The 4 Stages of Team Collaboration and your role as a leader

You want to develop your team for maximum collaboration and effectiveness?

A lot of managers hire an entertainer or organize events like paintball, traveling, hiking, sports games and other fun activities. And these team activities are definitely part of team building. But you may have observed that team members in conflict will avoid taking part; they find important reasons to be busy and conveniently don’t attend most of the time. Because they don’t feel comfortable in their workplace, they don’t want to spend additional time with coworkers—making a large part of your team-building effort obsolete.

Create an atmosphere of open communication and trust between all team members with proven systems.

Playing is fine and fun, but you wonder what a systematic team development process could bring to your revenue, innovation and customer service. A good team makes the difference in the world of achieving results, new business, competition, fast change and good customer service.

There are 4 stages of team collaboration  

Did you know that many team get  stuck in Phase 2 and never really get to Phase 3? As much as we would like to avoid Phase 2 we all get to it sooner or later. The big question sis how prepared are you as a leader to handle the challenges? In my 20 years of leading teams and developing high performing  teams being the  coach I learned that it is not enough to be kind with the people and learn to delegate tasks. So lets dive into the 4 stages and you will understand.

1. The Forming Phase

In the Forming Phase, your role is to be the host for new team members, give guidance, create an atmosphere of open communication, provide a clear vision and assign concrete tasks. In kick-off workshops from one hour to up to five days, you create rules for behaviour and shared values; you craft charts and clarify roles and responsibilities; you try to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each team member. In this phase, team members watch you and follow you like a commander, as they are insecure and cautious in their new environment. You are the only decision maker.

Your Role as the leader is like being the Host of an event, Mentor and Guide.

2. The Storming Phase

In the Storming Phase, you detect hidden conflicts and resolve them with professional conflict management methods. Here you will implement the slogan “good team-building starts with the composition and hiring of your team”. It’s during this phase that I observe many managers avoiding resolving conflicts while simultaneously setting high-pressure deadlines. The combination is demotivating, and team members who have a choice leave the team or create an informal leader, compromising your authority. Performance levels drop as your team experts fight to be right instead of getting good work done. You may think you’re the ultimate decision maker, but your decisions will be questioned and possibly even overstepped. If you applied professional conflict management methods to resolving such issues, however, you could take your team to the next level with increased professionalism and productivity.

Your Role as the leader is like being the Conflict Mediator and Conflict Manager., Organizer.

3. The Norming Phase

In the Norming Phase, your task is to be a good leader and a good team member. You have a clear expectation of what your task is and what can be accomplished by each team member. You are living by shared values and guiding principles in your daily work, and even the weakest team member is supported by all team members against attacks from the outside. You have a family feeling and everybody feels protected by the team and you as a leader. If the norming phase goes well, you’ll cultivate an atmosphere of high motivation and high achievement. Decisions are often made in a democratic way, or at least understood and accepted by other team members.

Your Role as the leader is like being the Facilitator, Sales Manager and Influencer.

4. The Performing Phase

In the Performing Phase, your role is to be a coach. Your team members are showing high responsibility and engagement and achieving results. They are open to innovation from outside sources and support each other. Decisions are often made mutually, in a democratic way or even with consensus if time allows. In the performing phase, it is critical that you be a good listener to represent and protect your team.

Your Role as the leader is like being the Team Member, Influencer and Coach.

Successful team development demands from you a kind of sandwich position. When you’re managing well, you represent the team’s results and interests to your line managers and clients while also protecting your team and ensuring they can work efficiently and communicate effectively.

Resources:

If you’d like to assess your Team Stage so that you can take intentional action please click here