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The forming stage

Team composition and building

· team,to-sort

The team :

  • meets and learns about the opportunities and challenges,
  • and then agrees on goals and begins to tackle the tasks.

The team members:

  • tend to behave quite independently.
  •  may be motivated but are usually relatively uninformed of the issues and objectives of the team.
  • are usually on their best behavior but very focused on themselves.
  • mature ones  begin to model appropriate behavior even at this early phase.

The meeting environment also plays an important role to model the initial behavior of each individual.

Orientation:

  • The major task functions also concern orientation
  • Members attempt to become oriented to the tasks as well as to one another. 
  • Discussion centers on defining the scope of the task, how to approach it, and similar concerns.

To grow from this stage to the next, each member

  • must relinquish the comfort of non-threatening topics 
  • and risk the possibility of conflict.