Modern Management: concepts and skills, 14/e

Stages of Team Development

More and more modern managers are using work teams to accomplish organizational tasks. Simply establishing such a team, however, does not guarantee that it will be productive. In fact, managers should be patient when an established work team is not initially productive, because teams generally need to pass through several developmental stages before they become productive. Managers must also understand this developmental process so that they can facilitate it. The following sections discuss the various stages a team usually must pass through before it becomes fully productive.42

Forming

Forming is the first stage of the team development process. During this stage, members of the newly formed team become oriented to ...