Group Formation: Bennis and Shepard’s Model

In the last byte, we had a generic discussion about group formation.  In today’s byte, we look at Bennis and Shepard’s group development model.
This model proposes that there would be four stages in group development:
  1. Mutual Acceptance
  2. Decision Making
  3. Motivation and Commitment
  4. Control and Sanction
If a team’s needs to become a mature team, it would need to navigate through and negotiate all these stages of group development successfully.

This model in essence addresses three issues:

  1. Interpersonal issues – these involve matters of trust, personal comfort and authority
  2. Task issues – include mission or purpose of the group, methods employed by the group, outcome expected by the group
  3. Authority issues – includes decisions about who is in-charge, who tells whom what to do etc

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