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