Building A Coalition
Group Development
According to Bruce Tuckman's model of group development, the stages include forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. A group starts in the forming position where the ground rules are established and the team members hardly know each other. As it moves to the storming stage, the members of the group are still individualized and resist any form of leadership. The storming stage is where it is likely for the group to get stuck. With the help of a good boss, the norming stage will come next in which the concept of teamwork is accepted. Once that is mastered, the performing stage comes into play in which the team continues to work in a good trusting atmosphere to complete their task. Finally, a reflection is made over the team's accomplishments and that is to be known as the adjourning stage. In the case study Building a Coalition, the members of the group are currently in the forming stage of their group development. This being because they have yet to identify exactly what three members are going to be included in the final team. Once their team members are set that will get the ball rolling to proceed to the next stage, storming. The Woodson Foundation could have benefited from understanding the stages of group development in that it could have acted as an effective resource that has proper guidelines in place to know what it takes to form a highly functioning team. From the information presented in the article, it is apparent that the Woodson Foundation is reluctant in working together with the other organizations in order to create a successful program. Seeing that each of the groups have their specific areas of strong concern, like the Woodson foundation's focus on hard data, NCPIE's focus on the parents, and the school's consistency with the school board and unionization with new jobs, the development