The 5 Stages Involved in Building a Team

Discuss about the Socialization in Organizations and Work Groups.

The objectives that an organisation set as a part of the strategic management decisions is achieved with the contribution from the people associated with the company. Every company has various departments or groups based on the scale of operation and number of people working for the company. These teams coordinate with each other in order to achieve the objectives of the company (Raes et al. 2015). However, within the team it is very important to have understanding and coordination as well.  Every team has their own objectives and goals, which cumulatively leads to the success of the company. A team is a group of people working towards achieving a similar goal. Team is a term that is associated with sports but in a business organisation the dynamics of team plays an important role as well. The team that will be assessed is operations department of a company. According to Tuckman (1965), there are five stages involved in building a team:  forming, storming, norming, and performing are the stages explained first and later he added another concept to the list adjourning.

Forming is the first step; this explains the process by which a group of people start working together. There are mixed emotions among the individuals regarding this step. The people are mostly anxious and polite.

Storming is the process by which a group of people start working together and get in to a phase where there is struggle for acceptance among the people. This stage is characterized by challenges and conflicts. 

Norming is the process by which the team resolves the differences and conflicts and moves towards appreciation among each other. There is a sense of development of togetherness and understanding at this stage (Levine and Moreland 2014).

Performing, at this stage the team has a bond and performs towards achieving the objectives of the business.

Adjourning it is the stage where the team is in a position to dissolve, the reason for this stage can vary from one organisation to another for example during a phase of restructuring of the company or due to the failure of the team to achieve the objectives (Seck and Helton 2014).

Performance and efficiency improvement: The efficiency of an individual increases when they are associated with a team as there are people who support and guide each other to perform the day to day activities.

Benefits of Working in a Team Environment

Support and guidance: A team is led by a leader: a manager or a supervisor according to the structure of the company, the major role of the leader is to provide the people of the team guidance and support in order to improve individual as well as the performance of the team. The person who leads the team is an experienced individual and therefore should have knowledge regarding the same (Costa et al. 2014).

Develop a sense of belongingness: It is important for an individual to feel important and feel associated with an organisation. Being a part of a team drives this emotion. This in turn helps the person to be productive and therefore help the company to achieve its objectives.

Promoting creativity: Innovation helps a company to stay relevant in the dynamics of the industry. A team helps in fostering creativity among the people by providing an individual with like-minded people and space to focus the thought process. With the help of the team members and the support of the supervisors creativity and innovation seeks encouragement and scope of development (Costa et al. 2014).

 Greater perspective: working as a team offers wider perspective of issues and conflicts that the team has to face on a daily basis. As a number of people are involved each can come up with a solution to a problem from a different perspective.

Flexibility: As a team gap in skills of one person can be fulfilled by another thus providing the team with flexibility and positive approach to versatility within the team. While working in an organization there can be situations which are unpredictable in such cases it is important for the teams to be flexible (Fausing et al. 2013).

As a leader the most important role is to support and guide the people, but along with this guidance it is also important to participate in the task with the team. For example, when there is a conflict (missing deadline due to misunderstanding) in the team until and unless the leader has active participation in understanding and developing the tasks he or she will not be able to resolve the conflict (Costa et al. 2014).  

Effective communication is a large part of the being a leader as they are the medium of communication in between the higher management and the employees. Assuming the conflict situation regarding a task it is the duty of the leader to maintain a clear exchange of messages in order to understand the cause of conflict and then aim at finding a solution with the help of the team in order to get a wider perspective of aspects (Costa et al. 2014). 

The Role of a Leader in Team Building

The member of a team depending on the job role has the responsibilities that he or she has to follow. But as a member of the team it is important to interact and bond with the members. For example, in a situation where there is excess work for the team, the members should accommodate and work in a fair manner, there should be an understanding so that the gaps of one can be fulfilled by another. A member of a team takes extra initiatives in order to help the team (Hurst et al. 2015).

The goal of the operations department is to improve the performance and thereby add to the profitability of the business. The review of the goals can be measure with the help of the metrics such as net profit of the company as well as the return on investment of the shareholders. Depending on these aspects it can be said that the goals of the team has been achieved. The conflict situation among the people gave insight as a leader regarding the ways which can be incorporated in the operations to improve (Hurst et al. 2015).

Training: in the process of resolving the conflict some of the issues that had been highlighted by the members was the deficiency of skills, therefore it can be said that training is the process of self development as well as career development opportunity for an individual, thus it is an important part of being a member of a team.

Supervision: It is not only the responsibility of a leader to supervise the team; the members of the team should also ensure that the work of each other is perfect and improved.

