Recently we asked Lisa Pafe, Lohfeld Consulting Group Principal Consultant, to share her thoughts on the five stages of teamwork and how to jump-start team performance… In previous blog posts, Lisa discussed how to move your proposal team quickly through the forming and storming stages of team behavior. In the norming and performing stages, your proposal team members are more comfortable with their roles and responsibilities. Here are some strategies to move your team through norming and performing into adjourning. Communicate. To ensure high performance, use praise and constructive, actionable criticism as needed. Continue to communicate, ensure clarity, and resolve conflicts. As people take more responsibility, you need not be quite as directive, as long as you are able to review daily agile iterations from team leads. Circumvent. Quite often, a team member or two refuses to norm and perform. You may have to remove them from the team if … Continue reading Strategies and tactics to bring your team to a win – Part 3: Norming, performing, and adjourning →

Recently we asked Lisa Pafe, Lohfeld Consulting Group Principal Consultant, to share her thoughts on the five stages of teamwork and how to jump-start team performance… After proposal kick-off, proposal team members quickly get over their initial politeness and conflicts emerge. You cannot avoid the storming stage. Real teams are made up of real people with varying personalities and viewpoints. You may not like them; they may not like you. How do you progress more quickly from storming to norming? Use an agile, iterative approach with coaching. Monitor work in smaller agile increments (daily stand ups, individual status checks, and written iterations) and talk to people – and not just in team meetings – to avoid miscommunication and correct invalid assumptions. Insist on clarity. Conflicts often arise from a lack of clarity. Review daily iterations, communicate using honest feedback, and recommend corrective actions. With work divided into smaller increments, re-writes … Continue reading Strategies and tactics to bring your team to a win – Part 2: Storming →