| Course | BU 502 Leadership and Team Dynamics |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 2 |
| Paper type | Development stage analysis |
| Length | About 1,000 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Herzing University |
| Program | MBA |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for BU 502 Unit 2
Settled on Thursday, Reopened by Monday: A Development Stage Analysis of a Composite Move Coordination Team Stalled at One Seam
Student Name
Business, Herzing University
BU 502: Leadership and Team Dynamics
Instructor Name
April 13, 2026
Settled on Thursday, Reopened by Monday: A Development Stage Analysis of a Composite Move Coordination Team Stalled at One Seam
The Model and Its Source
This paper places the move coordination team described in Unit 1 against a staged model of group development and argues why it has stalled where it has. The model comes from Tuckman (1965), who proposed from a review of studies of therapy, training and laboratory groups that groups tend to pass through forming, storming, norming and performing. Tuckman and Jensen (1977) revisited the model more than a decade later and proposed adjourning as a final stage for groups that come to an end. The model is a description of common tendencies drawn from that literature, not a law about how every workplace team must behave, and the closing section returns to that limit.
A stage cannot be placed from a mood, so each one is first converted into behavior a person could watch.
| Stage | What it would look like on this team |
|---|---|
| Forming | Members ask what the new arrangement means; huddle contributions are polite and brief; people defer to the old routines |
| Storming | Decisions about who controls the date are challenged; settled plans are reopened; members appeal over the lead to the general manager |
| Norming | Rules for booking and planning are written down and followed without reminders; disagreements are raised in the planning session, not after it |
| Performing | Members adjust plans for each other without the lead; problems surface before the day of the move; the Thursday plan survives the week |
Forming, October to November 2025
The team in its present form began in October 2025, when the three estimators were moved from sales into move coordination. For about six weeks the log of that period, reconstructed from my calendar and the board history rather than from the daily log I began in February, shows forming behavior. Estimators attended the 8:15 huddle on their office day only and spoke when asked. On October 23 one estimator asked in the huddle whether the move to the team changed who approved discounts, a question about the new arrangement rather than a challenge to it. Coordinators kept using the routines they had used for years, and nobody proposed changing them.
The team passed through this stage, but it did so without anything that would mark the end of it. There was no meeting about how booking and scheduling would now work together, and no written rule about who owns a move date once it is offered to a customer.
Storming, From Late November
The first clear storming episode is dated November 24, when an estimator objected in the huddle that coordinators were calling customers to "re-confirm" dates the estimator had already confirmed, and said this made the estimator look unreliable. Similar episodes followed at a steady rhythm. On January 15 a Saturday crew plan agreed in the Thursday session was reopened the next Monday after an estimator added a third truck for a job booked over the weekend. On February 19, during the observation period, the same thing happened with two jobs on the last Friday of the month. On March 5 the senior dispatcher declined to rebuild a plan and asked in the huddle who had the right to add jobs to a closed day. The question received no answer.
Each episode turned on the same issue, control of the move date once a customer has been offered it. Appeals over the lead also appear in reports: on two occasions in February an estimator told me the general manager had already approved a date before I was asked, and the general manager confirmed this when I raised it.
Partial Norming Inside One Subgroup
Not all of the team is storming. The coordinators and dispatchers worked together for years before the restructuring and behave like a normed group with each other. During the eight weeks, coordinators moved a job to a different crew on 23 occasions without involving me, and in every case the dispatcher simply updated the board. Coordinators raised problems in the huddle, and on four occasions a coordinator disagreed with a dispatcher in the room and the disagreement was settled there. This is how a norming group behaves, and it shows the team is not storming as a whole.
The storming sits at one seam: the handover from estimator to the rest of the team. A model applied to the whole team would average these two pictures and place the team somewhere misleading.
Where the Team Sits and Why It Has Not Moved
The team sits in storming along the estimator seam and in norming elsewhere. The harder question is why it has stayed there for four months, when the model expects storming to give way as members settle roles and rules.
Three behaviors keep it there. First, the Thursday session makes decisions but records none of them; the plan on the board changes, but the rule behind a change does not exist anywhere a person could point to on Monday. A settled matter can therefore be reopened without anyone appearing to break an agreement. Second, the general manager accepts direct appeals about dates from estimators, which means the team's own forum is never the last word. Third, I have treated each reopened plan as a scheduling task and rebuilt it, which solves the week and leaves the question of ownership open for the next one.
Gersick (1988) found in her study of project groups that the framework set at a group's first meeting tends to persist until a midpoint transition, when groups revise their approach as a deadline nears. This team has no deadline and no midpoint, because its work is continuous, and its first meeting in the new form never set a framework for the date question at all. On Gersick's account, a team in that position has no built-in moment that would push it to settle the seam. The stall is the absence of an agreed rule plus three habits that make the absence cheap.
