Team Dynamics — The Stronger The Better
“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” — Phil Jackson
Working on a team is challenging and not easy. This is because a team consists of several people who of course have different traits, characteristics, mindsets. For example, maybe it is often found, that many people actually feel irritated with group work because there are team members are irresponsible, this makes group member feels that group work is actually worse than working alone.
In the Software Development course at the Faculty of Computer Science, Universitas Indonesia, each student is asked to form a team to then work together to develop projects from clients. This is a 6 credits course and runs for a semester. As we all know, building software is not only coding, coding, and coding, but it also requires good cooperation, good communication, mutual trust, and other constructive things.
Good teamwork is one of the determining factors whether a project or task will be successful or not. For this reason, building good team dynamics is also very important for each team. In this article, I will explain about team dynamics, how to build good team dynamics, and also the implementation on my team!
What is Team Dynamic?
According to the definition of teamtechnology, team dynamics are the unconscious, psychological forces that influence the direction of a team’s behavior and performance. They are like undercurrents in the sea, which can carry boats in a different direction to the one they intend to sail.
Team dynamics are created by the nature of the team’s work, the personalities within the team, their working relationships with other people, and the environment in which the team works.
5 Stages of Team Development
The formation of a team usually goes through five stages in order to develop to face challenges, overcome problems, find solutions, plan work, and deliver the results. The five stages according to Bruce Tuckman are forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. The theory that Tuckman presented in 1965 will inevitably be passed by a team that will carry out its duties.
Forming
In this stage, the team will meet and learn about opportunities and challenges, and then formulate goals and begin to divide tasks. Each team member will generally work independently but remain in a group together. In this phase, the main task of the function is related to orientation. The members will try to direct their perception of the task as well as their teammates, and they will also discuss the limitations of the task, and related matters. To be able to go to the next stage, each team member must leave his individual comfort because the topic he will face has the risk of conflict.
Storming
At this stage, members can express opinions about the character and integrity of other members and are expected to voice their opinions. If they find someone evading responsibility or trying to dominate, the rest of the team can question the leader’s actions.
Personal discrepancies and conflicts must be resolved before the team can exit this phase. In this phase, there is a possibility that team members will not be able to go through storming, and may even return to this phase when there are new challenges or disputes. Some teams can make it through the storming stage, but for those that don’t, the timing, intensity, and damage incurred in the previous stage may vary. Tolerance of each member and differences must be the main concern. Without tolerance and patience, the team will fail.
At this stage, there is a possibility of a decrease in the level of motivation of members, but the differences that occur will also be able to make members stronger, more skilled, and able to work more effectively as a team. For this reason, team leaders must be more open but still have to direct their members to make decisions and behave professionally. In this stage, each team member must resolve their differences so that each can engage with more fun.
Norming
Resolving differences of opinion or conflict can result in a closer relationship. Thus the spirit of cooperation will be further increased. At this stage, all team members take responsibility and have the ambition to work towards the success of the team’s goals. They accept other members as they are, and try to cooperate. However, sometimes there is one member who intends to avoid conflict, by not conveying controversial ideas to the forum.
Performing
With the rules and regulations that have been developed, it will be easier for group members to concentrate on achieving common goals. This will have an impact on the team’s success in achieving its goals. In this phase, they are still motivated and understand their task, but team members are now competent, autonomous, and able to carry out the decision-making process without supervision. Differences of opinion are possible as long as they are channeled through a mechanism agreed by the team.
At this stage, the team supervisor always participates. The team will make the necessary decisions. Even the best-performing team will be able to evaluate each stage it has gone through, and be able to make revisions. For example, a change in leadership can make the team return to the storming phase because the new leader does not agree with the agreed order and the dynamics of the team.
Adjourning
Tuckman in 1977 together with Mary added the fifth of the four stages of team building, namely adjourning. This includes completing tasks and resting the team, it can be temporary if the team will still be needed again.
Implementing Team Dynamics Stages on My Team
My team is in adjourning stage. As have said before, there are several phases to reach this stage. Forming stage isn’t really hard for us, because we’ve been on many team projects before. The next phase is the storming stage, we started with getting to know our client and listen to the requirements. Our project is making an Android Application. We build it with flutter and dart.
At the norming stage, we’ve decided on the storming stage and start to plan sprints. We decided to divide teams into backend and frontend teams. We do coding together to complete our project. The last stage before adjourning team is performing. Developing software project with scrum method which you can see on my other article. At last, we are now at adjourning where we are just fixing some things to complete the project.
How to Build a Good Team Dynamics?
Based on what my team had been through there are several things that could make good team dynamics:
Quality Time
Not only code all the time, but we also spend time playing and study together. This helps our team to know each other even more. This means it helps us to build better team dynamics.
Communication
Communication is a key to many things, it also a key to making a good team. If there are some mistakes that a member makes, others should know about this member's struggle and helps them out if capable enough. And also the way to treat each member of the team should fair so that there are no members who will feel discriminated against and enjoy working on the team.
So that’s all some tricks that you could try to create a stronger team! Good luck and #keepexploring!
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