Tuckman's Model Of Teamwork

Executive summary
This paper is a mini research paper conducted during an organizational behavior class teamwork, in Ashesi University College. It tries to provide analysis and comparison of some concepts and theories discussed in class to how the group applied those concepts and theories in achieving their set objective. The concepts and theories that were applied are; Tuckman’s team building model, self-fulfilling prophecies, Affective Events Theory, Stressors, and emotional intelligence. The methods used to gather up the information were observation and interview among group members. The results of the analysis and the comparison show that the application of most of the concepts and theories help the group successful to achieve their set goal while other concepts attempted to draw their work back. Grounded along the results, group members should consider observing each member in the group and give
maximum support to one another. I believe an individual should also consider study and know the kind of people he or she is working with in order to contribute marvelously to the group work. The limitation of the information is that; most of the information used to analyze were based on assumptions since members were not interviewed into the details to understand why they are behaving as such. Likewise, the information were not enough to extrapolate the solutions to every group since it was merely one group used.
The report
According to Tuckman’s model of team building, as a team develops in maturity and ability, the leadership style changes in the team and relationships are forged.
He came out with four-stage model of team building based on the changes that occur at each stage. The four stages are; forming, storming, norming and performing. This model was published in 1965 and later added the fifth stage, adjourning in 1970. Giving that team members are polite and positive toward the team project at the forming stage, my team members and myself acted the same way at the beginning of the project. For instance, during our maiden meeting, everybody was present on time. Almost all us were excited with the project and ideas were flowing from a person to another person. We did not have a leader; therefore, we wasted a lot of time trying to settle on which topic since team member’s role was not properly defined. I realized that if we had a leader we would not have wasted time at this stage because he would have controlled the meeting and the activities that we did during the forming
stage. For the storming stage, members begin to move beyond the boundaries set in the forming stage. According to Tuckman, many teams fail at this stage because they may be conflicts based on their working styles. In addition, team members always get frustrated when the different style of working causes unforeseen problems. These conflicts lead to team members start to challenge authority and strive for positions as their roles are clarified. This was exactly what happened in our fourth to fifth meetings. Unlike the beginning, we settled on the topic and each member knew what he or she was supposed to do. I was supposed to do the company profile, other members to research on literature review and some wait, after we are done collecting the data, they analyze and compile the work. We all accepted the roles, but some came back to complained that their work was too much. I think because our roles were properly defined, most of the team members try to take the leadership upon themselves because they feel that they will do much work than some of us. It got to a time when we go for meetings one person will be recording menus, others vie for team leader, and nobody attempted to be group organizer. One could see that we were really following the building model unconsciously.