Strategic Team Development - Dr Fazal Mahmood

A team is a group of people organised to work together. Teamwork is the ability to work together towards a common vision, goal or objective. All team members must share in that vision and work both independently and inter-dependently to achieve the goal. Modern managers must have the ability to harmonise individual accomplishment with organisational objectives.

As a team matures, members gradually learn to cope with the emotional and group pressures they face. As a result, the team goes through fairly predictable stages:

Stage 1 Forming

When a team is forming, members cautiously explore the boundaries of acceptable group behaviour. Like hesitant swimmers, they stand by the pool, dabbling their toes in the water. This is a stage of transition from individual to member status, and of testing the leader's guidance both formally and informally.

Forming includes these feelings:

§  Excitement, anticipation and optimism

§  Pride in being chosen for the project

§  Initial, tentative attachment to the team

§  Suspicion, fear and anxiety about the job ahead

and these behaviours:

§  Attempts to define the task and decide how it will be accomplished

§  Attempts to determine acceptable group behaviour and how to deal with group problems

§  Decisions on what information needs to be gathered

§  Lofty, abstract discussions of concepts and issues; or, for some members, impatience with these discussions

§  Discussion of symptoms or problems not relevant to the task; difficulty in identifying problems

§  Complaints about the organisation and barriers to the task

Because there is so much going on to distract members' attention in the beginning, the team accomplishes little, if anything, that concerns it's project goals. This is perfectly normal.

Stage 2 Storming

Storming is probably the most difficult stage for the team. It is as if team members jump in the water, and thinking they are about to drown, start thrashing about. They begin to realise the task is different and more difficult than they imagined, becoming irritable, blameful or overzealous. Impatient about the lack of progress, but still too inexperienced to know much about decision making or the scientific approach, members argue about just what actions the team should take. They try to rely solely on their personal and professional experience, resisting any need for collaborating with other team members.

Storming includes these feelings:

§  Resistance to the task and to quality improvement approaches different from what each individual member is comfortable using

§  Sharp fluctuations in attitude about the team and the project's chance of success

and these behaviours:

§  Arguing among members even when they agree on the real issues

§  Defensiveness and competitive; factions start to form and members start to choose sides

§  Questioning the wisdom of those who selected this project and appointed the other members of the team

§  Establishing unrealistic goals; concern about excessive work

§  A perceived 'pecking order'; disunity, increased tension, and jealousy

Again, these many pressures mean team members have little energy to spend on progressing towards the team's goal. But they are beginning to understand one another.

Stage 3 Norming

During this stage, members reconcile competing loyalties and responsibilities. They accept the team, team ground rules (or 'norms'), their roles in the team, and the individuality of fellow members. Emotional conflict is reduced as previously competitive relationships become more co-operative. In other words, as team members realise they are not going to drown, they stop thrashing about and start helping each other stay afloat.

Norming includes these feelings:

§  A new ability to express criticism constructively

§  Acceptance of membership in the team

§  Relief that it seems everything is going to work out

and these behaviours:

§  An attempt to achieve harmony by avoiding conflict

§  More friendliness, confiding in each other, and sharing of personal problems; discussing the team's dynamics

§  A sense of team cohesion, a common spirit and goals

§  Establishing and maintaining team ground rules and boundaries (the 'norms')

As team members begin to work out their differences, they now have more time and energy to spend on the project. Thus they are able to at last start making significant progress.

Stage 4 Performing

By this stage the team has settled its relationships and expectations. They can begin performing - diagnosing and solving problems, and choosing and implementing changes. At last team members have discovered and accepted each other's strengths and weaknesses, and learned what their roles are. Now they can swim in concert.

Performing includes these feelings:

§  Members having insights into personal and group processes, and better understanding of each other's strengths and weaknesses

§  Satisfaction at the team's progress

and these behaviours:

§  Constructive self-change

§  Ability to prevent or work through group problems

§  Close attachment to the team

The team is now an effective, cohesive unit. You can tell when your team has reached this stage because you start getting a lot of work done.

This article has been extracted from one of the Impression Training course books. All training materials are developed by experienced trainers and consultants.

Impression Training runs courses related to this topic.

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This Is the Best Time of Day to See Your Therapist

If you see a therapist for anxiety or a phobia, you might make more progress in sessions scheduled for the morning hours. Cortisol, a hormone that regulates stress and fear, is highest at this time of day—and a new study suggests this could make a real difference in overcoming emotional difficulties.

The new research, conducted by researchers at Southern Methodist University and the University of Michigan, focused specifically on a treatment known as exposure therapy. During exposure therapy, patients work with mental-health professionals to put themselves in situations that would normally cause panic or fear. The goal, with repeated exposures, is to diminish those stress responses over time.

“For example, a patient may think that standing in an elevator could cause him or her to lose control or faint, suffocate, or may create physical symptoms that would be intolerable,” explained Alicia E. Meuret, PhD, director of the SMU Anxiety and Depression Research Center, in a press release. “By having them stand in an elevator for a prolonged time, the patient learns that their feared outcome does not occur, despite high levels of anxiety. We call this corrective learning.”

Not all patients benefit equally from exposure therapy, though. And Meuret and her colleagues suspected the hormone cortisol—which is thought to help suppress distressing memories and facilitate corrective learning—may influence how its effectiveness varies from person to person. They knew that cortisol levels tend to be highest early in the day, so they set out to test whether morning sessions worked better to help people overcome their issues.

