Effective School Management

parties to get new things done. Such teams must learn to ‘gel’ quickly. Most
large schools operate with a top management team, which is an obvious
place to start trying to improve effectiveness.
Newly formed teams have been observed to pass through five stages of
development as they gain experience of working together (Tuckman, 1965).
These are depicted in Figure 10.3. Awareness by the team members of these
natural stages of team development helps to depersonalize conduct
sometimes misdiagnosed as members’ personality defects. Teams and their
members should bear in mind that
(1) progress is not continuous – a team that is ‘norming’ or ‘reforming’ can
easily fall back into ‘storming’ on a particular issue;
(2) if there is a change in team membership there will invariably be some
regression – otherwise a new member may be excluded; and
(3) most importantly, senior management should not change a team that is
storming’ in the mistaken belief that this group will ‘never manage to
work together’.
Like all models, this one is no more than an approximation to the truth, but it
does set a direction for development.
Teams are trained by encouraging them to follow a systematic approach to
getting things done. Individuals who have the talent and skill to solve
problems intuitively may feel that they do not need to follow a systematic
approach. Intuitive thinkers tend to solve a problem by devising solutions
and testing them until they are satisfied with the quality of their decisions.
Most individuals, however, are more effective when their thought processes
and actions are systematic; even intuitive thinkers meet situations when they
need a systematic approach.
It is when people are working in groups that a commonly understood
systematic approach becomes essential, since an intuitive approach cannot be
followed and understood by other members of the group. A simple

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EFFECTIVE
SCHOOL
MANAGEMENT