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Norming is where the team members:
- take responsibility,
- agree on and
- commit to team goals and processes, and
- accept other team members as they are.
Giesen and Osborne (2008) divided this stage into two:
- good norming and
- bad norming.
Examples of bad norming are where:
- a team member talks about a team member and not to that team member about an issue,
- the team leader refuses to handle a problem within the team,
- team members break into two or three cliques which do not cooperate effectively with each other, and/or
- team members avoid raising issues because they are apprehensive about how their fellow team members would respond (Giesen & Osborne, 2008).
Teams that fall into a bad norming stage either:
- (1) stay stuck in this stage and eventually have to be replaced, or
- (2) address the issues that are holding them back and go back to the storming stage before (hopefully) progressing to a good norming stage (Giesen & Osborne, 2008).
Examples of good norming are where:
- team members are able to raise issues and address disagreement and conflict, and
- the team leader's level of trust and confidence in the team grows, leading to team members taking on greater roles and responsibilities within the team (Geisen & Osborne, 2008).
The type of thing that a team might say at this stage is: This is what we do.
You might ask yourself at this stage: How can I help the team?