Inside Your Company: Relationships – Stage 3: “Norming”
Nothing "Norming" Here, Move Along, Nothing to See!
We’ve covered the first two steps in forming, storming, norming and performing. Todays, installment covers the all important stage of “Norming.”
At some point, the team may start the norming stage. Team members adjust their behavior to each other as they develop work habits that make teamwork seem more natural and fluid. Team members often work through this by agreeing on rules, values, professional behavior, shared methods, working tools and even taboos. During this stage, team members begin to trust each other. Motivation increases as the team gets more acquainted with the project.
Here’s were I get afraid, from the view point of a creative company.
Teams in this phase may lose their creativity if the norming behavior becomes too strong and begins to stifle healthy dissent and the team begins to exhibit groupthink.
Groupthink is a phrase that sounds like it belongs back in the 50′s and makes me want to run for the hills. I want people to exhibit individual creativity but in a group format. What do I mean? I mean, that the project encompasses, “X” and the group bring together individual skills and ideas that when combined with the project you get an unbeatable network hub, that works to the completion of the project. Here’s the norming stage described from the supervisors role.
Supervisors of the team during this phase tend to be participative more than in the earlier stages. The team members can be expected to take more responsibility for making decisions and for their professional behavior.
Supervisory participation is great as long as the team is doing the work, not the supervisor, holding on to tight and over-supervising. We hire our team for their skills, let them shine, develop and grow. In the end the team will grow and so will your business.
As team members get to know each other better, their views of each other begin to change. The team feels a sense of achievement for getting so far, however some members can begin to feel threatened by the amount of responsibility they have been given. They would try to resist the pressure and revert to storming again.
When a team member reverts, it means to me, that they ease back to doing the comfortable. This process has to watched carefully, I call it, “running home to momma,” you’ll see people do something they know well or doing nothing and their productivity will drop to zero. I typically will go to the team member favorite golf course and look for their car, usually this is the end. This team member isn’t ever going to stretch and your organization losses.
Michael S OGrady __ Stella Pop, the fizz makers!
