Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing

Team work is important in almost every activity of humans life. Not only in sport and at big factories team work plays a great role. Also occupations like managers, negotiators, salesmen have a lot in common with working in a team. For example if the manager doesn't know how the group works he won't be able to manage it correctly. He must know the four stages of team development.

The first stage is Forming. It might be also named as Testing. The emotions that are strongly connected with this stage are being polite but also impersonal, watchful and guard. This stage starts a the first meeting when the team is formed but people don't know each other very well. They only 'testing the water' not sure what might happen, trying to define the boundaries of their tasks as individuals and as a single entity and a norms in the group. At this stage questions and friends have their beginning.

After the first impression and the first 'good morning', the politeness and unsureness, comes a stage of being in conflict! Yes, that's right, a second stage is a kind of a battle when different ideas, points of view are coming out on the world and come against each other. It's kind of storm of minds and that's why this stage is called Storming. Team members deal with conflicts and their resolutions. Here, they meet challenges -- both interpersonal and duty-related -- that oftentimes present conflict or stalemate.

But the conflict should stop at the third stage. While its good at the second stage its disturbing everything at the stage of Norming. The Norming stage of team development is characterized by cohesiveness among team members. After working through the storming stage, team members discover that they in fact do have common interests with each other. While at the second stage very important is controlling conflicts (people after negotiation training can help to calm it down), at the next stage more important are being opened, developing skills, establishing procedures, giving feedback

The last stage of the path, Performing, is not available to all groups. It's a result of good work at the three other stages. Team members have become interdependent. They are motivated and knowledgeable, competent, autonomous and able to handle the decision-making process without supervision. Dissent is expected and allowed as long as it is channelled through means acceptable to the team. The team's interests and concerns are shared by all team members. By putting energy toward common goals and using agreed-upon strategies, the team is making a significant progress.

These are the four stages of team development. So being a good manager or negotiator or a good salesman not only having a good sales training will be enough. The participation at courses that will make passing through those stages more easily will help that kind of workers know the situation of the group that they have to manage, the group that the conflicts they would have to control, the group that they want to sell something.