In business we talk about the four stages of a group’s development: Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing.
The first stage, forming, is the initial stage where the group is being put together, team members join, and they establish the mission, goals and general ground rules. There’s a focus on learning about roles, expectations, and getting to know each other. This is one of the exciting phases, when all is new and possible.
The second stage, storming, is when the group first begins and roles are new, there may be conflict or disagreement as people test the waters and see who has responsibility. There is also an air of excitement as group members join and drop out depending on the situation.
At the norming stage, most conflicts are resolved, rules and goals are set, role responsibilities are clearer, and norms begin to be established. Team members begin to work more cohesively.
The final stage, performing, the team has reached its “steady state” and is its most productive, focused on achieving goals, and collaborating effectively.
However, I believe that there is more to the performing phase of group development, and in my opinion, that is the most important. Perseverance.
Perseverance is our effort to achieve something despite difficulties, setbacks, or opposition. It’s the quality of sticking with something until it’s finished, even when it’s challenging. Essentially, it’s the ability to keep going, especially when we want to quit.
I am reading the book How We Learn to Be Brave by Mariann Budde. You may know her as the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, courageous enough to speak her values when challenged.
In one of her chapters she covers perseverance, the ability to fail and not quit, the ability to learn from mistakes and continue on. She describes her own mistakes and those of Madeline Albright and how Dr. Albright learned to recognize and attempt to fix her mistakes as she persevered despite criticism and frustration. In her autobiography, Madam Secretary: A Memoir (a whopping 920 pages), she wrote a paragraph about perseverance so powerful …my words cannot do it justice.
I have spent a lifetime looking for remedies for all manner of life’s problems, personal, social, political, global. I believe that we can recognize truth when we see it, just not at first and not without ever relenting in our effort to know more. This is because the goal we see and the good we hope for comes not as a final reward, but as the hidden companion to our quest. It is not what we find, but the reason we cannot stop looking and striving that tells us why we are here.
Perseverance is the hardest part of any process. When we see a group member frustrating the group’s ambitions, it is easy to quit or shut down rather than try to work through it. When we make our own mistakes, it is hard to own up to them in the group. Perseverance is when we want to walk away, but we know that we need to stay.
In her book, Budde talks about her own experience. She arrived at her dream church, a church that was growing, vibrant and committed to social justice; only to find that underneath this success were relationship, leadership, and infrastructure issues. She had to go through the difficult process of helping the leadership and getting funding for infrastructure, a necessary but challenging part of church leadership.
Perseverance applies not just to groups or work but also to ourselves in our everyday life, especially with relationships. Marriages, friendships, and family have their ups and downs. And if we don’t persevere, then we can lose them. Once they are lost, they could be lost forever. I have my own regrets about letting friends go when we got to difficult places.
There is no trick to persevering, it is simply not letting temporary roadblocks become permanent. Remembering why we had a relationship in the first place before the differences and squabbles emerged. Sometimes it takes a cooling off period, but that can become permanent if we don’t persevere.
One of the secrets to a happy life is one full of friends and family. And, in most cases, that requires plain old perseverance.
Angela Rieck, a Caroline County native, received her PhD in Mathematical Psychology from the University of Maryland and worked as a scientist at Bell Labs and other high-tech companies in New Jersey before retiring as a corporate executive. Angela and her dogs divide their time between St Michael’s and Key West, Florida. Her daughter lives and works in New York City.
