Enhancing The Effectiveness Of Work Groups And Teams: Group Development Stages

Discuss About The Enhancing The Effectiveness Of Work Groups And Teams.

Importance and Positive Effects of Group Development

This reflective essay has been prepared to reflect my understanding on my course unit concepts where I have chosen to evaluate group development stages more critically. In contemporary organisations, understanding one’s position along with core responsibilities while working in groups as well as alone becomes very significant. While going through the literature, I found that making reflective writing is an integral part of professional practice through which we examine ourselves for developing skills and enhanced practices. Therefore, I have decided to reflect my own experiences gained through the group development stages related concept as well as stating the reasons behind selecting this topic at the end of the essay. Groups in organisations according to Kozlowski & Ilgen (2006), refers to number of chosen individuals who are united together to undertake responsibility for completing a specific task. To form an effective group, number of stages are undertaken where selected individuals are developed into a team who eventually carries their responsibilities.

Groups not only help us in understanding co-worker’s idea and knowledge, but also forms a mutual bonding that is required to complete a specific task efficiently. In future, I aspire to become human resource manager in an international firm, therefore, value behind group development along with reasons behind developing effective communication among group members becomes significant for me to understand. According to Zoltan & Vancea (2016), “Regardless of the method of work group formation, the group is not fully functional in terms of its primary task from the moment it is constituted” (p. 241). Teams are those form of groups where individuals form a general unit to accomplish a common goal. I can still recall my experience when I was assigned for a group assignment where all my group members belonged to different backgrounds. We all had few issues related to communication and also, we were unaware of group development stages thereby neglecting few initial stages while we formed our own group.

Through my entire ten weeks journey, I realised that developed groups have positive effects on individuals as well as organisations. According to Sinha (2017), group building provides motivational factor to individuals that enhances self-control when they exploit their inner strengths. Similar statement was given by Tohidi (2011) where the author state that teams and groups create healthy environment that can lead organisations towards better opportunities, enhanced networking and adequate learning experience that are related to current traits within individual group members through shared learning. Kumar, Deshmukh & Adish (2014) further elaborates the above saying and adds that while comparing groups who does not comprehend the significance of common goal, groups who produces responsive efforts and share each other’s ideas while moving towards a specific goal proves more advantageous for organisations. They not only generate enhanced learning experience, but also adapts to necessary changes along with noticing problem solving measurements through improved efficiency in work production.

Tuckman's Group Development Model

A comprehensive group development stages was established by Bruce Tuckman in the year 1965 where the author analysed 50 articles related to group development stages. According to the author, all the articles represented three common groups i.e. training, therapy and laboratory groups. Tuckman realised the importance of group development stages in organisational level and hence developed five stages that we currently know as Tuckman’s group development model. His theory determines stages of group development until the task is deemed completed. Initially, Tuckman’s model consisted of four stages only and the fifth one was included later in the year 1977 with the help of Mary Ann Jensen. The first stage of group development in Tuckman’s model include forming stage where each group member or individuals selected are provided with an initial task to determine their capability. Here, the group members usually unite to formulate the requirements and procedures necessary to accomplish a common task for which they introduce themselves considering their core capabilities and knowledge. The second stage or the storming stage is the most critical stage according to Tuckman and thus he has given a special name to this stage, intragroup conflict stage since group members in this stage shows tendency to become unreceptive towards one another (Hingst, 2006).

Third stage or the norming stage develops cohesion among group members in which group members start responding to each other’s situation while inviting to share group members beliefs and ideas. According to Sinha (2017), shared idea and responding to each other’s shows that the groups have agreed to follow a common norm for accomplishing the undertaken task. Therefore, fourth stage is initiated which is commonly called as performing stage. After resolving initial conflicts and differences, groups start contributing their responsibility as individual role has been defined. According to Tuckman, when individual members observe that they are equally responsible for task fulfilment and have to work unitedly, they agreeably move towards next step where problem solving and emergence of solutions take place. Fifth and final stage that was added later in Tuckman’s group development model is called adjourning stage. In this stage, groups are terminated when the task is completed or goals are accomplished by group members (Ravi & Sumanthi, 2016).

