Facilitation is the art of leading group processes. It has been called the key to unlocking the gold mine of wisdom and knowledge buried in the heads of the employees of an organization.

Some of the benefits of good team facilitation include:

• Greater motivation and productivity
• Saves time and resources
• Greater potential for important learning
• Greater participation and empowerment
• Actions more closely linked to organizational goals
• Increased ability to deal with change
• Better decisions and more robust strategies
• Builds a stronger sense of teamwork

Increasingly, employees, their managers and leaders are being called upon to deal with more complex problems that require teamwork and collaboration. Much has been written about how groups of people become high performing teams. At Management Transitions, we have facilitated literally 1000's of hours of meetings and completed in excess of 100 team development sessions. The roots of our approaches to building teams follow.

Influential Models of Team Process and Performance

What is perhaps the best known model of team development is usually attributed to Bruce Tuckman who looked at teams from the perspective of how people feel and behave at different stages. Tuckman's model consists of four stages:

• Stage 1. Forming

  When teams first get together, members are generally cautious and uncertain about many things. People want to explore, dabble, try something. During the forming period everyone tries their best to look ahead and think about all the things that need to be done.

• Stage 2. Storming

  Inevitably the process begins to heat up under the pressures of work and conflicting perspectives. People jockey for influence. Patient and impatient people clash. Trust is tested, and confusions around goals and roles begin to surface. If there are heavy deadlines and severe bottom-line constraints, this stage can be quite tense.

• Stage 3. Norming
  

  As people get to know each other they reconcile differences and come to agreement on things like decision-making processes, resources, timing, quality standards. A "norm" is something everyone understands - often written down. Think of norms as the formal and informal rules that make up the operating system of productive work.

• Stage 4. Performing

  The final stages of team development involve using all the experience and understanding with each other to get results for each other and the organization.

However, in our view, the Drexler/Sibbet Model of Team Performance provides a more useful way to look at how teams deal with the challenges faced as they perform at higher levels. Essentially this model says that groups of people pass through seven stages as they become a team. Teams may move back and forth between stages and may, in fact, skip ahead and then return to different stages.

1. Orientation Stage: "Why Am I Here?"
   Do You Have Purpose, Personal Fit and Membership?
2. Trust Building Stage Characteristics: "Who Are You?
   Do You Have Mutual Regard, Forthrightness and Spontaneous Interaction?
3. Goal/Role Clarification Stage: "What Are We Doing?"
   Do You Have Shared Assumptions, Clear and Integrated Goals and Identified Roles?
4. Commitment Stage: "How Will We Do It?"
   Do You Have Shared Vision, Allocated Resources and Organizational Decisions?
5. Implementation Stage: "Who Does What, When and Where?"
   Do You Have Clear Processes, Alignment and Disciplined Execution?
6. High Performance Stage: "Wow!"
   Do You Have Flexibility, Intuitive Communication and Synergy?
7. Renewal Stage: "Why Continue?"
   Do You Have Recognition, Change Mastery and Staying Power?

Working with groups of employees, we design and facilitate experiences that help them identify and address key organizational challenges and function at a higher level as a team. If you would like to discuss facilitation and team development, contact us.