Team Formation

I thought I'd keep this blog going beyond our February BT run!

I was working with a great group of literacy leads this week and we started talking about team formation.

Many business people will be able to tell you about the stages of team formation (forming, storming, norming, and performing) - interestingly enough, it's actually based on an educational model!

In essence, "teams" must go through:

1. Forming: building inclusion; each team member trying to figure out their "role"
2. Storming: exactly as it sounds - teams try to work out issues of control (who has it, who doesn't, how can we all have it).
3. Norming: only after storming, can group norms be set (i.e., behaviour contracts - preferably explicitly stated and recorded)
4. Peforming: here's where the team works together successfully!

I find the idea of team formation extremely interesting. We tend to assume that because we are all teachers that we're all really nice people and get along really well. Reality is, this doesn't always happen (awesome when it does though!). I believe that we get stuck on step two - we form teams (i.e., school staffs, grade teams, etc.) and get stuck on the storming phase. We don't set norms in order to succeed and this keeps us from performing (i.e., working on those things that will improve student achievement - remember, at the end of the day, it's all about the students!).

We don't always get along, but what is the harm in setting norms (perhaps even putting them in writing) such as:

• keeping negative/disruptive comments to a minimum so it doesn't sidetrack the purpose of the meeting. There is a difference between playing a devil's advocate in order to benefit the group as opposed to just being negative and resistant
• consider "attacking" an idea and not a person
• instead of saying "yes, but..." try saying "yes, and..."
• let a "quiet" group member speak. I tend to listen a lot as I need time to reflect - it doesn't mean I don't have anything to say, I just need to think it over a bit!

Really, these are just my personal thoughts on this, but I'd be interested to hear about how you've been able to get a team to move beyond "storming" so that you can set norms and perform!