Introduction
The stages of team development are formation state, storming, normalizing, performing and transforming stages. Each of these stages has a special challenge especially for a group of people who are struggling to function as a unit. Some unique or special features/actions particularly from the individual entities strengthen the cohesive forces that ought to guide team members towards a team mission.
First and Second Stage
According to Guttman (2008), the first stage of formation involves coming together to form a group that has a shared vision or mission. The group aims at mainly accomplishing a certain purpose.
The second stage of storming emerges because the team members get to know each other, but may have some conflicting views that can stain the relationship. For instance, they may fail to agree on the procedures to follow towards attaining the set goals or disagree against the set vision /mission of a firm. The case sample of members of a medical facility has passed these two stages.
Norm Stage
The norm stage is progressive since members are able to share ideas and form working relationships that cater for the team’s objectives and progress. The current team has harmonized its prior strained or competitive relationships. It is thus able to work harmoniously towards development goals. However, some cohesiveness of the team still lacks some collaboration, thus the reason it is still in the norm stage.
The team has to attain the next stage of the development life cycle, which is the performing stage. The team lacks strong collaboration and team unity thus affecting harmonization. Lack of synchronization in the team is thus the reason why members or team leaders fails to bring out a successful functioning team.
Justification of the Opinion
A new colleague joining the team at this stage must expect to meet members who can either cause team conflicts or enforce work harmony. The members may also feel secure and express their opinions freely due to existing spirit of responsiveness, kindness and affirmation.
Openness and members cooperation also promotes members’ listening skill. By listening to one another, they are able to understand the importance of maintaining an effective form of communication. They have various measures of enhancing communication as an effective tool of combating conflicts or disagreements.
The working techniques and strategies are well established. The reason for easy establishment is due to collaboration and as a result, members are in a position to choose a leader amongst them and establish the role of each affiliate. However, effective performance often fails to take place due to lack of enough trust or honesty among members. The team is thus not yet reasonable, since there are no evident justifiable procedures to quantify the team.
Expectations
In line with Boone and Kurtz (2010), a real team in the performing stage is very effective and productive. The members act honestly with each other, thus strengthening their interaction and ability to have synchronized objectives for success.
The members of this team at a medical facility also lack confidence and members may fail to believe that the group is strong enough for anticipated success.
Member’s collaboration still fails to trigger personal impressions that their team is the best and the most successful experience. At the initial stages of development, a team is expected to engage members to pursue goals or projects.
Conclusions
The new member should also understand that his/her presence might cause either progression to the next stage or regression to previous stage. The progress therefore depends on experience and skills of the team members. At this stage, the team cannot analyze their current performance level and have a basis for future projections.
The team always disbands after accomplishing goals, but it is a difficult process due to the already formed strong links between members. Perhaps one question that can assist in analysis of the stage would be how fast or easy the team can break up.