Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing

When I went back to school in 2004 to finish my BS, the first class I took introduced me to a theory of team formation and dynamics that was just 4 words long:

Forming

Storming

Norming

Performing

The Morning Stars are in this process.  Thankfully, we've known each other for several years and have shared connections at church.  Our forming period was the most difficult, as we didn't know what we were capable of, or if the group would even come together.  We had some absences early on, and weren't really sure if the other members were committed.  Around rehearsal #3, this pretty much vanished.  Everyone expressed how much fun they were having in the group, and apologized to the other members for forgetting or being late.  No animosity, but we weren't sure how much to trust each other and didn't know our roles until we settled in a bit.

At that point, the group was formed.  We had an ongoing concern in business parlance, and could take our performance opportunities as a real possibility.  During the next few weeks, we dealt with the reality that some arrangements call for a different vocal assignment.  I was always flat on one piece, and another member wasn't quite in tune either.  We switched parts, and found that it worked much better that way.  Frankly, we didn't do much storming.  Nobody got mad, we figured out a way to make the thing work.  Even this early, we were having fun.

Norming is where we've been for a few weeks now.  Everyone shows up on time, ready to sing, taking ownership of trying new things.  If one of us doesn't have a part, he fixes it.  That may require stopping the group and running a few measures a few times.  It may require singing a few more verses to figure it out.  As a result, we now have about half an hour of performance-ready music.  We've worked on another half an hour worth, and sung through a bunch of stuff that we're not going to use.  We've also put time and thought into our next forays into arranging and composing for the next 6 months.  

Are we to the performing stage?  I think we're very very close.  As we get better, rehearsals have become less chattery and more music-focused, and that's brought us into a different realm.  Last night, we spent about half an hour finishing our 15-minute program for this coming Saturday.  Then we spent an hour playing around - working on a piece that grabbed our fancy, changing the ending to an upcoming piece, reading through a new piece and deciding we didn't like it, hitting some favorite hymns along the way.  Many choirs have problems with chattiness where people will say funny things to avoid fixing a difficult spot, lengthening the time it takes to fix it.  The Morning Stars don't do that any more.  We attack problem spots in the most efficient way we can, and our chatty breaks tend to be short, funy, and focused.  There's lots of levity and smiles, and there's also serious rehearsing.  Will we ever be the King's Singers?  Nope.  Is that okay?  Yep.  We are, as envisioned, a group of guys that love to sing.  Performance opportunities will come  if the music is ready, and we'll do that.  But performance is incidental - the love of music is what drives us, and drives us together.

It's a good place to be.