Case Study “The Forgotten Group Member”

According to Tuckerman’s 5 stages of a team there is forming, storming, norming, performing and in 1976 he added the 5th adjourning. The Team lead by Christine Spencer for her Organizational development course is in the storming stage of development. We are told of how they were brought together and a short summary of their individual characteristics at the start of the team. The basic characteristics of the storming stage is vying for positions both formal and informal on the team, identifying communication plans and learning to solve problems together. This stage isn’t considered completed until the team becomes accepting of one another and starts working together towards their common goal. Christine was unable to pull Mike into the team in an effective way. According to the study, he specifically did not make it to several meetings, he was accusatory when he felt he had been left out of a meeting and he did not turn in his tasks as assigned. Since the next stage of norming consists of a team giving up individual ideas for the success of the team and that all team members take responsibility for the end result; the lack of Mikes participation led me to the conclusion that Christine’s team never made it out of the storming stage of development.
One of the primary areas the team failed in immediately is Christine identifying each of the teams attributes and generalizing Mike as the “class clown” biased her working with him forward. These were Christine’s perceptions not necessarily the facts of each individual. Because she labeled him she did not see that Mikes ego was damaged when he made the remark he couldn’t make meetings at 8:30 and would also miss his show. Instead of acknowledging this as a valid problem the team laughed at him. Because Christine did not see Mike really did have an issue with the time, she did not stop and determine a time that was acceptable to all, or how she could ensure inclusion of all team members for the team meetings. Subsequently Mike felt excluded right from the beginning which triggered his feelings of exclusion when he saw the team together informally.
A secondary problem was the lack of either an identifiable communication plan or a schedule. As a team lead, Christine needs to keep her team on task which means periodic check in on the status of information. That Mike handed in rough notes just a week before the project was due indicates there were no interim milestones on the tasks to ensure everyone was completing their parts. With a plan, Christine and the rest of the team could have held Mike more accountable and also ensured he had input if he missed any of the meetings. It appears Christine has labeled Mike as a social loafer and isn’t able to bring him back around as a viable team member.
One solution to Christine’s problem is to have know the stages of a team and taken the time when her team was first assigned to get to know one another better, identify strengths and weaknesses and set up a time that everyone can meet regularly. Many people use humor to deflect real conflict so she needed to acknowledge Mikes conflict of time, not dismissing him as class clown. Then set a schedule showing interim tasks to be completed. As those milestones are reached she is checking in with team members even when they are unable to attend the meetings. Christine had set her team up to be interdependent, assigning tasks and having them working more independently. While interdependent teams can be very successful when all members are highly functioning, they often breed conflict if not effectively communicating and collaborating and critical points.
Another approach to Christine’s team was managing Mike’s participation more effectively. The rest of the team did appear to be high functioning and capable of interdependent work and Mike was the outlying creating the conflict. Christine could spend more time with Mike and getting to the reasons behind his lack of motivation to participate. She could find what his drivers are in engaging him in team success. Obviously she does not have the extrinsic factors of money or benefits, the one extrinsic factor she is the grade thy will get for the course. She could find out he has a high need for inclusion and he rebelled because he did not feel a part of the team. According to the text, lack of inclusion is a high characteristic for team members to withdraw when not feeling included in the group. Even if his schedule prevented him from attending all meetings, she needs to send out notes and ask for his input to provide Mike with the feelings that he was a valued part of the group. While Mike may truly have been too busy, having put forth the effort for more inclusion, Christine would have done her part.

My overall assessment of Christine’s ability to lead a team is that she is not effective. While she did some assessment of team dynamics she did not take into consideration the team’s diversity of styles and needs in order to best communicate with each. While all teams are a performing unit towards a common goal, a team is made up of individuals with different perspectives and needs. What works for the whole team may not work for specific individuals. Christine did not take the time to find out Mikes specific needs to be a valuable member of the team early on in the forming stage. She needed to take extra measures to pull Mike into the team by finding out his specific needs. I know of one case early in my career where a team member was written off by others for not delivering and participating. Upon further discussion it turned out he was hard of hearing and was actually missing vital pieces of information. He got a hearing aid and became a high performer. When Mike was offended at the cafeteria she should have addressed that conflict immediately, as it was obviously a red flag that Mike did not feel he was part of the team. Christine’s leadership style is fine when there is a highly performing interdependent team. If she had set up the team early in the forming stage to be interdependent she may have been more successful. As most teams have conflict, Christine as well as all leaders need to know how to effectively deal with team dynamics and conflict in order to have a successful team.