The ‘Storming’ phase in the process of teambuilding is where players try to find their spot in the team, relations are built and authorities are established. The coach is more passive in this phase carefully observing what is going on. For instance, the coach will be looking for a captain and try combinations like this 8-9-10 during this phase.

I like to share some of my experiences of the storming phase. (Back then I unfortunately did not understand the whole process as described here).

Coming new to the coaching job from coaching the Colts, I brought young raw talent with me to the First XV. Complications:

• The older players were only just discovering their own responsibilities, some veterans just quitted;
• The younger players came from a different background, atmosphere;
• Young players were thrown into the Premier League, scared not to perform;
• I wanted to change the way the first XV played, confusing the established players and given the ex-Colts an leading edge. Of course these ex-Colts understood better what I wanted;
• Because I retired early due to injury, some of the veterans were my old teammates. A situation I could not cope with very well….

I confused everybody by not informing, or explaining the way I wanted to team to play. I then thought it would be better if they would discover things by just doing all the small moves we practised in the game. Also I let the older players try to stamp their authority too much.
Looking back I should have taken more control. I did not have a ‘Norming’ phase……

Motherruggers

This was a team of mothers of the Under 12 team who wanted to play at the Ameland Beach Festival. Great to built this team from the ground up. Very few mothers actually played themselves and I had to ease them into the contact stuff, create tactical awareness and positional understanding. There was little “Storming” in the team because I was very clear what we wanted to achieve and how we were building towards that goal. At the tournament the mothers did very well too!

More

More on the other elements of the teambuilding process:

• Introduction on teambuilding;
• Forming: several angles on the forming phase in teambuilding;
• Norming: appointing a captain, develop a Code of Conduct and plays and scenario’s.
• Performing: gameplan, evaluation and goal setting.

The post Storming in Team Dynamics first appeared on Martin's Rugby Coaching Blog.