16.Describe the stages of group development.

Forming

In this stage, most team members are positive and polite. Some are anxious, as they haven't fully understood what work the team will do. Others are simply excited about the task ahead.

As leader, you play a dominant role at this stage, because team members' roles and responsibilities aren't clear.

This stage can last for some time, as people start to work together, and as they make an effort to get to know their new colleagues.

Storming

Next, the team moves into the storming phase, where people start to push against the boundaries established in the forming stage. This is the stage where many teams fail.

Storming often starts where there is a conflict between team members' natural working styles. People may work in different ways for all sorts of reasons but, if differing working styles cause unforeseen problems, they may become frustrated.

Storming can also happen in other situations. For example, team members may challenge your authority, or jockey for position as their roles are clarified. Or, if you haven't defined clearly how the team will work, people may feel overwhelmed by their workload, or they could be uncomfortable with the approach you're using.

Some may question the worth of the team's goal, and they may resist taking on tasks.

Team members who stick with the task at hand may experience stress, particularly as they don't have the support of established processes, or strong relationships with their colleagues.

Norming. Gradually, the team moves into the norming stage. This is when people start to resolve their differences, appreciate colleagues' strengths, and respect your authority as a leader.

Now that your team members know one another better, they may socialize together, and they are able to ask one another for help and provide constructive feedback. People develop a stronger commitment to the team goal, and you start to see good progress towards it.

There is often a prolonged overlap between storming and norming, because, as new tasks come up, the team may lapse back into behavior from the storming stage.

Performing

The team reaches the performing stage, when hard work leads, without friction, to the achievement of the team's goal. The structures and processes that you have set up support this well.

As leader, you can delegate much of your work, and you can concentrate on developing team members.

It feels easy to be part of the team at this stage, and people who join or leave won't disrupt performance.

Adjourning

Many teams will reach this stage eventually. For example, project teams exist for only a fixed period, and even permanent teams may be disbanded through organizational restructuring.

Team members who like routine, or who have developed close working relationships with colleagues, may find this stage difficult, particularly if their future now looks uncertain.

17.Refer to the potential contributions and problems of teams and groups.

A team is a collection of individuals organized to accomplish a common purpose, who are interdependent, and who can be identified by themselves and observers as a team. Teams exist within a larger organization and interact with other teams and with the organization. Teams are one way for organizations to gather input from members, and to provide organization members with a sense of involvement in the pursuit of organizational goals. Further, teams allow organizations flexibility in assigning members to projects and allow for cross-functional groups to be formed.

Given that teams and groups are such an integral part of how organizations function, it is easy not to look critically at their contribution. However, researchers, writers, and managerial workers themselves asses the contributions of groups, both the upside and downside, especially with teams.

Teams and groups make a contribution to the extent that they produce results beyond what could be achieved without a high degree of collaboration among workers. Considerable case history evidence supports the contribution of teams over independent effort. The previous discussion of self-managed work teams presented examples of this evidence. Another perspective on the importance of teams is lift-outs –the practice of recruiting an entire high-functioning team from another organization. The company doing the recruiting believes that the team is more important for attaining its goals than an to speed rapidly in the new setting. An imported team might also help the company enter a new market or line of business quickly.

Lift-outs have been frequent in such industries as financial services, law and information technology. Now professional services firms, such as management consulting and accounting, are hiring more teams. Despite the increase in lift-outs, the concept can raise legal issues and might be considered unethical.

Teams tend to be most useful as a form of organization under the following conditions:

• When work processes cut across functional lines

• When speed is important

• When the organization faces a complex and rapidly changing environment

• When innovation and learning have high priority

• When the tasks to be accomplished require integration of higehly interdependent perfomers

The general term for moving in either direction is group polarization, a situation in which post-discussion attitubes tend to be more extreme than pre-discussion attitubes.

Social loafing is freeloading, or shirking individual responsibility, when a person is placed in a group setting and removed from individual accountability.

A curious problem about workplace teams is that they are often given credit for accomplishment but rarely blamed for failures.

Ostracism is the extent to which an individual group member perceives that he or she is being ignored by the other group members.

A final concernabout team arises from focusing too much on group or team effort, rather than individual effort, which can retard a persons career.