Newly-Formed Teams

Remember the first day of school? Not much learning occurred in the rush to find your cubby hole, stash your crayons, and learn what days you’d be taking P.E. class. The early days in a team’s existence can be equally unproductive and frustrating as members struggle to delineate roles and responsibilities, establish procedures and systems for completing work, and set goals and milestones.

Developing a team identity is crucial. From the early stages of Forming and Storming to the mature stages of Norming and High-Performing, all teams follow a similar developmental path. And while there’s no way to skip the early stages, you can speed the process with the right interventions at the right times. We recommend that newly formed teams use an approach like this one…

A fun, light-hearted, half-day team building event like Pursuit, GeoTrek or Great Creations: Build a Boat to break the ice and illuminate some of the team dynamics that the group will need to address in order to progress.

Followed soon by...

A full-day workshop like Stages of Team Development to understand the four stages, determine in which stage the team is most commonly operating, and construct a plan for moving quickly into the high-performing stage.