Have you ever been thrown into a group of people at work or school and told to be successful with an item or a task that will produce a result? This has been my life for the past seven years at my job and for the past two years with school. It is interesting how a group of people that are all working toward the same goal can come together, discuss their difference of opinions and move toward a team setting to perform the required task and deliver the end result successfully. At school we all know we are on the same topic, have the same goal, and want to get a good grade. Our goals are all the same basically but we will rely on each other to be successful when it comes to group projects. At work the goal is always the end result of why we were put into a group to form a team and we all have a very different idea of how to get to the end result. The most recent group that I was put into to turn into a team and work on a common goal was for putting together and implementing a 5S (Sort, Simplify, Sweep, Standardize, Sustain) plan for the production floor at work. The way to get to this end result is putting our heads together and figuring out what the solution is and the best way to approach it. For this project, we went through Bruce Tuckman’s Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing team development model without even knowing it. First we had to form in a room face – to – face and get a grip on who was on the team and what they brought to the group as far as area expertise was concerned. Next we had to figure out a plan of action to get the end result in a timely fashion while meeting the goal, this stage was storming. The storming stage takes a while, going through everyone’s ideas and getting everyone on the same page can be very tough at times with strong personalities in the room. By the end of the storming stage it feels as though we are more of a team than a group. We have come to a common understanding of how to be successful and have assigned roles and responsibilities to team members which transitions into the norming stage. The whole team knows what we are all doing in the room together and why we were chosen for the project which really helps build the relationships. Once roles are agreed upon and understood we then transition into the performing role which is the role that takes us to implementation of a successful plan by the team. With teams there are leaders and someone always take the role of the leader whether they meant to or not. Usually there is a strong personality in the room that takes over and becomes the leader, sometimes that is me but we all get opportunities to lead so many projects it does not bother anyone when someone volunteers or takes it over on their own.
Work Cited:
Northouse, P.G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
Wilson, C. (2010). Bruce Tuckman’s forming, storming, norming & performing team development model . Retrieved from http://www.performancecoachtraining.com/resources/docs/pdfs2/BruceTuckman_Team_Development_Model.pdf
By: Christopher Boyne
Good post. I liked reading about the processes your work group went through to achieve a goal. You state in your post that you were placed in a group at work that was to be formed into a team to work on a common goal, which was to put together and implement a 5S plan for the production floor at work. I disagree with you in that you state that you were initially placed into a group that formed into a team. I think that all along you were involved in a group because there was a high level of interaction between you and your group members, but each member of your group was not responsible for a separate piece of the task, which would be indicative of a team (PSU WC Lesson 9, 2014, p. 3). You state that you and your team members put your heads together to accomplish the task, so this seems that specialization was not involved, which would indicate this was a group environment.
The Lesson 9 Commentary states that, “…six people working to develop a new production system for cars would be considered a group” (PSU WC Lesson 9, 2014, p. 3). This example seems similar to your example of developing a 5S plan for the production floor at work. The main characteristic of your scenario that make same believe you were indeed involved in a group and not a team is that you all collaboratively worked together, and you do not mention that any specialization within your group was implemented. Though a group and a team are similar, and often used interchangeably, I think that a team has a unique set of characteristics which include specialization, and a results-driven structure which was not evident in your group (PSU WC Lesson 9, 2014, p. 7).
References
Pennsylvania State University World Campus. (2014). PSYCH 484: lesson 9: Team leadership Retrieved from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/sp14/psych485/001/content/09_lesson/01_page.html