W1_BUD_Tuckman Assessment

Understanding Growth Stages of Mahakam 2013 Team

On this first week blog posting assignment, I am trying to determine which of Tuckman’s Stages our Mahakam 2013 Team is in and use that to determine which leadership style is appropriate for the team. According to Bruce Tuckman’s Theory (1965), the growth of a team can be divided into four stages: Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing.

The tools we use to determine growth stages of our team is 32 questions Team Development Survey ^[1]. Here is my survey result:

	Forming	Storming	Norming	Performing
Total Score	26	25	25	30

 The result shows that our team is in the Performing stage.

Appropriate Leadership Style for the Team

So many theories about Leadership Style out there, but basically there is 3 leadership style. Explanation and best use of this leadership style described as follows ^[2]:

Leadership Style	Best Used for
Authoritarian (autocratic)	in times of crisis/emergency
Participative (democratic)	make better decisions
Delegative (free reign)	already motivated and skilled team

To determine the best leadership style I am trying to match between leader’s responsibilities at the performing stage and leadership style.

Leader’s responsibilities at the performing stage [3]	Leadership Style*
	Authoritarian	Participative	Delegative
Delegate at much as it is reasonable to do so	0	1	2
Trust team members to work on their own	0	1	2
Remove roadblocks that may prevent the team from accomplishing goals	2	2	1
Provide timely feedback on the team’s progress	1	1	1
Total Score	3	5	6

*) Scoring: Most likely yes = 2; Sometimes = 1; Most likely not = 0

Based on the total scoring, most likely the appropriate leadership style for performing stage team is Delegative Leader. However the best leadership is never a single leadership style. It’s a combination of all the three leadership style with the knowing when to use ones.

Conclusion

Based on Team Development Survey result, Mahakam 2013 Team is in the Performing stage. The best leadership style to keep this team perform is combination between delegative, participative, and authoritarian with more portion of delegative.

Reference

1.    Survey: What Stage is Your Team in? Retrieved from http://www.cscaweb.org/EMS/sector_team/support_files/tools_for_the_team/tool_stage.pdf

2.    Leadership Style. Retrieved from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadstl.html

3.    Zmorenski, Debbie. Tips on creating and leading high-performing teams. Retrieved from http://www.reliableplant.com/Read/27377/Creating-leading-high-performing-teams