What are the stages of team development?

1. Forming stage: Forming

The first stage is characterized by a lot of ambiguity about the team’s composition, and who its members are. At this stage, the first attempts are made to select the members for each other and try to get to know each other closely. The purpose of management is to gather these people into one team.

2. Conflict stage: Storming

This stage is characterized by an attempt to impose certain norms for the team and the way it works. At this stage, the team members or some of them try to prove themselves, and some of them may try to impose certain norms.

3. Stabilization stage: Norming

After the end of the conflict, or most of it, the stabilization period begins; Where the norms and laws related to the team (meetings – decision-making – scheduling – etc.) are agreed upon, and in mature work teams, this choice is the result of a stage of exchanging and following up on ideas, and therefore the ideal leader may be chosen for the team.

4. Performance stage: Performing

This is the most important stage. As it means the good completion of the task entrusted to the team, after stability, team members devote themselves to the task entrusted to them, and ideas and experiences are exchanged on the best way to accomplish, and at this stage the results of the team’s work begin to appear, in terms of listing the discovered facts, or making decisions, or recommendations , or reports to what there are things.

5. Team Breakup Stage: Adjourning

In the case of temporary work teams, which end with the completion of the task assigned to them, the team is dismantled, and we do not mean here only physical dismantling, but emotional and psychological dismantling, as some may be pleased with the completion of the task, while others are close to frustration due to their sense of “losing company” carried out during the period of the team’s work.

Below are some of the leadership behaviors required at different maturity levels:

1. When forming the team:

Because team members in this period are in dire need of information, and therefore at this stage they need to understand the nature of the task, and explain the reason for forming the work team, and the members need to get to know each other and know why they were grouped in this way, the leadership behavior required here is a guiding behavior My guide provides the team members with all the necessary information to start their work.

2. At the conflict stage:

Not every conflict is bad, and not every conflict is negative, so the leader at this stage should not act to stifle the conflict; Because suppressing it without resolving its causes is like covering it up and covering it for a limited period without dissolving it from its roots.

3. Stabilization stage:

At this stage, the leader begins to reduce his interference with the work of the team, and seeks to develop the team itself to later become independent in its work, and this does not happen until after the leader is reassured that the members have agreed on most of the rules of their work, and that the existing conflicts are purposeful conflicts aimed at developing Ideas are sharpened, not to personal or psychological conflicts.

4. Performance stage:

This is an advanced stage in which the role of the leader diminishes. Where he delegates a lot of things to the same team, which works semi-independently, depends on the ideas of its members and learns from its mistakes, and here the role of the leader changes from being an organizer and interfering, to being a mentor and advisor.