As you might know, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert ended last week, bringing to a close Colbert’s own 11-year run on the show, as well as The Late Show‘s 33-year run (which began with host David Letterman), and a history of TV variety shows in the same theater dating back to the early 1950s. Included in that run was The Beatles’ American TV debut on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964, watched by 73 million people (almost 40% of the nation). Remarkably, more than 62 years later, The Beatles’ Paul McCartney was Colbert’s final guest (and performer – singing Hello, Goodbye with Colbert on backing vocals), and was given the symbolic honor of turning off the theater’s power to end the show.
What you might not know is that less than 24 hours after Colbert’s 1,794th and final episode of The Late Show, he hosted a different one-hour late-night talk show, called Only In Monroe – this time on public access TV in small-town Monroe, Michigan – complete with guests like Eminem and Steve Buscemi, and with musical director Jack White. (The show was a bookend to his Late Show career; the day before his first episode of The Late Show back in 2015, Colbert held a dry-run of sorts on the same public access channel in Monroe – also including Eminem as a guest.)
The close of Colbert’s late night, whether it be for financial reasons (as CBS has claimed) or political reasons (as is commonly believed), got me thinking about the often-overlooked final stage of Bruce Tuckman’s model of group development. As you may know, Tuckman’s model outlines the stages many groups find themselves going through over time:
- Forming – Orientation and getting acquainted.
- Storming – Conflict and role clarification.
- Norming – Cohesion and collaboration.
- Performing – Achieving goals and high productivity.
- Ajourning – Completion, closure, and reflection.
Naturally, when people think about group development, they want their teams to be in the “performing” stage, where everything clicks and the team moves fluidly with shared trust and common goals. (Spoiler alert: This hardly ever happens! If you’re being brutally honest with yourself, you might be able to count on the fingers of one hand the number of times you’ve been on a team that has truly been in the performing stage. More on that another time…) So naturally we focus a lot on the first three stages in order to get there. But we often don’t give much thought about how to close a team or an organization, or even just a project. And when we don’t find a way to adjourn well, we’re not setting up our team – our ourselves – to work effectively on what’s next.
But there are legitimate reasons why people avoid adjourning! Ending a group can create some apprehension, or even a minor crisis. It effectively revolves around giving up inclusion in the group, and/or letting go of greater purpose or group goals – and after it was all going so well! People want to hold on to what was good – what worked well – and as a result, as you may have experienced yourself, some committees, teams, and groups stay around much longer than their effectiveness. Momentum slows down, “Why are we even meeting anymore?” questions pop up.
As a team is reaching its end, emotions can range from sadness to relief. I’ve written before about creating a closing ceremony for your team at the end of a project, and each team’s needs are unique. But there are some common threads to pull together for any team, whether you’re ending a late night talk show or simply closing out a new product launch.
This Week’s Tips:
- Ask yourself – and your team – two questions for reflection (perhaps asynchronously, perhaps with a chance to share responses during a meeting):
- What can I / we be proud of?
- What will I miss about this group?
- Recognize and reward team efforts. If you’re leading the team, take some time to articulate everyone’s contributions to the team during this season, with some notes towards how that will serve future teams or projects of which they will be a part.
- Tie up loose ends and tasks. Close neatly. If there are dangling loose ends, it’s that much harder for a team to move on.
- Listen well to each member of the team, and help develop options for what’s next.
- Determine a date for the closure of the team / project, and, if possible, mark that final date with a celebration of sorts – even if it’s something simple. The group recognition mentioned above could take place there.
Try these out this week, and let us know how it goes – we’d love to hear from you!
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Building Bridges Leadership 