How team building leads to cohesion

Teams start to get cohesive after they confront and go through challenges together. Bruce Tuckman identified stages that lead to team cohesion and best performance. In early stages, team members have to be goal focused and avoid conflicts. Spending more time together not only in work environment will create positive relationships. Bruce Tuckman’s theory is flexible and can be applied to sports, business or Public services teams. When going through these stages team members gets to know each other and can provide support to one another when they need to. That is what makes team cohesive.

Impact of good team cohesion

Good team cohesion will increase chances of completing the objective successfully with high performance.  Team will be trusting each other and supporting.  That will make job done faster and more effectively.

Impact of poor team cohesion in the team

Poor team cohesion will lead team to poor performance that might prevent team from reaching their targets, goals or objectives.  Individual team members have to forget about their arrogance and take their roles and responsibilities seriously.  Managers, coaches and leaders has to put huge input in making team to get together.  First of all leader has to choose right individuals.  They have to be skilled and have good attitude towards working in a team and being positive about their work.  You don’t want people who have qualifications and skills, but have no attitude, willingness or desire to do the job and have it only, because of the money.

Stages of team development that Bruce Tuckman identified

The first stage that Bruce Tuckman identified is Forming. It is a stage where team meets for the first time and team members are mostly dependant on the team leader where they get most of the information from.

The second stage is Storming.  This is very turbulent stage when team members have enough information to form their own ideas about goals and targets of the whole team.  That is why some of them might struggle for power or position with other team members and they might challenge leader for position.  At this stage it is very important for a leader to take control over the team and keep them focused on the goal.

Stage 3 is Norming.  In this stage members commits to the team and their responsibilities.  There is a sense of bonding and unity between team members and leader is not challenged so much.

Crucial stage for the team is stage 3 which is Performing where team really begins to work and show high performance.  They are able to work positively towards goals and resolve conflicts effectively in positive and constructive way.  At this stage team develops cohesion and builds positive relationships.

Last stage (stage 5) is Adjourning.  This stage is not often seen as a part of the main theory, but it is still an important part to be examined.  The fifth stage is when team is no longer needed as team’s goals and targets been achieved successfully and team members have to go to other projects or jobs.  This separation can cause insecurity to some sensitive people if they created strong bonds between teammates. It’s important to deal with this stage sensitively to ensure that team members can move on to other projects without being sad.