Team dynamics and leading teams!

I could have easily chosen “how to create your team in fortune 500 companies” or a rather trendy one “10 things you should do to create best teams in 1 day, no sweat!”…Well I won’t. This is not about a quick solution, neither an easy one. This is about knowing what really forms the groups, how we become associated with one and what you can do as a manager to help reshape your team. So here we go..

As you may already know in 1965 Psychologist Bruce Tuckman layed out the following stages of team formation in this article “Development Sequence in Small Groups”:

• Forming
• Storming
• Norming
• Performing

Let’s have a brief look at them:

Forming

Team members are mostly calm, they are knowing each other or you as their manager. The groups start forming, there is a sense of fresh air along with
an unknown future.

One of the biggest mistakes that we do as managers (knowingly or not) is not to communicate responsibilities and roles clearly. Which in return

causes the start of a race between the team members, and between the groups. This is where the culture starts shaping.

Storming

As the teams are forming and the team members find their places conflicts appear between the team members and the groups. Team members find out
their colleagues are working in a different style, mostly the way they wouldn’t. Some team members start pushing the boundaries, try to dominate on a particular subject or an area (I know Amazon AWS better or I do manage this product myself)

As a manager, if you have not defined the roles clearly and with supporting evidence in the forming stage, the team will start racing each other to find their places in the team and will cause more conflicts to appear.

This stage plays a crucial role in how the team members will treat each other in the later stages of the formation. As a manager, it is your duty to set the boundaries in how your team will threat between themselves or other groups.

Norming

This stage is where it all starts to calm down. By this stage your team members know each other they start looking out for each other they are able to go for the goals together as a group.

This stage often overlaps Storming. There is no sharp border in seeing where one ends and one starts. In my experience, one subgroup may reach to this stage while others are still in storming.

It is important to note that reaching this stage does not mean it all comes to an end. It is only the beginning.

Performing

This is the stage where groups know their goals, they work together to achieve them. In this stage, you as a manager should be able to delegate much of technical work and focus on managing.

During all these stages the team passes a milestone shaping the culture and getting ready for the next one.

Now that we know these stages let me add 5 factors which I think are crucial to the team formation:

• Communication
• Trust
• Respect
• Appreciation
• Sharing

Lets have a look at them together.

Communication is the first thing on the list. During the maturation of teams, the first thing that needs to be enabled is communication. Not a coffee talk communication but rather a profound communication to have the team aware of the things that are happening around them. Communicating everything in group level is the start of engaging your team, letting them know what is coming and what problems are ahead. This will help your team see the future and be with you when creating it.

Trust always will start once your team really know you. SO why it is so important to trust? If you have ever been to theater practices, one of the very first things they do practice is the trust fall. A new member is told to leave himself/herself to fall backward and should trust that the rest of his/her group will support him.

This is the first step. It is crucial that your team know that the rest is there to support him. As a manager, you are the one to make it happen. Trust your team, and more importantly let them know you will be there to support them when needed.

Respect is the other side of the coin with trust. I can hear that you mention how your team respects you because you are the head of xx /, think twice. Respect is not something that comes with your official title, it is something you earn bit y bit and with your every action. Show them you respect them, their thoughts and that their work is important, mean it and you will see they will start respecting you. Not as a big boss but a person that they can count on when the difficult situations arrive.

Appreciation is something we all forget. We all have a lot of problems to deal with and I can hear you shouting “You cannot believe how much work i have”, well at least I do. But it is not really getting things done, it is how you get things done. Have a good eye for your team who will work an extra 15 minutes to finish up a task, or that team member which will get online to see how the releases are going, or your tester who came up with a new idea without even you asking it. Appreciate your team’s efforts.

Sharing is the last factor but not the least. Being in the last of the list really does not take any importance on how important sharing is. This is where we as managers play a big role. Being example is sharing information, experiences, knowledge with your team is one of the first things that you will need to set up an example at the time you expect them to share.

Share with your team, help them share their knowledge, experiences, appreciate their work, respect their thoughts, trust their decisions and communicate well.

If you are a careful reader you may have already noticed I have knowingly avoided the word Leader and continued with Manager all throughout the article. It is not easy being a leader, nor it is given to you in a silver plate neither it is offered to you because you have succeeded in technical efficiency.

It is a title to be earned.

If at the end of this journey you have an all-trusting team, respecting each other, acting as a whole, communicating and sharing without any borders and there is a new culture which enables every individual to be at its best then

Congratulations! You earned that title!