Adjourning--Saying Good-bye to A Team...

This week we have been looking at the 5 stages of team development as theorized by Bruce Wayne Tuckman…the following is a slightly compressed and “fun” version of his theory:

So here it is I have some earth shattering news...Bruce Wayne is not only Batman, but he is a theorist who developed four of the five stages for team development. It says right here, Bruce Wayne (Tuckman) coined and created "tuckman's stages" in 1965. Stage 1: Forming (getting the group together, initially your sizing each other up) Stage 2: Storming (this is the how do I fit into the pecking order stage, and I want my ideas to be valued and chosen, insert the need for a facilitator or team leader). Stage 3: Norming (the team starts to become a cohesive group moving in the same general direction the focus is on processes and procedures). Stage 4: Performing (this is a high functioning team, you are on fire, cooking with gas and getting it done!) Here I thought batman was just a prick eared, cape crusading, underwear on the outside of his tights kinda guy. And just to not leaving you hanging the 5th stage was added by MaryAnn Jensen in 1977 and it is adjourning, you came, you saw, you got the t-shirt and now it's time to find a new group.

Our assignment this week is to look at the adjourning phase of a team and report on two separate group adjourning events, an easy good-bye and a not so easy goodbye. Both of these events were weeklong intensives I took for my undergrad program .  One was an Infant Toddler Caregiver II class, one a Reggio-Emilia project approach training. I loved both classes and had fun but at the end of our infant/tod class I actually cried…I’m not a public crier! I couldn’t figure out for the longest time why it affected me so much, until now.  We were instructed to bring three things with us that represented who we were. This was our ice-breaker activity on the first morning of class. We were given small boxes and tables and tables of art supplies, crafty things, and miscellaneous materials to decorate our boxes to tell “our story”. The class was small, I think there were 10 of us, as it was a pilot class. The University wanted to see if it was a program that would be well received and could be offered. Our group was the first in the state to go through this infant toddler extension class (above and beyond the typical 4 credit class that was currently being offered). By the second morning of class we had finished our boxes and began sharing them with the group. What each of us was sharing were the intimate details of our lives and what made us tick; I think it drew us together closely and quickly. We were also staying in a dormitory that was rustic to say the least—no wifi, no television, sketchy cell service. After class on the second night we just all sat out in the hallway and talked til at least 2 in the morning, laughing and getting to know each other. It was so fun, one of my most cherished “college” memories (I was 30 before I ever started my post high school education).

The second grouping was the Reggio class. Still wonderfully fun, taught by my mentor and personal hero in the ECE world.  There were probably 40 of us taking the class, in a Conservation Corps cabin in the mountains just outside of Dillon Montana (super small town). We were placed in small groups of 5 to do our project work. This was the most excruciating group effort I had ever been involved in. My group mates were another provider from my town, two from the Browning Head Start, and one from the Great Falls Head Start. I turned out that the three head start teachers were told by their Ed Coordinators to show up and take this class, they weren’t given a choice, they did not want to be there, it was their summer vacation time.  Myself and the other gal from my town had our own family childcare homes and we were really the go getters of the group because of that fact. We weren’t used to having assistant teachers, or sharing classrooms or any of that kind of interaction. If there was a job to do in our programs it was up to us to get it done. The other girls were used to having to report back to a number of people in order to made decisions. Tough combination; by day 5 I was more than ready to go home. It was drama, discontent and hurt feelings all the way around. When the other girls could not make decisions or add to the project we just did the work without them…they did not like that at all. There was a spot set up in camp to work on conflict resolution—we ended up there twice—the record for any class over the last decade. I learned so much more about myself in that week than I have in my entire life, bad group experience, but amazing self-reflection and personal growth for me personally.

I loved both groupings each in a different way. I think what made the first group more magnanimous was the fact that it was a smaller group overall and we were all present on our own want, not because someone told someone they had to be there. The second reason was the icebreaker…it virtually eliminating the “storming” phase, as we jumped headlong into the norming phase. They tried to repeat the infant/toddler II class one more time after ours and it didn’t go well at all. The University decided not to sponsor it, so perhaps it was a fluke to begin with. I would like to think the stars aligned and we had the right people at the right time to create the mother of all groupings!

The closing activities were similar with both groups but the level of commitment and genuine connectedness with the first group made it so hard to leave. I will remember it forever, and have created a number of friendships that last to this day.