This is the first stage of team development. This is the stage where the foundations of the team are laid. During the training phase, team members rely heavily on their leader for guidance. Learn the practical strategies you can use during this stage to help your team become a highly effective high performing team.
Good team development starts on day one, and training is the “getting to know you” stage. You can compare this stage to your first day at school as a child, or perhaps your first day at a new job. Some obvious behaviors are; Everyone is polite, overgrown and generally unsure what to expect. This is the first stage of group development – Formation where team members try to get to know each other and feel comfortable with each other.
Establish roles and responsibilities
In the formation stage, the team comes together and the members try to get to know each other, establish a common understanding and formulate roles and responsibilities. Team members can be excited and enthusiastic, but they can also be anxious. At this stage, members try to explore and understand the behavior of team members. They strive to understand the expectations of peer team members, are polite, and explore how to gain acceptability and integration into the team. Because everything is new, there is a lot of confusion and anxiety as members naturally try to figure out their own roles, the roles of other team members, and their purpose in the group. This is completely natural and predictable. People are uncertain, suspicious and nervous. Productivity can be low as people try to do their best.
Member exploration
It takes time for a new team to become a cohesive unit, “Formation” begins with a lot of exploration as the members of the group get to know each other. Think of this stage as a period of exploration in which individual roles and responsibilities are sorted out. At this stage, team members are usually enthusiastic and driven by a desire to be accepted. They are generally very polite to each other and try to understand the similarities and differences with each other. First impressions play a key role when people try to understand similarities and differences. Issues that can arise are whether each person feels a part of the group, whether other members can be trusted, and who is responsible.
Guidance is the most important task of the formation stage and members look to the leader to provide the required direction. During the formation phase, team members rely heavily on their leader for guidance, and the leader’s job is to lead, so that the group can coordinate in its efforts.
Establishment of operational structures
It’s also a good time to look at how the group is organized because the group hasn’t formed a strong and effective unit yet, so it’s still relatively easy to rearrange the group if necessary. It is also helpful to establish ground rules for the group, which are expectations for how work will be done, decisions will be made, and how people will treat each other. In short, the leader has a wonderful opportunity to ensure the right people are in the right place using the right process. The “training” stage is usually short, sometimes lasting just one meeting where team members are introduced.
Building an effective and cohesive team is critical to overall team success and building the right team from the start has benefited far beyond one-off tasks. We will now focus on different strategies to deal with problems that may arise during the first stage, “Formation”. You’ll learn strategies for selecting the best performing team members that are best suited for your project or team, as well as recommendations for delivering appropriate presentations, clarifying the team’s purpose and context, and you. ensure team members understand their responsibilities. As a leader, you can use several strategies during this stage to build an effective team.