
maintain and perpetuate the group. Every team member is involved in decision making and
formulating an action plan. The relationship has improved significantly as the is now a
willing support of all other team members to achieve objectives.

It’s easy for team members to get overly focused on their individual agendas and
responsibilities. Yet your team ‘s success is ultimately measured by how well its collective
work provides beneficial value for stakeholders.in fact, stakeholders and their needs are the
reason for your team’s purpose, which in turn drives your team’s work.

To keep your team’s focus on stakeholders, connect with them from time to time. Staying in
touch allows your team to discover how well your team is providing valuable benefit to them
and whether the relationship is good. When your team sees its stakeholders as central to the
team operations, you prioritize the collective team endeavour of serving stakeholders over
individual team member interests.

On the case study the two companies together created an agreement in which the
revenues from the increase SMS messages would be shared between Vodafone and TA
Telecom.

Performing: This was a last stage of Tuckman original model in 1965 where a group become
functional. There is better understanding between members and everyone has the shared
vision of what is the purpose of the team and team members support each other(Raina,2017).
The team members are now willing to share the workload with other members when is
required. The team start performing as a unit which improves the performance of the
organisation. The team have sense of pride and self-satisfaction as the healthy work culture
has been achieved.

One of the big reasons individual team members can be overly focused on themselves is that
they want to appear capable. Yet each human on your teams has flaws. To mask those flaws,
individuals often balk at admitting they sometimes lack skills, or they make mistakes. That’s
why it’s important that you as team leader show that it’s okay to admit you aren’t all
knowing, may lack some ability and will own up to mistakes in the spirit of learning.
Additionally, your team might consider creating norms around these concepts.

Acknowledging human weaknesses permits team members to accept each individuals. It also
can focus them on learning together as a team rather than protecting their individual ego’s.

Amr began to consider how they could change their team to become more talent based,
building an environment of innovation, adaption and rapid development. He believed
that employing the team with the right skill set will grow the company considerably.

Adjourning: When Tuckman’s partnered with Jensen in 1977 he updated his model by
introducing final stage known as adjourning(Nestor:2013) This stage occurs when a task of a
work team is completed successfully and its role is no longer required, the organisation
would break the team and everyone could revert back to his or her original assignment. The
main outcome for this stage is that a team feel that they are recognised for achieving desired
results. The team has feeling of fulfilment because they achieved their objective as team
rather than seeing themselves as individuals during the first few stages.

Focus on the team by creating team relationship action plan. The key to such a plan is to
ensure that each individual team member identifies their own areas of growth. Then they ask
for what they need from other team members to make gains in those areas. This creates
mutual accountability between each individual and whole team for individual development
that furthers the team purpose and goals.

To conclude, individual talent and creativity are necessary contributions to the team.
However, successful teams are able to create a singular team focus to serve their
stakeholders. Don’t rely on this happening naturally; consider trying some of these ideas to
routinely reinforce what it means to be a team.

The process Amr has adopted starts out open and fluid. At any point, any staff member
can pitch an idea or opportunity. Employees then come together, often over lunch, to
brainstorm it further and as such the team was able to develop common goals for the
company.