Monitoring: working in an organisation it is important for the company to maintain the records of the members. This helps in providing proper guidance (Hurst et al. 2015).

It can be concluded from the above discussion that a building and maintaining a team is not only the responsibility of the leader rather the whole team is responsible for making the achieving the goals of the team. Conflicts and challenges are a part and parcel of running a team and it should be taken in a positive way to understand the dynamics of the team as well as improve the performance.

Kevin: The person is ambitious yet has performance issue; there are also several complaints against him, which should be considered. The retention of such a person can be de-motivating to a number of other employees.

Measuring Effective Performance in Operations Department

Ahmed: Has potential to improve as well as have the urge to learn. Personality wise also has scope of improvement, thus retaining him should be a positive outcome for the company.

Measurement of effective performance: Feedbacks from the team leads during the time of performance appraisal are the measurement for both the candidates.

Kevin: He needs a session with the HR department regarding the No tolerance policies of the company in case of behavioral issues or any biases.

He also requires a session with the team leader regarding his contribution to the team as a member of the team

Ahmed: training should be given in order to improve the expertise in terms of computerized data entry system.

The appraisal procedure that is followed for both the candidates are Chain Of Command. In this process the leaders of the team each of them are assigned to review the employee which is further reviewed by a manager.

Firstly the steps that are taken are moving the person to a PIP phase, where the daily tasks of the person is scrutinized by a supervisor. Feedbacks are shared and in case of three negative feedbacks the person is terminated.

All the members of the organisation are expected to follow the rules and policies of the company while being associated with the company. The HR department shares all the policies during the time of hiring and every member should abide by these regulations.

Codes of practice and procedures relating to disciplinary actions and grievances

The company follows a no tolerance policy for certain cases most of these cases are in the behavioral category. Warnings in from of negative feedbacks are shared with the concerned person this is followed by termination.

The person that has been employed is Anwar, He is a sincere individual but is also moody. He has an argumentative nature which has been escalated before. He is a year old in the organisation and has excellent skill in terms of technology which is an essential part of his job role. Despite of his behavioral issues he is popular among the team and also has a reputation for his performance.

Person’s learning styles: He has to understand his own mistakes in order to learn, if any correction or issue is imposed on him he does not take it in a positive way.

Individual development needs: He needs counseling and HR face to face sessions so that his behavioral issues can be highlighted and his performance can be appraised at the same time.

Training requirements: He does not need training for the job role he has been offered.

Methods of evaluation: His productivity marks his performance and the number of escalations will mark his improvement in behavior.

A period of six months of observation from the date of the HR session was accounted for the development of the Anwar. Before the session there were three complaints in a month recorded against his behavior. And a total of 8 complaints in six months, when this was communicated to Anwar as expected he was furious. The key here is to communicate effectively as the company will not like to lose a person who is efficient. Therefore, it was made a point to highlight his best attributes as well. After six months it is observed that the complaints have reduced to two. This is an indicator that the assessment and the evaluation process is effective as there is a positive outcome to the communication.

In the assessment process one of the major attributes to focus upon is communication and research. Before communicating with a person regarding his behavior assessor should be ready with correct data points. This is essential to justify the statements are being issued against the individual.

Reference list:

Costa, P.L., Passos, A.M. and Bakker, A.B., 2014. Team work engagement: A model of emergence. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 87(2), pp.414-436.

Fausing, M.S., Jeppe Jeppesen, H., Jønsson, T.S., Lewandowski, J. and Bligh, M.C., 2013. Moderators of shared leadership: work function and team autonomy. Team Performance Management: An International Journal, 19(5/6), pp.244-262.

Hurst, S., Arulogun, O.S., Owolabi, M.O., Akinyemi, R., Uvere, E., Warth, S. and Ovbiagele, B., 2015. Pretesting qualitative data collection procedures to facilitate methodological adherence and team building in Nigeria. International journal of qualitative methods, 14(1), pp.53-64.

Levine, J.M. and Moreland, R.L., 2014. Socialization in organizations and work groups. In Groups at work (pp. 83-126). Psychology Press.

Raes, E., Kyndt, E., Decuyper, S., Van den Bossche, P. and Dochy, F., 2015. An exploratory study of group development and team learning. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 26(1), pp.5-30.

Seck, M.M. and Helton, L., 2014. Faculty development of a joint MSW program utilizing Tuckman’s model of stages of group development. Social Work with Groups, 37(2), pp.158-168.

Tuckman, B.W., 1965. Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological bulletin, 63(6), p.384.