Team Building and Group Development

It seems likely that more has been written on the theme of "team building" - or, if you want to be formal about it, "team development" - or any other aspect of management.

There's something about this topic that attracts scholars like bears to honey, and all want to build your model and bring their own passwords.

Already in 1965, Bruce Tuckman was able to collect not less than 50 models and previous studies. Needless to say that the good Professor Tuckman could not resist the opportunity to add a first 50.

His is the development model that divides the group into four phases: training, Storming, Norming and entertainment. To this he subsequently added a fifth phase, updating ... of course.

There have been many, many others since then.

If Professor Tuckman the slogans are not enough Buzzy, there is always Orientation Tubbs', conflict, consensus, and the closing ... or orientation Fisher, Conflict, Emergence, and strengthening ... Inception or McGrath, technical problem solving, conflict resolution, and execution ... and so on ...

Most of these systems are not very nice internally consistent with little relevance to the outside world.

It could provide order in which categories fit what has already happened, but it is very doubtful whether the party leader has ever said: "So that concludes the technical problem solving phase, now proceeds to the step of conflict resolution."

Part of the problem is that the bulk of the literature is that there is confusion about the definition of basic concepts. Different models often use different words for the same thing. Similarly, the same words can mean different things in different models.

The "team building", a term has become ambiguous.

In academic circles, it refers - correctly - to the entire development process of the group, but in popular culture has become synonymous with business group games, dynamic sessions bonding, trust exercises and the like. At the risk of adding yet another model to the list too long, the simplest, and therefore the best way to approach team building is a two-step process.

The first phase is the recruitment, selection and organization of the team, in the first place. This happens, of course, before the team meets ever.

Phase two is all that follows, the team meeting and make it work.

The problem with much of the academic literature is that it only starts in phase two. At that point, it is already too late. If the wrong people were recruited and selected, or even if the right people are there but have been put in the wrong organizational framework, the damage was done.

No amount of team building exercises can be done by one with the wrong people or the wrong structure.

In fact, part of the problem with the narrow definition of team building, and with many of the academic models, is that divert attention from really important issues of recruitment, selection and organization. If people are wrong, no amount of paintball is going to make them work together successfully....