Fisher’s theory of decision emergence necessitated four stages through which decision among group members can be made effectively. According to Fisher’s theory, the task distribution and decision-making stages requires critical management and effective communication so that a stronger team is developed (Adnan, Akram, & Akram, 2013).  In decision emergence theory, the first stage is orientation phase where group members establish relationship among each other’s along with giving rise to tensions among them. Here, effective communication plays a significant role as each member might not be aware of others beliefs and knowledge thereby lacking trust among them. Second stage is conflict phase in which new ideas are discussed that may potentially lead to tensions again as few members might bring forward alternative approach that might not get acknowledged by others. However, according to Frances (2008), in some groups, conflict adds to bring competition within group members where they compete to perform better than the others. Third stage is called as emergence where the outcome of conflicts takes practical form. In this stage, few members may soften their views while others may show interest in other group members beliefs and decisions. Lastly, reinforcement stage takes place where every group member commits to follow common objective and procedure either through mutual understanding or by force. Although this theory showed practicality in all of its stages, weakness seen is that any significant disagreement during any of the four stages might bring a halt to that stage. Nevertheless, like Tuckman’s model, Fisher’s theory also covers significant group development stages and both the theories helps in deciding and forming group of individuals to a developed team (Adnan, Akram, & Akram, 2013).

Fisher's Theory of Decision Emergence

While discussing group development stages, Tubbs model is also discussed immensely in literature as his model shows simplicity as compared to the above two models. However, Tubbs model does not utilise much of extra factors related to individual personality like seen in Tuckman’s forming stage. Researchers argue that Tubb’s has utilised the systems theory concept to apply it on group development stages. In Tubb’s model, three general categories can be seen: relevant background factors that summarises individual members reasons behind group formation, internal influences where behaviour of individual member parades within the group and finally the consequences phase where ultimate output of group formation is realised. Hurt and Trombley (2007) suggests that in Tubb’s theory, group members move in updated and linear fashion where individuals understand the behaviour according to the situations raised during group formation.

Other than group development stages, I realised that understanding the role of groups and teams in a workplace along with understanding the significance of effective organisational communication will further help me in my future career where I aspire to become a HR manager. “Teamwork must now look for new ways to adapt quickly, operate more efficiently and better prepare themselves for future” (Tohidi, 2011). Hence, I will utilise my course learning as well as literature reviews made on role of teams and group members by making further evaluation regarding the concept for my future career. Organisational communication is another concept that are extensively used by HR managers and as said by Sadia, et al. (2016) organisations can perform successfully in this competitive business environment only if effective communication is enabled within its organisational culture. Indeed, managements without effective external and internal communication cannot establish employee’s participation to align them strategically for achieving organisational goals. Since, I personally lack effective communicational skills, I will consider making critical study further on this concept so that organisational communication concept is effectively utilised by me in my future career.

Groups and teams’ formations requires critical structure following which effective groups can be developed. In my ninth week study, group development concept proved important for me for my future career and therefore the above essay reflected my personal view points along with literature review made on group development stages concept. While evaluating the group development stages, I critically analysed different models of group development among which three of them have been discussed in the above essay. Earlier I had faced issue in group formation phases during one of my experience when I was assigned to a group work. But, things have changed critically for me where now I find myself as a knowledgeable person who is capable enough to develop a group with individuals who seeks attaining a common goal.

References

Adnan, A., Akram, A., & Akram, F. (2013). Group Development: Theory and Practice. Middle-East Journal of Scientific Research, 16(10), 1428-1435.

Frances, M. (2008). Stages of Group Development - A PCP Approach. Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 5, 10-18.

Hingst, R. (2006). Tuckman’s theory of group development in a call centre context: does it still work? . 5th Global Conference on Business & Economics. Cambridge.

Hurt, A. C., & Trombley, S. M. (2007). The Punctuated-Tuckman: Towards a New Group Development Model. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED504567.pdf

Kozlowski, S. W., & Ilgen, D. R. (2006). Enhancing the Effectiveness of Work Groups and Teams. Association for Psychological Science, 07(03), 77-124.

Kumar, S., Deshmukh, V., & Adish, V. S. (2014). Building and Leading Teams. Indian Journal of Community Medicine, 39(04), 208-213.

Prabhakar, G. P. (2008). Teams and Projects: A Literature Review . International Journal of Business and Management, 03(10), 3-7.

Ravi, B. S., & Sumanthi, G. (2016). Study on Theory of Group Development; Groups and Teams. IOSR Journal of Business and Management, 18(02), 58-61.

Sadia, A., Mohd , B. S., Kadir, Z. A., & Sanif , S. (2016). The Relationship between Organizational Communication and Employees Productivity with New Dimensions of Effective Communication Flow. Journal of Business and Social Review in Emerging Economies, 02(02), 34-39.

Sinha, A. (2017). The Role of Team Effectiveness in Quality of Health Care. Integrative Journal of Global Health, 1(1:2), 1-4.

Tohidi, H. (2011). Teamwork productivity & effectiveness in an organization base on rewards, leadership, training, goals, wage, size, motivation, measurement and information technology. Procedia Computer Science, 3, 1137-1146.

Zoltan, R., & Vancea, R. (2016). Work group development models - the evolution from simple group to effective team. Ecoforum, 05(01), 241-246.