There are several methods of project team growth that project managers can use to better understand and lead their teams. Most of the time, these models explain the stages of a team’s growth and the problems that teams may face at each step. Some of the most popular ways to build a project team are:
1. Tuckman’s stages of group development: The steps of group growth by Tuckman: Bruce Tuckman, a psychologist, came up with this model to explain how teams grow. It has four stages: building, breaking, norming, and acting. Tuckman says that teams move through these steps as they become more successful and work better together.
2. The Drexler/Sibbet Team Performance Model: It describes seven steps of team development: getting started, building trust, making sure everyone knows what the goals are, making a pledge, putting the plan into action, high performance, and renewal. For good performance, the model stresses how important it is to build trust and make goals clear.
3. Belbin’s team roles model: Belbin’s team jobs model: This model shows how important it is for each person on a team to know their own skills and flaws. Belbin came up with nine team roles, such as planner, implementer, and resource inspector, and said that teams do better when each job is filled by a team member who is good at it.
4. Margerison-McCann Team Management Profile: This model describes eight jobs on a team and stresses how important it is for these roles to be balanced. Some of the jobs are analyst, planner, creator, and so on.
5. Situational Leadership Model: This model shows how important it is to change the way you lead based on how much your team members have grown. The model says that team members go through four stages of development: D1 (low competence, high commitment), D2 (some competence, low commitment), D3 (mid to high competence, varying commitment), and D4 (high competence, high commitment). The model says that leaders should change how they lead based on how much their team members have grown.
These models for developing project teams can help project managers understand and lead their teams better. Project managers can help teams work better and stay together by being aware of the challenges they may face at different times of growth.