Limits of This Placement
Staged models describe tendencies observed across many groups, and Tuckman (1965) drew his from groups quite unlike a workplace team with continuous work and changing membership. Teams can sit in different stages along different seams, as this one does, and can return to an earlier stage when structure changes. The placement here also leans on reports for everything that happens at the general manager's level. It is offered as the most consistent reading of the dated evidence, and Unit 3 tests it by tracing the symptom the team itself complains about back to the pattern underneath.
References
Gersick, C. J. G. (1988). Time and transition in work teams: Toward a new model of group development. Academy of Management Journal, 31(1), 9-41. https://doi.org/10.5465/256496
Tuckman, B. W. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), 384-399. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0022100
Tuckman, B. W., & Jensen, M. A. C. (1977). Stages of small-group development revisited. Group & Organization Studies, 2(4), 419-427. https://doi.org/10.1177/105960117700200404
The Herzing BU 502 Unit 2 instructions
Unit 2 of BU 502 asks for an analysis of where one team sits on a development model and why. Students choose a staged model, attribute it to the researcher who proposed it, apply each stage to the team using behavior with approximate dates, and argue what keeps the team where it is. The assignment rewards the stall argument more than the placement itself. Teams that seem to sit between stages are common, and the instructions generally allow a split placement if the evidence supports it. Expect to end with the model's limits, since staged models describe tendencies. Meeting minutes and internal emails are company records, so leave them unquoted and retell each episode in your own words.
How this BU 502 Unit 2 example is built
After crediting the model to Tuckman and the later fifth stage to Tuckman and Jensen, the example converts all four stages into observable conduct in a short table. Forming is then dated to the six weeks after the estimators joined, with one question from the huddle as evidence. Storming gets four dated episodes, all turning on control of the move date, plus two reported appeals to the general manager. A separate section shows the coordinators and dispatchers already behaving as a normed group, so the storming is located at one seam. The stall section names three behaviors holding the team there, including the lead's habit of rebuilding plans, and brings in Gersick's midpoint finding before closing on limits.
Reading the BU 502 Unit 2 rubric
The rubric for this unit usually weighs model accuracy and attribution, translation into behavior, evidence for each stage, the stall argument and writing mechanics. Attribution earns its points when the model is credited to its author and described accurately, including where it came from. Translation is judged on whether a reader could test the placement, which adjectives cannot support. Evidence criteria reward dated episodes across the whole sequence, not just the stage the writer prefers. The stall argument carries the heaviest weight in most versions, and top marks go to papers that name specific behaviors keeping the team in place. Recognizing that different parts of a team can sit at different stages is often credited as stronger analysis.
BU 502 Unit 2 help before you submit
Stage papers lose points when they announce a stage and support it with a paraphrase of the model. Feeling words such as tense or comfortable leave the marker nothing to check. Skipping straight to storming hides whether the team ever finished forming. Another trap is averaging a team with two climates into one stage, which produces a placement that fits nobody. Writers also forget their own part in the stall; in the sample the lead's rebuilds are one of the three holding behaviors. If your team does not fit neatly, our writers can help you build a split placement from your own dated episodes and draft it to your section's rubric.
Get a BU 502 Unit 2 example written to your instructions
The fastest route through Unit 2 is to hand us the instructions and the BU 502 rubric your classroom carries, plus whichever staged model your section teaches. We write a custom example that attributes the model, translates its stages into observable behavior, evidences each with dated episodes and argues the stall. First custom sample free, returned in 24 to 48 hours.
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BU 502 Unit 2 questions, answered
Which staged model should the example use?
Whichever one your instructions and reading set out, since sections differ and arguing against the assigned framework rarely pays. Where the choice is open, pick one, attribute it, and stay inside it for the whole paper. Mixing two models halfway through produces a document that places the team twice and defends neither placement properly.
What if the team seems to sit between two stages?
Say so and treat it as the finding rather than a problem. Teams commonly hold the cooperation of a later stage in routine work and fall back to an earlier one under pressure or after a member changes. Show both patterns with evidence, then argue which one governs, since that argument is worth more than a tidy single label.
Can I quote emails or meeting minutes from my team?
Not as documents. Internal correspondence and minutes are records the organization owns, and pasting them into a submission moves them outside it. Retell the episode as your own account of what took place and what changed as a result, keep individuals as roles, and let the evidence be your narration rather than an attachment nobody agreed to release.
Where can I find a free BU 502 Unit 2 sample paper?
This page carries the complete BU 502 Unit 2 development stage analysis free, with the stage table, the dated episodes, the stall argument and margin notes. Working from a different team? Share the prompt and a few dated episodes; a custom analysis follows free, generally inside 48 hours.
Can a team be in two stages at once in BU 502 Unit 2?
Yes, if the evidence shows it. The sample finds the long-standing coordinators and dispatchers behaving as a normed group while the seam with the newer estimators is still storming, and argues from that split.