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Unit 7: OD Intervention

Various OD interventions discussed so far have their specific implications for OD and, therefore, Notes
are closely associated with a very few advocates and practitioners. As against these, team-
building is the most important, widely accepted, and applied OD intervention for organizational
improvement. For example, French and Bell have opined that “probably the most important
single group of interventions in the OD are the team-building activities the goals of which are
the improvement and increased effectiveness of various teams within the organization.”
A possible reason for this phenomenon is that people in the organization work in groups
(teams) and the effectiveness of these groups ultimately determine organizational effectiveness.
Before going through how team-building exercise can be undertaken to develop effective teams,
let us consider the life cycle of a team, how synergy is generated through team-work, problems
in team-work, and features of effective team so that team-building exercises focus more sharply
on developing effective team.

Life Cycle of a Team

When a number of individuals begin to work at interdependent jobs, they often pass through
several stages as they learn to work together as a team. These stages are: forming, storming,
norming, performing, and adjourning as shown below:

Figure 7.1: Life Cycle of a Team

forming storming norming performing adjourning

Though these are not followed rigidly, they do represent a broad pattern that may be observed
and predicted in many settings across team’s time together. These stages are the result of a
variety of questions and issues that team members face such as “who will be members of the
team?” “Who will perform what functions?” “Who will contribute what?” “What rules will be
followed?” “How can conflicts among members be resolved?” and so on. These typical stages of
life cycle of a team are described below:

1. Forming: At the first stage of the life cycle, team members get introduced to each other if
they have not interacted earlier. They share personal information, start to accept others,
and begin to turn their attention to the group tasks. At this stage, interaction among team
members is often cautious especially when they are new to one another.
2. Storming: After the forming stage which is mostly related to perceiving and assessing
each other, members start interaction among themselves in the form of competing for
status, jockeying for relative control, and arguing for appropriate strategies to be adopted
for achieving team’s goals, because of individual differences, different members may
experience varying degree of tension and anxiety out of this interaction pattern.
3. Norming: After storming stage, team members start settling. The team begins to move in
a co-operative fashion and a tentative balance among competing forces too is struck. At
this stage, group norms emerge to guide individual behaviour which form the basis for
co-operative feelings and behaviour among members.
4. Performing: When team members interact among themselves on the basis of norms that
have emerged in the team, they learn to handle complex problems that come before the
team. Functional roles are performed and exchanged as needed, and tasks are accompanied
efficiently.

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