Their study involved 24 people with panic disorders and agoraphobia, a fear of public places. The men and women received weekly sessions over three weeks, during which they were exposed to situations such as tall buildings, highways, elevators, supermarkets, movie theaters, and public transportation.

Overall, the participants showed improvement no matter what time of day their sessions were held. But, as suspected, they made the biggest gains during appointments that started earlier in the day.

When patients came back the week after a morning session, they scored lower on measures of threat misappraisal, avoidance behavior, and panic symptom severity. They also felt that they had greater control over their panic symptoms.

The authors point out that factors besides cortisol levels—like natural circadian rhythm or quality and quantity of sleep—could certainly influence the effectiveness of early-morning therapy.

But higher cortisol levels were also related to better outcomes in the study—above and beyond the time-of-day effects. (Saliva samples were taken during each session.) This suggests that the hormone is at least partially responsible for the a.m. bump, they say. 

Drugs to mimic cortisol’s fear-extinction powers are being investigated, says Meuret, but so far they’ve produced mixed results. For now, she offers another suggestion. “The findings of our study promote taking advantage of two simple and naturally occurring agents—our own cortisol and time of day.”

The study, published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology, notes that it’s not always possible to schedule therapy sessions for the morning. But exposure therapy also involves “homework” between meetings, the authors say, which can be practiced with more flexibility.

Meuret also cautions that her study looked at a very specific type of psychotherapy. Without further research, she can’t speculate how much the findings would apply to other types—like cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT, sometimes known as talk therapy) held in a practitioner’s office.

But she does say that most therapies for anxiety “target the learning of new and corrective information,” and that’s a good sign.

“Our data, along with data from learning and memory studies, suggests that there should be a benefit in practicing CBT skills in the morning hours,” she told Real Simple, although studies are needed to confirm this idea. “Evidence-based psychotherapy is about learning of new information, and memory studies generally suggest that learning is better in the morning.”

Functional Medicine Approaches To Narcolepsy Incorporate Lifestyle Changes Into Overall Treatment Plan

When a Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice study showed that a variety of stress- and fatigue-related issues have been improved through functional medicine, Jose Colon, MD, MPH, was far from surprised.

For years, he’s seen the benefits of utilizing functional medicine, a science-based healthcare approach with an emphasis on addressing the root causes of chronic diseases.

Through his clinical practice, Colon, the founder of Paradise Sleep, has found taking an integrative functional medicine approach to treating sleep disorders—including narcolepsy—to be very effective.

“When we look to treating sleep disorders, we often spend a lot of time worrying about the nighttime but it’s especially important to address what’s going on during the daytime as well,” says Colon, author of The Sleep Diet-A Novel Approach to Insomnia. “I think of disorders like narcolepsy, a 24-hour disorder.”

That means helping patients with narcolepsy look at other factors that contribute to excessive sleepiness, such as their lifestyle choices. Colon says it’s all about helping patients make lifestyle adjustments that will help improve their condition (along with the sleep disorder medication that’s necessary).

While treatment approaches and methods vary from patient to patient, one lifestyle change Colon has recommended to some narcolepsy patients is a low glycemic diet. Eating low glycemic foods has been found to improve mood and lower fatigue, according to a 2010 study.

“Patients like to know what’s going on with their disorder and what kind of lifestyle accommodations we can make,” says Colon. “That includes scheduling naps or making nutritional changes to ultimately improve the quality of life among patients that have excessive daytime sleepiness.”

Other recommendations include reminding patients to stay hydrated, since fatigue can be a sign of dehydration. Even trying out essential oils in the peppermint or citrus variety to maintain wakefulness sometimes provides a needed boost.

“There are of course medications that can sustain alertness but sometimes a patient just needs to get through a test, sometimes a patient just needs to get through a meeting, and it is an option that you can add another medication or give them another short-acting medication. But another option is that they can look at another option backed by science that can be helpful,” says Colon.

Will functional medicine approaches become more prevalent in our conversations about narcolepsy?

Most likely so.

“I think we’re making movements, and if you take a look at the amount of data on mindfulness today and the amount of data that was on mindfulness 10 years ago, it’s a boom in the amount of information that’s out there,” says Colon.

The Fertility Crisis is real - and it's getting worse

Couples are waiting longer and longer to start families for many reasons. Too often, when the time is right financially, socially or professionally, it may not be right physically. Problems and delays in conceiving lead to pressures and stress between couples who fall prey to false hope and promises from an overly publicized IVF community.

IVF is a propitiously suggestive and expensive protocol that safeguards revenue by not disclosing accurate failure rate or injured organ data. IVF professionals feed into the panic; capitalizing on it through its money-making fear mongering protocol. They routinely formulate life in LABS rather than investigate and solve what is impairing a woman's fertility. Couples end up cashing in their life savings in hopes of having a child and many end up never conceiving.





                                              Jennifer Mercier's own struggles with conceiving led her to years of drugs and disappointment. She questioned the IVF community and its practices and began to dedicate her life to researching alternative practices that were less damaging to the body and the purse. The result: Jennifer found that a focus on the cause of the infertility is a better approach to take. Through research and her practice, Jennifer created an approach to conceiving that boasts a 5X more success rate than IVF for a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the stress to the couple and the body's reproductive organs. Her whole-body approach maintains the integrity of the woman physically and her reproductive organs remain unscathed, intact and free of drugs.