Martial Arts Professional Magazine

Your ability to negotiate, communicate, influence and persuade others to do things is absolutely indispensable to everything you accomplish in life. The most effective men and women are those who can quite competently organize the cooperation and assistance of other people toward the accomplishment of important goals and objectives.

Of course, everyone you meet has different values, opinions, attitudes, beliefs, cultural values, work habits, goals, ambitions and dreams. Because of this incredible diversity of human resources, it has never been more difficult, and yet more necessary, for diplomatic leaders to emerge and form these people into high-performing teams.

Fortunately, leaders are made, not born. You learn to become a leader by doing what other excellent leaders have done before you. You become proficient in your job or skill, and then proficient at understanding the motivations and behaviors of other people. As a leader, you combine your personal competencies with the competencies of a variety of others into a smoothly functioning team that can out play and out perform all its competitors.

When you become a team leader, even if your team only consists of one other person, you must immediately develop a whole new set of leadership skills. To determine these skills, you must consider the genesis of high-performing teams.

Teams generally progress through four phases, as they evolve toward high performance. These stages are called forming, storming, norming and performing.

The forming stage is very important, perhaps even critical, to the success of the team. Your ability to select the proper team members to accomplish a particular task-personal or business-is the mark of the superior leader. If you start by selecting the wrong people, then it becomes almost impossible to build a winning team, just as it would be impossible to win athletic championships with unskilled or ill-suited players.

In the forming stage, the team members come together and begin to understand each other. There will be a good deal of discussion, argument, disagreement and personal expression of likes and dislikes, and the forming of friendly alliances between team members.

This stage, especially the discussions and conversations, may seem time-consuming, but it is absolutely indispensable to the development of a unified group of people that you can lead. One of the most important qualities of a leader is patience; and patience is never more necessary than the early stages of assembling your team.

The second stage of team development is called storming. Storming is a shortened form of the word “brainstorming.” It is during this stage when the group, whose members are now comfortable with each other, begins the hard work of setting goals and deadlines, dividing the tasks, and starting the job. During the storming phase, people learn about the contributions that each member can make to achieve the purposes of the team.

The third stage of team development is called norming. This is where norms and standards are established among the team members, so that everyone feels secure and confident in his or her place. All members know what is expected and how it is to be measured. All members are aware of their responsibilities and obligations, not only to the job, but also to the each other. Your ability as a leader to promote the norming process is critical to the success of the team.

The fourth stage of team development is performing. In the final analysis, your ability to achieve results is all that really matters. Your lifestyle, rate of promotion and level of rewards, and respect and esteem among your co-workers and bosses will all be determined by your ability to perform and to lead others to perform.