by Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Leadership Solutions, Inc.®

“A team usually unites because it forms, storms, norms and performs; and then eventually disbands.”

By all accounts the same approach, as indicated above, is true for a marriage or partnership – it forms (courtship), storms (learning to live together), norms (hopefully come to terms with each other, or else divorce), and ultimately performs (live happily ever after J).

Corporate or other teams eventually disband or fall-apart through promotions, retirements or end of mission. Sports teams experience exactly the same. Suffice it is to say, the most successful ones never achieve real championship status unless they successfully negotiate the storming phase. In fact, that includes the possible ejection of players who are either insufficiently talented or don’t share the right team attitude. When teams reach the norming level that’s when members readily accept each other for better or for worse – in the case of marriage “in sickness and in health as long as we shall live.” Once that norming stage is settled, then they start performing somewhat selflessly…working for each other.

By contrast, this writer has come to notice, with the aid of a highly effective communication survey, that, while successful couples are more likely to be somewhat opposite to each other in terms of personal style, workplace people tend to gravitate toward those more like themselves. Is this because they instinctively know the storming phase is somewhat of a painful experience and therefore wish to avoid it within their workplace? Is it also because executives mistakenly believe their job is to ensure everyone gets along with each other from the get-go?  This regrettable misunder-standing and dichotomy so often works to an organization’s detriment over time. Why is that?

If we believe that groups of people need to go through a storming phase before they truly become a team, then we have to create that opportunity. Of course, the most extreme form of storming could be a big fist fight – note that some titans in sport have become the best of friends after their gladiatorial experience – but it doesn’t have to go this far. As long as the people concerned experience a focused moment, where they’ve had to debate an important work situation and come to terms with each other, that could be enough. The important point being that they need an opportunity to find synergy.

It’s this writer’s contention that because we don’t allow storming to occur, our organizations could be under-performing by as much as 20%. In our quest for harmony we  lose out on unmitigated performance. Perhaps that’s another reason why bureaucracies occur: we contrive organizations to control or avoid conflict, although end up denying their true level of performance because we stifle the synergistic effect of storming. Such reasoning is reinforced every week for this writer, when he reviews the above-mentioned survey output and can observe how a particular team is not performing to its true potential because participants haven’t come to terms with each other or are too much alike.

What does this mean? Organizations or teams have to consider the following principles if they’re serious about developing true synergized teams:

» Complementary Personalities – You will be greatly helped by forming teams with complementary personalities rather than somewhat identical ones. The former will enrich and challenge a team to work at its best – rather like a good partnership or marriage – whereas the latter will suppress creativity and avoid nudging each other along.

          Clearly the enrich and challenge stance is the leadership approach, while too often managers will avoid it when-ever they can in the name of a smooth and harmonious existence. They assume harmony means teamwork. Big mistake – they sacrifice performance for artificial teamwork.

» Team Building Exposure – You should expose a potential team of complementary personalities to a team building experience, where they are required to reconcile certain issues in the pursuit of a common objective. In the case of a marriage or partnership, that objective is likely the pursuit of producing a happy and productive family. In the case of a team or organization, it’s likely achieving an important objective or resolving a debilitating issue. It’s rather like a trial jury having to reach consensus on a contentious case or throw it out…It wouldn’t surprise this writer if many juries miss not having similar possibilities to debate and disagree back at their workplace.

» Reconciling Shortcomings – It helps to keep a working team to a manageable size, otherwise it would be impossible for them to work through their differences and reach a decent synergy. There are many working models out there that suggest 6-7 people is an optimum size, including the team leader. A pair seems to be a good size for getting something accomplished. By keeping groups within this range, it provides the best shot of reconciling differences and shortcomings, better known as norming.

» Ready to Perform – Having handled the norming phase, participants will start rooting for each other, whereas non- team players will tend to undermine each other so they won’t shine. At the performing stage real, exciting things begin to happen and members start to enjoy each other’s successes and probably even celebrate those successes together whenever they can. Note how really successful sports teams enjoy each other’s victories.

How often does this sequence of events happen within your organization with appropriate size groups or teams? A true team is a joy to behold. Its performance level is a joy to have around. Its camaraderie is something special. For those executives who prefer harmony, their preference biases them to avoid that all-important step called storming. The ones who wish to avoid this step, they claim: “I don’t have the time.” For those people, this writer cares to point out that they either give the time upfront or they will pay for it later: when they have to devote untold time to trying to produce the level of performance that should have been produced in the first place.

There is also the misplaced notion of putting people together that share the same values, which is often code for picking  people with the same ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds. While it is valuable for likely teams to share certain fundamental values, like integrity, mutual respect and optimum performance, it helps for the richness and depth of teams to have somewhat diverse values…just as for a marriage or partnership, where the two parties can be quite opposite to each other in many ways to produce a really productive, helpful relationship.

True leaders instinctively know this, which is why they are generally more successful at producing stellar team performances. They instinctively know about storming because that’s the way they produce above-average results – willingness to challenge the status-quo and encourage a group to come to terms with each other. And they encourage this on a fairly regular basis because they know it’s all part of producing healthy, constructive team relationships. Why don’t you give it a good shot as soon as possible. You have everything to gain.

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