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How to get your team working like a well oiled machine.

By: Len McGrane

Building a team that will function as a hard-working unit that hits its goals has been difficult from the first time our ancestors tried it. No large job can be finished without a team . But you're dealing with people and people don't always form into a team without some issues coming to the surface. So how teams come together and develop is of interest. The businesses or organizations employing them often have time, money and reputation invested to make sure the team functions.

An academic paper by Bruce Tuckman, published in 1965, has come to be accepted as the best general description of how teams build and function. In it, Tuckman proposed teams build through four distinct stages which he cleverly named forming, storming, norming and performing.

Other researchers now widely agree that Tuckman's four stages do exist. Team members do indeed seem to want to find out about the others, need to make changes to accommodate each other, hit conflict, and (in many cases) eventually function together as a team ideally should.

Forming is the first of Tuckman's stages

This first stage is about getting to know each other and the structures and rules restricting the team. This is a time when members rely on each other, or where the team's been in existence for a while, on the things that order and define the team.

After this comes the Storming stage.

This is a great way to describe what occurs. Members get into conflict and this affects their work. Researches see this as a rebellion against being pressured by the others in the group.

Then Norming become dominant, the third of Tuckman's phases.

Here is a time for people to say how they feel and what they think. The group becomes a solid unit. New ways to work together are agreed.

When this stage is fully developed Tuckman's last stage flowers. Performing is what he called it.

This is the time supervisors dream about. Everyone understands the others and working together is easy. Members work together to get jobs completed, to the extent of doing work for the others where that's going to be helpful. The team leader will be unchallenged and members support each other.

Tuckman took his analysis further. A few years later he inserted a stage five and of course there were always going to be researchers who debated and refined his findings. But in spite of this, Tuckman's clear outline of the research of his day, and his catchy descriptors, have lasted the distance and right up until now are the best explanation of team work that we have.

Article Source: http://www.articlekingpro.com

Len McGrane has written widely on corporate team building programs and teambuilding ideas. He recommends this team building web site for programs www.teamworx.cc

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