Your team is new and excited to learn about upcoming projects as well as about each other. You outline the work, as well as key milestones, deliverables and objectives. It’s up to you to provide clarity, ensure team alignment and employee motivation. If you reflect on them, they’ll tell you a cohesive story about the stages of team development their strengths, needs and performance. You and your teammates trust each other enough to get a little creative and innovative, while still delivering top-notch work on time. Managers and project leads need to keep their eyes open, but be mostly hands-off so the team can build muscle around working independently.
Understanding the five stages of team development is vital to form teams that work effectively as a unit. Teamwork presents a lot of unique challenges, like addressing individual needs, resolving conflicts and more. Projects that require a lot of teamwork show companies how important it is to have an organised and effective HR team. In the Performing stage of team development, members feel satisfaction in the team’s progress. They share insights into the personal and group process, and are aware of their own (and each other’s) strengths and weaknesses. Members feel attached to the team as something « greater than the sum of its parts » and feel satisfaction in the team’s effectiveness.
The forming stage
They’re fully accustomed to each other’s workflow and respect their colleagues. At the norming stage, a team leader, official or unofficial, steps back and gives individuals more autonomy, not giving the role up completely, of course. Forming is the very first stage of team development, and it typically takes place when the team is first created. You can think of this stage as the honeymoon phase, where team members are excited to work together and get to know one another.
This is often when personality clashes start to occur, as people begin to assert themselves and their individual strengths and weaknesses come to light. Forming typically lasts for a few weeks or months, and it’s important to make sure that team members are given the opportunity to get to know each other during this time. You can do this by organizing team-building activities, https://www.globalcloudteam.com/ setting up regular check-ins, and providing opportunities for feedback. In the 1960s, a strategy was developed by Bruce Tuckman that aimed to explain the process of how a team evolves and functions. The theory, now known as the “Tuckman Model”, is still used by businesses today as it outlines five distinct stages that a team goes through during its development.
What is Open Communication & Why it Matters in the Workplace
Psychologist Bruce Tuckman was the first to document the different phases that teams go through as they develop. In this article, we discuss the different stages of group development and how you can guide your team through them to optimize collaboration. At the end of the project, set up an online meeting where team members come together to discuss the entire project, from the successes to the frustrations. Ask them to prepare examples beforehand outlining what worked and what didn’t, and then give each person five minutes to share their thoughts. Document the comments so that it’s easy to see which trends emerge and what changes need to be made going forward.
There may be regret as the team ends, so a ceremonial acknowledgement of the work and success of the team can be helpful. If the team is a standing committee with ongoing responsibility, members may be replaced by new people and the team can go back to a forming or storming stage and repeat the development process. If teams get through the storming stage, conflict is resolved and some degree of unity emerges.
Performing, the fourth stage of team development:
This is then followed by a « performing » phase that leads to a new performance level which they call the « reforming » phase. « Resolved disagreements and personality clashes result in greater intimacy, and a spirit of co-operation emerges. »[4] This happens when the team is aware of competition and they share a common goal. In this stage, all team members take responsibility and have the ambition to work for the success of the team’s goals. They start tolerating the whims and fancies of the other team members. The danger here is that members may be so focused on preventing conflict that they are reluctant to share controversial ideas.
If you’ve ever had to work on a project with other people, chances are, you have experienced Tuckman’s stages of group development firsthand. By this stage, teams have developed a sense of shared purpose – and this means that their productivity increases. Real work rarely gets done at the forming stage, but it’s not a problem. At this point, the focus is not on results but rather on building relationships with one another and finding a shared purpose.
Who invented Tuckman’s Team & Group Development Model?
The characteristic feature of the forming stage is team orientation. In the first stage of group development, people get to know each other. It resembles the first day at a new job when you are unsure how to interact with your colleagues and, for this reason, behave with caution.
- Commitment to the team’s mission is high, and the competence of team members is also high.
- The team will also be developing trust – helping each other and asking for help, and many teams are socialising with each other by this stage.
- Team members will be tired of conflicting ideas and work harder to solve problems and reach the best state possible for the group to achieve.
- Storming is the most difficult and unproductive of the five stages of development, but it is nevertheless vital to the team development process.
- Strong communication skills are the backbone of conflict resolution.
- Obviously, it is a leader’s responsibility to ensure team building goes smoothly.
Time, the right sort of support, and clear leadership all work together to move the new team to the point where important questions start to emerge. Forming is the first stage of team development, when people get to know each other as team members, rather than as people they see in the staff canteen or an occasional meeting. It is a time during which people often behave in ways that are subdued, guarded, observant and polite. Individuals will also start respecting the authority of the team leader. The first team results will appear, which team members will celebrate while being motivated to work harder to overcome any failures.
elegate responsibilities based on individual strengths
According to the 2021 overview of group development theories by Vaida and Şerban, the performing stage represents peak efficiency and coordination within the team. Most processes occur smoothly and interpersonal relationships flourish. Work is almost over – projects have been completed, goals have been achieved, and people start to move to other projects. Since they have got used to each other, it may be hard for them to leave the group.
With that in mind, let’s see what the experts have to say about how groups move from norming to performing. The now-famous terminology of forming, storming, norming, and performing came from the discussion segment of the paper. These terms were Tuckman’s shorthand for the events that take place during each of the stages he identified. The table below showcases the main components of the original phases of group development.
Stage 2: Storming stage
Solving problems face-to-face instead of over email or chat is a good investment right now because you’ll get a richer sense of who your teammates are as people. For more advice, check out these lists of team building books and team building tips. On the other hand, you must ensure that the team has most of the ownership over their direction and how they handle challenges. Teams that successfully traverse all these phases are what we refer to when we mention “top performers”. People who know and trust each other, have learned how to work together, and found rhythms and routines that work for them can easily tackle any challenge. After navigating through initial forming, intensive storming, and rebuilding during norming, magic happens.
Recent Comments