This series was originally published on LinkedIn and Medium, in which we started to define the term “Teaming Behaviors,” which is in direct opposition to “Team Building.”
This is a new concept in Teaming that creates high-functioning, adept, and transformational team success inside each individual of a team.
Teams that have good Teaming Behaviors don’t get stuck in the weeds and go on to become highly exceptional and mature teams. These team members can then transition back and forth between other teams, infusing them with the same teaming skills to achieve true teaming success throughout the whole organization.
For the previous posts in the series, click here:
- Intro to Teaming Behaviors – Post 1
- Teaming Behaviors – Post 2: The Year They Discovered People – The Hawthorne Studies (1924-1932)
- Teaming Behaviors – Post 3: Tuckman’s Stages of Group Development – Where We’ve Been (1932-1977)
Our Evolution as a Team
Business has changed so much in the last 100 years that it’s hard to take stock of ourselves as teammates, much less learn what we might do when our teams use AI as additional team members.
We will always have a human element in business, no matter how far we evolve, but sometimes our use of neurotransmitter chemicals that we give to each other during discussions can prevent us from working well together.
(Some “Stress” neurochemicals/hormones are cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline. On the other hand, some “Feel Good” neurochemicals are dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. We give each other these neurochemicals, back-and-forth, inside every discussion or interaction that we have together.)
To help us navigate our human elements as best we can, we need to understand the differences between the “us” and “we” of our teams, and the very narrow “I” lenses that are in place inside ourselves at all times.
Our Hypothetical Team
I’m bringing in a hypothetical team to illustrate some of Tuckman’s Stages. Let’s see how this team navigates the model’s colorful Stages.
Remember — what we’re looking at is:
- the team’s interpersonal relationships, and
- how the team accomplishes its tasks.
The Backstory
This team has been specially selected and tasked with creating a specific application that will benefit the entire company, composed of one headquarters and three satellite offices.
Here is the Backstory of our team:
- The CEO has convened it. They have determined what this team’s outcome should accomplish, but they’ve not prescribed how to “get there” nor have they shown what “Done” looks like. They have a general concept they would like to see the team set in motion in the product they are tasked with completing.
- What they are about to create will affect every department and division, in each of the company’s four offices. The application they will build needs to be seamlessly crafted to roll out to every project manager, while having the ability to touch HR, accounting, and project management across all offices, analyze and possibly redistribute workloads, and give back-of-office support through the company’s internal CRM and ERP systems. The CEO has good intentions and plans to discuss all of these items in the initial meeting.
- The team consists of people in cross-functional roles who normally accomplish their work at the whole company level, but only in their own specialties.
- Apart from their company-wide prescriptive roles, this whole team has never worked together on a project before. They have worked individually with each other, sometimes in person, but more often through email or phone calls.
- Some members of the team are close friends.
- Some members of the team have taken part in agile teams.
- All team members have been selected by their CEO based on their excellence in day-to-day duties and their specialized skills. However, the team members do not know this.
- All members understand that their time together will have far-reaching outcomes, but they’re not exactly sure what those might be.
- This team will be together for at least one year while they build the application.
- All team members are located at the company’s headquarters.
- There is no leader. The team was formed without the aid of a Project Manager. [Gasp!]
Stage 1 – The Forming Stage: Team Excitement!
The CEO is excited to introduce everyone at the first meeting and share their vision. This gave the team time to learn about each other. The CEO asks if team members have worked together before on other projects. Most have not—or at least they don’t remember—yet.
Team members sense their optimism together. They’ve worked with each other before, but only in a way they would normally mesh together during a normal workday. They know they’ve had good working relationships in the past with many of the members, but there are other members they feel that they’ve never met in person.
There is excitement!
There is food!!
Everyone is very polite.
Most focus on the CEO’s explanation of what they will create together inside the team. There is superficial banter.
But…
…some members start to remember times they worked with one or another of these teammates before. Now they’re trying to connect the dots inside their heads: Did they work well with this person? Or did they not get along?
Oh no! It wasn’t a very positive experience at all! Now what?!
Once they realize the bad experiences, these team members become more guarded, but still remain overall positive in their thinking.
However, those with the more negative experiences keep their experiences to themselves and start imagining scenarios of problematic situations. Their anxiousness starts creeping into their thinking.
But overall, this meeting is still a success, even if some of the team members have started to remember other experiences. They try to discredit their feelings and tell themselves that maybe they or the other team members they’d had problems with before have changed.
They’ve grown up (they think)!
The CEO finishes the meeting. But before they go, the CEO sets up expectations of great work at the end of the project.
However, the CEO doesn’t specify much of anything else; they’re not wired that way. They also think that this means that the group can autonomously create the application without being micro-managed by the CEO.
The meeting is adjourned.
Tail End of Stage 1 — Forming
During the next few weeks, each team member starts to wonder:
“I have SO many questions!!!
Do I fit in here?
What in the world do I contribute to this team?
We’re missing some big pieces of our team — who can lead us?
Wait, when’s our next meeting? Did we even talk about that?
Are there any gaps in this team that might mean we would fail?
What are the steps we have to take to make this project work well?”
Those who’ve experienced the “bad teammate” think, “Does this other person remember that we didn’t have a good working relationship on the last project we worked on? How can we overcome this? Will I need to leave this team?”
As you can see on the Team Effectiveness scale in the infographic on the left side and the curve within the Stage, while the initial team meeting started with great anticipations of working well together, teammates start to second-guess their team involvement, and some may see some problems ahead.
Their dip in Effectiveness at the end of this stage was only a foreshadowing of what was to come in Stage 2—The Storming Phase.