Design Realization/Detailed Design - Medical Device Design: Innovation from Concept to Market - page 156

out of the scope of this topic but this does not mean that as lead designer you should ignore it;
on the contrary, you should read as many topics about teamwork as possible. You do rely on
them, after all.
Tuckman 1 developed the concept of the four phases of a team ( Tuckman, 1965 ) ( Tuckman &
Jensen, 1977 ):
Phase 1 : FORMING - In the first stage of team development, team members want to
know “What is expected of me? How do I fit in? What are we supposed to do? What are
the rules?” Anxiety can follow initial excitement. No one feels secure enough to “act as
themselves” so there is not much open conflict. You will need to set operating guidelines
or ground rules. You also need to spot prima donnas.
Phase 2 : STORMING - Initial enthusiasm gives way to frustration and anger. The team
struggles to find ways of working together and everyone seems awkward. What appear to
be resistance, wrangling, hostile subgroups, and jealousies arise. Ground rules start to be
broken. A hard phase to get through, but get through you must.
Phase 3 : NORMING - Gradually, the team settles and enters the “norming” phase. Team
members start to find independence and standard ways to routine things; power plays and
grandstanding become less evident. Team members may hold back good ideas for fear of
introducing conflict. Help the team by giving them responsibility and authority.
Phase 4 : PERFORMING - In the fourth and final phase, the team goes about its
business with smooth self-confidence. Team members disagree constructively; they take
measured risks, and have real ownership for their work. They also appreciate what the
other members of the team are doing and rather than seeing this as being in conflict to
what they're doing, they see it as a benefit. The team can experience “storming” periods
at any time - when under unusual pressure, for example. The team can also return to the
“forming” phase (especially if new members join).
Your role as lead designer is to get to the performing stage as fast as possible, and then keep
your team there. I have found that by giving team members ownership of the project, straight
away, they respond quickly. Hence your first team meeting is critical. How you run this
meeting is down to you but a good “icebreaker” helps; being focused on the problem at hand
also helps. To use another soccer analogy, if the team manager says, “Okay lads we're going
to win this one; go out and sock it to them,” what response do you expect compared with
“Okay lads this game's not important - win, draw, lose no problem”? As they say in China
“A one thousand mile walk starts with one step”; make sure the step is in the right direction
because it's a long way back! There is a plethora of textbooks and general reading topics on
team building/teamwork - I leave the choice of reading to you.
1 See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman's_stages_of_group_development