WMBA 6010 Week 3 Team Stage Diagnosis Example

Past Polite, Not Yet Agreed: Placing a Five-Person Manual Translation Team in the Storming Stage at Week Five, and What Gersick's Midpoint Predicts for the Next Two Weeks

Student Name

Walden University

WMBA 6010: Managing People and Promoting Collaboration

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Past Polite, Not Yet Agreed: Placing a Five-Person Manual Translation Team in the Storming Stage at Week Five, and What Gersick's Midpoint Predicts for the Next Two Weeks

The Team and the Question

The team studied here was formed five weeks ago at Larkspur, the localization company invented for this course, to translate a farm equipment maker's operator manuals into eleven languages over ten weeks. It has five members: K. O., a project manager in Minneapolis with two years' experience; R. M., the lead linguist, who coordinates the translators from Lisbon; T. B., who leads desktop publishing in Manila; S. V., a terminology specialist responsible for the shared glossary; and J. P., the client's documentation manager, who joins the weekly call. The team is behind schedule on three languages, and K. O. has asked me, as her lead, whether the group is simply going through a normal phase or is in trouble.

The question for this paper is where the team stands developmentally, on what evidence, and what that predicts for the next two weeks.

The Models

Drawing on dozens of earlier group studies, Tuckman (1965) described four stages. While forming, members work out what the job is and how they are expected to behave. While storming, they argue about the work and push back against what the group asks of them. While norming, they settle on how to work together. While performing, their effort finally goes into the job rather than into each other. Revisiting the model twelve years on, Tuckman and Jensen (1977) proposed adjourning as a closing stage for temporary groups. The model describes tendencies, not fixed steps, and groups can return to an earlier stage when membership or demands change.

Gersick (1988) offers a different account based on observing project teams with deadlines. She found that teams did not move gradually through stages. Instead, each team set a pattern of work in its first meeting and held it for about half the time available, then went through a burst of change near the midpoint, when members became aware that time was passing and revised their approach. The pattern set at the midpoint carried the team to its deadline.

Evidence From the Case

Table 1

Statements and Behaviors in Weeks Four and Five, With the Stage Each Suggests

Statements are paraphrased from the composite case notes.

The pattern places the team in storming. In the first three weeks, by K. O.'s account, members were cordial and deferred to her plan, which is forming behavior. That politeness has ended. The conflicts now visible are about procedure, who may change a term after sign-off, and about the boundary between subgroups, Lisbon's changes and Manila's rework. R. M.'s decision to bypass K. O. is a sign that members are testing the leader's authority, which Tuckman (1965) described as typical of the second stage.

Two pieces of evidence argue against a later placement. The team has not adopted any shared rule; S. V.'s proposed freeze date drew no response, which shows that norming has been offered but not accepted. And the group's energy still goes into disputes about process rather than into the manuals themselves, as the three languages behind schedule show.

There is also evidence against an earlier placement. Forming groups avoid open disagreement, and this team now disagrees in writing, in a shared channel, in front of the client. Calling this a forming team would ignore the most visible facts in the case.

What the Stage Predicts

Storming is a stage to move through, not an outcome. The conflicts here are task conflicts about procedure, which can become productive if the group turns them into rules. But the research gives reason for caution: across many studies, disagreements about the work itself tended to hurt team results and members' satisfaction nearly as surely as personal clashes did (De Dreu & Weingart, 2003). T. B.'s message about Lisbon starting over is close to the line where a dispute about process becomes a dispute about people.

Gersick's model sharpens the forecast. The team is at the midpoint of a ten-week project. If her pattern holds, the next two weeks are when the team is most open to revising how it works, and the revision it makes will last until delivery. That makes the timing unusually favorable. A change-freeze rule that went nowhere in week four could be adopted in week six if K. O. puts it on the agenda as a decision rather than a suggestion.

The forecast for the next two weeks is therefore conditional. If K. O. names the glossary dispute directly and asks the group to decide who approves late changes, the team is likely to move into norming, with a rule that reduces Manila's rework. If she continues to smooth the conflict over, the midpoint will pass with the current pattern intact, and the conflict between Lisbon and Manila is likely to become personal.

Advice for the Project Manager

Three steps follow. First, K. O. should hold a midpoint review in week six, framed around the deadline: five weeks remain, three languages are late, and the current way of working will not deliver them. Second, she should put S. V.'s change-freeze proposal to the group as a decision, with the client's documentation manager present, since late changes often begin with client reviewers. Third, she should talk privately with R. M. about the email to me, not to reprimand him, but to agree that disputes come to her first and that she will act on them.

Limits of the Placement

Stage models simplify. Real teams show behaviors from more than one stage at once, and the evidence here comes from two weeks of notes. The placement is a working judgment that should be revisited after the midpoint review, when the team's response will show whether it has moved.

References

De Dreu, C. K. W., & Weingart, L. R. (2003). Task versus relationship conflict, team performance, and team member satisfaction: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(4), 741-749. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.4.741

Gersick, C. J. G. (1988). Time and transition in work teams: Toward a new model of group development. Academy of Management Journal, 31(1), 9-41. https://doi.org/10.2307/256496

Tuckman, B. W. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), 384-399. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0022100

Tuckman, B. W., & Jensen, M. A. C. (1977). Stages of small-group development revisited. Group & Organization Studies, 2(4), 419-427. https://doi.org/10.1177/105960117700200404