In this booklet you will be able to get a better understanding of how some factors of teamwork can influence group dynamics and how it can affect performance in team sports. You will be reading about these four factors: • Tuckman’s Stages of group development
• Steiner’s Model of Group Effectiveness
• Cohesion
• Social loafing
What is the difference between a group and team?
A team is a gathering of people who work interpedently and are committed to achieve one goal where as a group is a gathering of people who interdependently but have individual responsibility to perform. A team is characterized by commonality in goals, objectives and approach contrary to a group which is on basis of individuality convergence. A group works efficiently for short term projects whereas long term projects are efficiently done by teams.
Tuckman’s stages of group development:
In order for a group of people to become a team, they must go through a series of developmental stages…. There are 4 stages to this process. –Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing. It is not necessary to go through the stages in this order, However all 4 stages’ must be completed before the group can be called a team. However later on Tuckman added a 5th stage to the process “Adjourning”
(For a group to be classed as a team, the members need to depend on each other and offer support to each other in order to try to achieve team goals)
Forming -At this stage, forming, members of the group get to know each other and decide among themselves if they should be part of the group or not. During this stage the members of the group start to work out what their strengths are and what their weaknesses are. Individual members of the group will get to know their roles in the group. Members of the group start to make new friends within the group, being polite to each other and try to make a good impression on each other.
Storming -The second stage in the process, storming, is characterized by conflict around interpersonal issues, with concomitant emotional responding in the task sphere. These behaviours serve as resistance to group influence and task requirements. During this stage someone is picked to be the team leader, i.e. a captain and they take charge of the group.
Norming -Resistance is overcome in this stage, in which in-group feelings develop and new roles are adopted, this happens when all members of the group pick roles in which they will be sticking to, for example in football there are different roles like a striker and defender, they chose their roles and have stuck to them which is exactly like what they do in this stage. The group leader is expecting the other members of the group to get involved with decision making tasks. Members of the group work together towards goals and tasks.
Performing -The last stage, performing, is the stage which involves the team progressing and working well within a team. The group becomes a team when this stage has been completed. The stage has been completed when the team works together to complete tasks. For example when the coach of the team gives them a task which they have to complete within a certain time limit, like in football training the coach may tell the team he wants 20 goals to be scored by the end of the training session, when this has been completed and they have scored the goals then they have completed the task set and are now a team.
Steiner’s model of group effectiveness:
Steiner’s model suggests the relation between individual abilities or resources on a team and how the team members interact, for example if a basketball team contained the five best players in the world, the team would be the best team in the world and win every game. This is because each player’s skills and ability are the most important resource for the team.
It is summarised by the equation:
Actual productivity = potential productivity – loses due to faulty group process.
Actual productivity refers