Team Working

Teamwork can be defined as the ability to work with people who are willing to work towards a common goal or aim as individual or separately from other ways within a group. Most of us have worked in teams or groups at some point in life, which could have been temporarily or even permanent. It could have been in school, college, University, Workplace, Voluntary organisation, etc. Teamwork exists where large units of production break down in Organisations or businesses, as an alternative of relying upon the use of the division of labour. Then each individual’s of the team are given responsibility for completing certain parts of the large units. Some Business also exist without been broken down in teams, as all members of that business or organisation work as one team. Individuals do not realize that they are working as one team, even though they are putting complete trust in other members of the business or organisation to work together and achieve a success common goal. Each individual of the team support each other with their sense of knowledge and identity to accomplish their goals.

Successful Team working

During school time in year 10 our school organised a cultural evening, for which we were responsible with the planning of each different acts on the stage and different play. Family, friends and others were invited for that evening, which we had to perform in front of all the visitors. We were given then responsible of organising a multi cultural fashion show, which was done by selecting people from different race as they had to represent their country and their traditional cloth. I had to work with people I have never worked with before and it was difficult communicating with every single person in the group. We let everyone know about gathering for a meeting and plan this. Since we had our meeting, everyone started turning up for the rehearsals after school and I believe in this case communication helped us get onto the next stage. We had rehearsals two weeks in a row and on the actual evening we performed better than expected.  Tuckman’s Theory has played a role in our team work where forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning took place.

Tuckman’s theory

There has been a major trend in businesses towards team working and also have theories, models and concepts of team working. Bruce Tuckman’s theory is one of the best known team improvements theories and was developed in 1973. His theory is mainly focused on how to undertake their work all the way through to completing their work to achieve their goal. There are five stages which Tuckman’s theory includes (Bruce, T., 2009):

§  Forming: This is the beginning stage where the team has an introduction of their team members and then their tasks will be allocated to them. The team members get the chance to speak to other members of the team to get to know each other and they would also be able to plan their task while they get to know each other.

§  Storming: People now begin to see themselves as part of the team. This is the stage where the members of the team would start to bring out information or idea and which could lead to disagreement, different opinions as to how the team should be lead. There could even be distraction by relationship and emotional issues, which should be avoided in orders to meet the goal. More to the point it could also be a positive stage, whereas the member agree to each other’s idea’s and get to know each other even more. This is one of the hardest stage for each other, as it is all about understanding each other. If they understand from the beginning and teach each other, there wouldn’t be a problem within the team. It is relatively important to have a strong leadership in this segment, because the leader’s skill could be the resolution or the key elements for the team to overcome this stage.

§  Norming: After passing a difficult stage they would move onto norming stage, whereas members of the team would start to be more focused towards their objective, which means working practices commence. This stage would be easier as they would have all merged onto this stage with an agreed method and rules on how to work to achieve the goal, therefore as a team they start to trust themselves and they would also know who does what, and how things will be done. 

§  Performing: Very successful teams would be able to reach this stage as it is very difficult to get to this stage. In order to reach this stage it is extremely important to have a very good communication between the team members as most of the decisions should be made together as a group with fewer issues. They would have regular meetings and would be communicating often to let each other know how their performance is going as well as keep a good relationship within the team. Each member of the Team would be focused on their work in a high expectancy. The team leader would have a relaxed stage at this point, as he wouldn’t have to assisted the team unless a team member ask for assistance from the leader.

§  Adjourning: This is the final stage which could be depressing for some even successful stage, because it is the break-up stage. On this stage the team breaks up since the work is finish. For some of the member this is sad as they would have to leave each other, whereas for those who didn’t get along would be glad and also relieved at the end of the work. Those who meet this stage, they are a successful team and they should be fulfilled with the successfully completed task (Apex Leadership Ltd, no date). 

Tuckman’s theory shows that the team wouldn’t be able to go on to next stages before passing the beginning stage. Therefore it is important to work with the team carefully to success and achieve the goal.

Effectiveness of our group

While working as a group for our Culture assignment, we didn’t follow any of the theories. A very positive point is that we all knew each other very well and thought that we would be able to manage to complete the assignment as a team whereas we only split the work into four people and carried on with our work. If I had to reflect our effectiveness of our group to Tuckman’s theory, forming which is the first stage wasn’t difficult as all four members of the group knew each other. Moving on to the Storming stage, I believe we were stuck there because we didn’t have any sort of discussion about the assignment, because we just split the work and thought it’s enough if we just do the set work and put it together.

Personally I wanted to have few meetings where we could discuss what we have done so far also how to put the work together, but it was disappointing when no one showed interest towards it. We tried to arrange meetings, but or another wouldn’t turn up therefore we cancel the meetings. If we were up to date with our work and have considered about our assignment, we would have been able 

to move on to the third stage, which is norming.

Reference:

http://www.the-happy-manager.com/teamwork-theory.html
Apex Leadership Ltd.(no date). Teamwork Theory: Tuckman's Stages of Group Development. Available: http://www.the-happy-manager.com/teamwork-theory.html. Last accessed 13th April 2011.

http://www.businessballs.com/tuckmanformingstormingnormingperforming.htm
Bruce, T. (2009). Tuckman forming storming norming performing model. Available:http://www.businessballs.com/tuckmanformingstormingnormingperforming.htm. Last accessed 13^th April 2011