Management and Leadership Tuckman Stages of Team Development

The Tuckman stages of team development are an important concept for a health care leader. The five stages are the means by which a team can come together in pursuit of a common mission, and the means by which the team will retain its cohesiveness over time. The five stages in the Tuckman model for team development are forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. These stages take the team from its inception to the point at which the team in wound down..

The forming stage is usually a stage when "most team members are positive and polite." There is some anxiety about the project, uncertainty about both roles and the team's social structure, and many team members are quite excited about the project (MindTools.com, 2015). For the manager, the forming stage is important to set the mission for the team, outline the different roles and responsibilities and begin the process of building trust (Stein, 2015). Most of the team's energy goes towards these formative processes at this stage, rather than to the actual tasks that need to be done.

The storming stage is named because this is the point when people in the group "start pushing at the boundaries that were created in the forming stage" (MindTools, 2015). There can be conflict between the working styles of the different team members, or power struggles might emerge within the team. The goals or assumptions might be questioned. This can be an important part of teamwork, because at this stage any faults or issues that might have existed early on will be identified. The problem is that the inherent conflict of the storming stage can also break the team. Thus, leadership plays a critical role at this stage, when people in the team need to make changes and challenge authority. Leadership needs to know when to allow people to redefine things and to set new boundaries, and leadership has to be adept at conflict resolution as well during this stage.

The norming stage of team development is the point at which the team starts to come together. The team might have re-established roles, but at this point there is a higher level of social interaction within the team, and there is a greater level of commitment to the team goal. Managers like to see this stage, because it usually implies that things are going well for the team. The group becomes more harmonious, issues that were identified earlier have been resolved and the team is working towards the goal.

The performing stage is next. At this stage, the team is starting to achieve its goals. The progress that came through the norming stage is paying off, and by this stage the team is enjoying a certain amount of success. The leader of the team mostly needs to keep the team humming along well at this point, integrating new team members where necessary and ensuring that old conflicts do not re-emerge. The adjourning stage may see team members hesitant to wind the team down, but if the team is achieving its goals then the team is going to be wrapped up. The main role for the manager at this point is to ensure that the transition out of the team is as smooth as possible for the team members, and that the team's objectives have been met in their entirety.

In health care, there are often interdisciplinary teams. The key for a health care manager is that the dynamics of teams are universal, so even when there is an interdisciplinary team the same stages still apply. The leader can consider that different disciplines may clash -- in particular there are different workstyles and maybe even rivalries. The manager may need to work harder at maintaining intergroup communication when there are team members from different specialties and fields. However, it is worth mentioning that it is also easier to delineate roles when the team members each have their own specialties.

2. Financial Objectives

Health care organizations have different financial objectives -- some are for-profit entities while others are not -- but ultimately financial objectives may create situations where there are competing interests. Where one of those competing interests is the staff, this makes for a unique challenge for the human resources department. The first, and most basic challenge is striking the balance between paying a top wage to get top people, or paying lower wages and maybe not getting the best people. Both are reasonable approaches, but ultimately health care management understands that where such a trade-off exists, it is usually quite literally a cost versus quality...

The institution that pays more provides better service, and sometimes can charge more for that quality service as well. The health care manager needs to make this decision in line with the strategy of the organization and whoever the payers are. Staff are directly motivated by their compensation.
The second way in which quality can be affected by the financial objectives is with respect to training. It takes time and money to deliver the best training, and an organization may have trouble making that investment if it is attempting to increase its profits. Often, this reflects a trade-off between the short- and long-term in terms of the financials

One of the approaches that managers can use to reconcile the conflicts that sometimes emerge between the pursuit of profit and the quality of service is through the balanced scorecard. This concept highlights the reality that there are a number of different stakeholders for each organization. The scorecard wants to optimize outcomes for all of them. This provides an opportunity to creative thinking that can deliver mutually beneficial solutions. The staff of a health care organization, if their needs are met, are likely to be more engaged and deliver better service (Chow et al., 1998).

Another interesting challenge is at the recruitment level. Many healthcare organization seek to pull workers from other states or other countries. There are actually advantages to this, in terms of cost, language skills and intercultural competency. But there are also some disadvantages, especially if the person in question is of imperfect English skills. Service is impacted negatively if there are communication barriers, but positively if this means alleviating a staffing shortage. What looks like it might be a cost-cutting move, however, could actually be positive if the organization is finding good workers who are undervalued in the market because they are from somewhere else. . While there is apparent conflict between the financial and quality goals, ultimately this may not be a sure thing -- the quality is just as likely to increase.

Staff are not always motivated by money, so there are ways that can work if the organization feels that it needs to freeze wages, or cut staff, or otherwise cut costs. While some staff might be upset, the reality is that most will adapt and move on. Motivation then, can be done with praise, recognition, and appealing to people's desire to do their jobs well. Tapping into the intrinsic motivation of the staff member is especially important when financial objectives are a constrain against taking good care of your works.

What this means is that professional staff may require a number of other motivation techniques, because the most tradition one (more money) might not be available. The company should take this into consideration -- how ill it be able to motivate people when there is no additional money for motivation spending.

Q4. There are several ways in which the definition of diversity is shifting. First, diversity today includes many things that were not normally considered part of diversity. When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed, there were a set list of protected classes, and maybe there were a couple more added on later. But today, there is diversity in terms of gender identity, sexual orientation and other aspects that are not always legally protected, but that represent the diversity of the society in which we live. Another one that is more in vogue now is the idea of generational diversity, where you are dealing with adult patients ranging from the millennials even to people who predate the baby boom, and the giant gaps in generation will lead to a lot of other different issues as well.(Harrison, 2000). Management can be challenged to deal with these forms of diversity, especially when they are not given legal protection. Further, accommodating different groups is a challenge. As a health care manager, do you extend same sex partner benefits? Operationally, are same sex partners considered family for things like visitation and life-and-death decisoin-making. Too often, there is a lack of clarity with respect to how this should work, and managers must address this fluid definition of diversity.

Another issue in recent years has been the increase in the number of people who are from different groups. The more traditional views of diversity broke down gender lines, and maybe used the basic census demographics such as African-American, Hispanic and Asia American to define what diversity looked like. But recently, the definition…