The Five-Stage Model of Group Development

Analysis

In this reflection report, I will explain our group’s situations by adopting the five-stage model of group development, then using other theories or researches to analyze the situations.

1. The five-stage model of group development

Figure 1: The five-stage model

Source: Adapted from

Tuckman’s theory suggests five stages of group development, there are Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing and Adjourning respectively (Tuckman, 1965 and Tuckman and Jessen, 1977). In the first four stages, the model demonstrates that group bonding could be developed by joining the objective or task, and then adjourns the stage after the task finished. Recently, SEEDS situation is in a transforming process form the Storming stage to the Norming stage.

Forming stage

SEEDS formation was occurred during an induction program and our members had a strong objective to be the winner of the marketing stimulation game. At this period, everyone was excited to be part of the team, enthusiastic about the work ahead and satisfied of group performance. Almost of our members fully intended to understand, to be familiar with each other. I thought that there were two main reasons that made delightful in-group working environment during week one to week six. The one was our successful in marketing case studies and the other was that all of the members respected to our group charter (Appendix 1). However, I experienced a slight problem, caused by a critical time management and a language barrier, that some members pleaded ignorance of non-native speaker suggestions. This was before our situation had gone to Storming stage.

Storming Stage

The conflict arose from different ambitions within SEEDS, due to most of our members always came t...

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... situations happened because of no preparation of group members, no real leader, unclear communication and task and relationship conflicts.

Motivation

Expectancy theory (Vroom, 1964) proposes that individual is encouraged to act if there is an expected outcome. In this case, an effort-performance relationship was introduced. As mentioned above, the marketing case studies had no mark so Person A always absented the marketing meeting by giving an accuse that he had to concentrate on the group assignment, and some of our members do the marketing case without attention. However, the rest of the group thought that case studies could gain the marketing experiences to prepare them for a real business world so they wanted to study hard in all aspects. I thought that the different point of view could make an inconvenient working environment and conflicts in our group.