Norming versus performing: a team effort

In recent articles, I have set out how teams can provide a vehicle for greater engagement and motivation. This aligns perfectly with the journey to sustained performance improvement, which is very much a team sport. In a manufacturing environment, team development is the key to delivering the benefits of improvement techniques such as 5S, visual management and problem solving. Through team development, managers hand over ownership of the shopfloor territory to the people that work in it – putting responsibility for the solution close to the problem. Despite this, few improvement processes provide guidance as to how to foster effective teamwork or how to improve the performance of teams that have lost their way. Many conceptual models have been developed to explain the team development process, including the 'Forming, Storming Norming and Performing' framework set out by Bruce Tuckman in 1965. These four transitions provide an insight into the stages that a group of individuals needs to progress through to become an effective team. This and other models explain how leaders must be sensitive to the needs of teams at each transition to help them develop. When teams work best, by Frank LaFasto and Carl Larson (ISBN 0-7619-2366-7), is based on research into 6,000 team members and leaders. It sets out what it takes for teams to succeed – it's well worth a read. Their research shows that in an average team, most work is carried out by a third of its members. In excellent teams, the work is more evenly distributed. The authors also point out that the biggest discriminator teams use to differentiate between good and bad team leaders is the way in which good leaders confront underperformance by team members. So although teamwork is a necessary foundation for delivering year-on-year improvement and it is a great vehicle for getting people engaged with the goals of the business, getting the best out of them is a leadership challenge.