Week 11 Coaching Assignment - Building Effective Teams - Assignment 1

Since the start of this semester I have been working with the same team throughout one of my courses. In my team we are four people, and we have one person who is especially perceived as the “problem”. He rarely does his part, and he complains about other people’s parts. For example, he will say that an idea will not work, without providing a better solution. This creates a negative environment and people become reluctant to share their ideas. Another problem that has occurred due to this, is that when this person is not around, the rest of the group will talk behind his back. We all have the need to let out some steam, and so we complain about him together. And I realize that this is not helpful and only fuels our frustration, as we become increasingly more negative to anything he has to say. I believe our problem can be explained more thoroughly using the four stages of team development.

The forming stage

When we first got together, I knew only one person on my team. And I think the same applied to the others; we were all relatively new to one another. Our first problem was that we didn’t take the time to get to know each other. We barely had an introduction of our names and our nationality, before we went straight to business. This did not give us enough time to get acquainted and become comfortable around each other. We were unable to create a productive atmosphere, because we were uncertain about the others’ reactions and work methods. None of us really provided any direction, clarity or structure in this stage (Developing Management Skills, p.499). High-performing teams have high credibility and trust, and these are attributes that we should have focused on from the beginning. In addition, we should have created direction and goals within our group.

The norming stage

Because we were unable to set clear goals in the first stage, it became difficult for us to create a cohesive unit or a “sense of team” (Developing Management Skills, p.499). Expectations were not clear. We made plans to have a certain amount of work done by a certain time, but several people failed to do their part. And perhaps this was caused by our inability to create a sense of responsibility towards the team. We didn’t know each other well enough to feel a commitment towards each other. And this lack of commitment also led us to spend even less time together. Everyone downgraded our team work, and paid less attention to it. And fewer meetings meant even less interaction, making it difficult to create common behaviors and perspectives. We were unable to create a culture of our own.

In this stage we should have focused on identifying the expectations from our team members, and create commitment to our goals. We should also have focused more on the personal aspect, for example like being able to provide supporting feedback to each other. High-performing teams share a purpose and vision, which in turn enhances commitment, trust and motivation.

The storming stage

Because we didn’t know each other that well in the beginning, we were very conscious about what we said, and afraid of creating conflict and discomfort. However, after a while this became increasingly more difficult. Especially communicating negative information became an issue. And perhaps this is where the disagreements within the group truly occurred. I noticed that my connection to two of the group members were stronger than with the third one – the “troublemaker”. In a way, we created a subgroup where we would let out our frustration about the fourth member of our group, never really facing the issue head on and giving him a chance to improve. And so, we also became part of the problem.

Here we should have tried to focus on communication and how to manage conflict. We should have figured out ways to discuss the issues with our fourth member, in order to be more productive. Perhaps he had a different view than us, and exploring these might have enhanced cooperation within the team.

The performing stage

I feel we have not yet achieved this stage. We are still unable to work at a high level of performance. Our issues remain, such as uncertainty, nonparticipativeness and self-centeredness (everyone focuses on other assignments they have). Before we can reach this stage we need to work on the already mentioned issues, while at the same time create clear work roles for each member and gaining knowledge of the core competencies that each member can provide. Only by doing this can we achieve high-performing teams that provide satisfying performance outcomes.

Ingrid Elisabeth Sørensen