FORMING & STORMING
We can learn from the past. Past leaders. Past events. Past lessons. Several years ago, the National Research Laboratories examined successful teams from World War II to determine if there were common dynamics that contributed to their success. Their research defined four stages of successful team development. The first stage for team development is forming – the time when a team first comes together. The second stage of team development is called storming – the time when team members struggle with identifying their place within the team.
Making Others Successful: Success Through Feedback
An important aspect of the coaching process is performance feedback. This consists of the coach’s role in sharpening the skills of team members, closing the gaps, and expanding responsibilities. When team members consistently fall short in their performance, these types of conversations, although necessary, are sometimes uncomfortable and unnatural for us as leaders. This is the part of coaching that many of us tend to want to avoid. When we avoid constructive feedback, we also miss out on the opportunity to develop our team members, even if does take us a little outside our comfort zone.
Making Others Successful: SUCCESS THROUGH COACHING
If you have ever played on a team, whether academic, athletic, or a hobby, you’ve experienced coaching. This individual who serves as “Coach” invests knowledge, understanding, know-how, personal experience, and study into making others more capable and successful in that specific field. Professionally, these individuals go by different names: supervisor, manager, director, trainer. But they all involve elements of coaching. Coaches prepare the team to successfully think through potential challenges, using the resources at hand to find solutions, and lead them into fruitful production and achieving goals.