Message of the Day - Team Frustrations are Normal

Good Morning,

 

This past weekend, during my trip, my friend Howard gave me a small pile of books. Two of these were Kenneth Blanchard Books, ‘The One Minute Manager Develops High Performing Teams’ and ‘Empowerment Takes More Than a Minute’ (http://www.blanchardlearning.com). Being short books and having a few airports to sit and wait through, I ended up reading both.

 

In each of these books there is talk about the challenges of getting teams to be high performing teams. In every case, no matter how much or how little time it takes, every team is going to move through four stages. The four stages; forming, storming, norming and performing, happen to all companies. Kenneth’s books use other names for these same four stages, but I prefer these.

 

The forming stage is when a team is first put together and get their marching orders. The storming stage is when a team first tries to work together and the storming starts. People try to feel out their boundaries, who owns what process or activity, who is the best of this process, who will report that, etc. There can be a heightened frustration during these times. This is normal, honest.

 

What needs to happen to get the team past the storming phase is a strong leader. Someone who can direct the team and move them past the issues. Yet, at the same time, this leader has to be good enough to allow the team to feel out their roles and focus on their own. A leader who mandates every little detail of a team activity will never truly have a team, as he will find himself back in the command and control days with a bunch of robots, upset robots at that.

 

Teams must work out their issues themselves with the guidance of a leader. And through the hard work, the team will come together.

 

If you are there, keep working on it, it will be worth it in the end.

 

Enjoy!

 

Sanford Berenberg

Sanford@berenberg.net

http://sanfordberenberg.blogspot.com/

502-533-9336

 

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