Team Management
Stages and roles
Teams commonly move through forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning, and leader behavior must shift at each stage - direction early, delegation later. Know the roles: sponsor/champion, team leader, facilitator (owns process, not content), members, subject-matter experts, and recorder. The charter defines purpose, scope, roles, deliverables, milestones, and constraints; ground rules are built by the team, not imposed on it.
Tools
The decision toolkit includes consensus (all members can support and commit), nominal group technique, multi-voting, Delphi (anonymous, iterative, for dispersed experts), and force-field analysis for readiness to change. Conflict modes are avoiding, accommodating, competing, compromising, and collaborating; collaborating is preferred when the issue matters and both parties hold needed information. Watch for groupthink, social loafing, and dominance by the loudest member.
Traps
Brainstorming rules are a favorite: no criticism during idea generation, quantity first, build on others' ideas. A distractor like “critique each idea as it is offered” is always wrong. Another trap swaps facilitator and leader, or credits the sponsor with running meetings. Also expect items on virtual teams - explicit agendas, documented decisions, and shorter cadence.
Rule of thumb: teams work best at roughly five to nine members; beyond that, meeting productivity and cohesion drop and subgroups form.