Know the Stages of Team Development

Team building involves several stages and processes. A new team will encounter several developmental stages. Every stage has its challenges. Understanding these processes before starting a team, is helpful for leaders to guide the team to their goal.

The first stage of team building is development. As the team is chosen and gathered for the first time, the members are getting to know each other. During the first stage the leaders will discover individual talents the members bring to the team and how best to use them. The leaders will coach members to utilize individual skills. The team will be learning about each other and how to work together. The team leadership should guide the team to unite.

With good leadership, in the next stage of team development, the team discover what their duties will be. The team commences to work together. Each member has his specific job to perform. Members may change roles as skills are better assessed. Team meetings will result in achieving specific goals. This is the time when teams can break apart and accomplish nothing, or go gang busters and get every project finished to perfection. Experienced team leaders will lead the team past this and into successful completion. This stage is also the "make or break" stage. Many teams fail during stage 2. Communication and dedication often fall apart and nothing is accomplished. Without strong leadership, a team will get passed the learning phase.

When a team passes into the next stage the team members have made a commitment to make the team a success. Assignments are carried out. Once stage 3 is obtained, the team will work well together and the project run like clock work. The members embrace the diversity of each other and work together as one. Once the team is up and running smoothly, new members may be shunned by the existing team.

The team may take quite some time to get to the final stage. By this stage the team is working like a well oiled machine. The entire team is witnessing the fruits of the effort that all are putting into the project or process. The individual members have learned how to work together and use the talents of the entire group to work as one. During this stage, the leaders can step back and need only offer advise when asked.

New members entering can tend to slow the team down. They may even revert back to the first stage for a time. But, typically the group gets back on track quickly.