Standard Model for the Stages of Team Development- Bruce Tuckman Model
There’s been a standard model for the stages of team development ever since Bruce Tuckman studied the traits of teams.
They’re basic human behaviors. They are forming, storming, norming and performing.
Forming is the getting to know you stage. It’s very I or me focused for everyone on the team. Each person understands who they are and what they bring to the table, but they may not understand any more than that. Everyone will be a little nervous, that’s to be expected. To speed the team through this stage, the leader needs to anticipate the question team members may have and may not be willing to ask yet.
As the team forms, you need to be ready to repeat the purpose and vision often. This way the team can integrate these ideas into their belief structures. Other key topics and questions the team has are;
- Who are the other people on the team?
- What’s our work? How should we tackle it?
- What are the processes we use to get things done?
As a leader, you need to hold one-on-one conversations with each team member. This is going to help you establish trusting relationships with them and set the foundation for future interactions. You’re also facilitating conversations with the group that help team members get to know each other. In these sessions, you’ll hold introductions, established team norms, and help the team define success for them. Generally, during forming, team members aren’t really willing to have tough conversations that could lead to conflict. They stick to neutral topics to keep the peace. However, in order to move to the next stage of development, they must mature to the point where challenging each other is safe.
The willingness to disagree about important stuff leads to the next stage of development, storming. Well, not every team goes through storming, many teams do, so be prepared. Storming can take many forms, but the hallmarks are questioning the knowledge, skills, and abilities of their teammates.
And second guessing the decisions of the team, PO or scrum master. In order for the team to progress, personality clashes and other conflicts have to be addressed so they don’t fester. Avoidance of conflict will hurt the team in the long run. So it’s best to face challenges head on. At its root, storming happens because during forming, the team was a group of individuals. At this stage, they’re recognizing their reliance on each other to be successful. So they’re beginning to form as a team in the fullest sense of the word.
Your role as leader is to help them through this process. You need to keep them grounded in their team’s purpose and remind them of their norms for interacting with each other. You’ll need to use all of your facilitation and conflict resolution skills to help team members work out their differences. Finally, keep the team boundaries simple by first keeping the goals clearly in front of the team.
Once you’ve led your team through forming and storming, you’ll start to see the light at the end of the tunnel as they move into the norming stage. At this stage, the resolution of conflicts during the storming phase have resulted in a greater sense of intimacy and trust among the team members.
The norming stage can be identified when you see that everyone on the team is taking personal responsibility for their work and their interactions with each other. The team members have internalized their interdependence and share the same drive towards success. The one danger to be aware of in this stage is that the team may enjoy this unity so much, that they avoid making suggestions that may be controversial.
You can save them from this trap by coaching the leaders within the team to encourage brainstorming at every opportunity. Then when you see the team taking risks and considering different approaches, recognize and praise those behaviors. This helps the team build confidence in their ability to make assessments and decisions on their own.
As the leader of a norming team, your focus shifts to guiding them toward improvement. You’re encouraging them to ask quality-focused questions like;
- what are our current product defects and how can we prevent them in the future? Or
- how can we become more efficient in our delivery of customer value? And
- what else can we deliver to our customers that will truly delight them?
These questions help push the team toward the performing stage. At this stage, the team has almost completely autonomous and needs little guidance. They have a high degree of loyalty to each other. They expect conflict, but have the tools within the team to resolve disagreements quickly and amicably.
As the team emerges into the high-performance mode, you can help them become servant leaders for other teams in the company. This ability to help coach and guide other teams will keep them grounded as part of a greater whole. It’ll keep them humble rather than considering themselves better than the other teams. Your role as a leader is to help them see the team as one important cog in the greater enterprise wheel.
Bear in mind that once a team is high performing, it may not always stay there. In fact, consider the four stages of team development to be fluid, changing circumstances from adding new team members to changing processes can push the team back to a previous stage. You’ll need to monitor the team as long as they’re together, so you know what stage they’re in. This way, you can always take appropriate action to guide them to high performance.
Thanks for reading!
Have you experienced any of the stages in your team? What are your thoughts?
Resources:
Linkedln learning- Scrum: Advanced
