Forming Groups
Sunday, April 19th, 2009It has been quite amazing and rewarding to watch a group of people previously unknown to each other build relationships over a 7 week period. Similarities were drawn to the Big Brother House on many occasions! Without doubt I feel extremely privileged to have watched the journey progress and relationships form and strengthen. With such diversity in the group, age, background, culture, previous experience, hobbies, lifestyle, - to put it simply an extremely colourful tapestry many may have concluded it would take time to form a cohesive group. On the contrary – throughout my lifetime I have never seen a group bond so well. I feel confident that apart from forging strong personal friendships it has also formed a special team culture with values that extend well into one of total support for colleagues. That is so important for any working team especially when they will be working remotely. I thought about Bruce Tuckman’s 1965 Forming Storming Norming Performing team-development model and did some more research on the web about group formation. here is a link to Tuckman’s work http://www.businessballs.com/tuckmanformingstormingnormingperforming.htmIt makes reference to teams and leadership and though I can see some similarities, this group is very different to anything I have ever witnessed before. Respect for each other was always present and though some individuals clearly fitted into ‘family member’ roles I never experienced any battle for supremacy or ‘pole position’. I would be interested to hear from anyone who has any additional information on group formation. Perhaps members of this group can shed light on why it became a strong unit so quickly and maintained its strength with out any signs of cracks over a 7 week period!
