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How To Use The 5 Stages Of Team Development And Build Better Teams!

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stages of group development model

As it turns out, people approach tasks differently depending on the quality of their relationships with their co-workers. Have you employed Tuckman’s stages of team development model when working with your own team? We’d love to hear about how you helped your team grow and what methods you employed while doing so! Get in touch in the comments section below and share your experiences with the community. When your team is performing well, it can be easy to get caught up in the moment and assume that things will remain at this high level indefinitely. As teams grow and change they can move back into the Norming, Storming or even Forming stages of the group development process.

Performing Stage

Having fun together can be an often overlooked element of team development. Seeing your colleagues as more than their job roles is something that should happen in the early stages of the Forming process but it’s important to keep engaging these muscles. Even as a team improves in performance, it’s vital to keep improving and engaging these skillsets in the name of better cooperation and team development.

  • Group reflection is an important part of improving on how you collectively and individually manage conflicts.
  • Mentoring is primarily the identification and nurturing of potential for the whole person.
  • According to co-CEO John Mackey, they have developed a high degree of trust that results in better communication and a willingness to work out problems and disagreements when they occur.
  • And although it may be slightly cliche, there’s a lot of truth to it.
  • Conflict can often arise if members of a team don’t feel as if their needs are being met by others on the team or the regular give and take of effective teamwork breaks down.
  • Tuckman would later go on to say that his group-forming model gained such popularity because the names of the first 4 stages formed a perfect rhyme — considering that they all end in “ming”.

At this stage, members are introduced to one another and maybe learn about the team’s purpose. Members become acquainted with one another and the work they will do together. The dominant task for this stage is to establish norms for how to operate as a team.

Conflict can often arise if members of a team don’t feel as if their needs are being met by others on the team or the regular give and take of effective teamwork breaks down. Conflicts around how teams work together often come from misunderstandings in 4 stages of role development responsibilities or how roles interrelate. You can help a team move towards more effective working practices by ensuring every team member is able to articulate what they need from other members and leaders and be heard and understood in this process.

How To Make Norming Run Smoothly

This is the midpoint in the journey when the team has reached high performance. The team is being recognised throughout the organisation, and management is capturing the processes and lessons learned to replicate the team’s success. This is the tipping point before the team begins its decline into complacency. To avoid this, team members need to remember that agile is a journey, not an end state.

stages of group development model

MeetingsBuild collaborative agendas, record notes and action items in real-time, and never forget what was discussed. Group interaction are lot more easier, more cooperative, and productive, with weighed give and take, open communication, bonding, and mutual respect. Members are discreet with their behavior, which is driven by their desire to be accepted by all members of the group. Conflict, controversy, misunderstanding and personal opinions are avoided even though members are starting to form impressions of each other and gain an understanding of what the group will do together.

Adjourning Phase

The storming stage is the most difficult and critical stage to pass through. It is a period marked by conflict and competition as individual personalities emerge. Team performance may actually decrease in this stage because energy is put into unproductive activities.

To prevent this from happening team members must be aware of the common pitfalls that may occur during this stage and take appropriate steps to ensure they don’t. This is when people figure out the routine and start to come together as a cohesive unit. Now that members know each other, they are able to create a closer and stronger working relationship . During this time, members also develop a stronger commitment to the organization’s overall mission/goals and begin to make progress towards achieving these steps. This is where groups begin to settle into a working pattern, appreciate one another’s strengths and become more effective as a team. Most teams are comprised of people from different disciplines, backgrounds, and skill sets.

In this stage, more formal roles are established, and people begin feeling increasingly secure with one another. According to the Tuckman Ladder model, there are 5 stages in team development. Motivators would increase job satisfaction while the hygiene factors would reduce job dissatisfaction. Money as a reward would be a motivator otherwise a hygiene factor. The leader of team should focus on Job enrichment as a job satisfaction strategy when money and hygiene factors cannot be increased or no longer motivate a staff member. As all stages have their own focus, they also correspond to a different set of feelings, behaviors and group tasks.

When Jack Welch took charge at GE, he discovered a company on the brink of bankruptcy. After putting transformation leadership theory into practice, the turnaround is legendary. They need to make sure that it is running smoothly, with all members aligned and supportive of one another. It is their responsibility to make sure that the team is self-sufficient and has what it needs to grow. In the second stage, ‘storming’, conflict arises as different points of view clash, and team members may feel increasingly threatened by each other. It can be said that this is the stage where the team members learn to trust each other, and starts developing good working relationships.

Stage #5

The skills related to team building pertain to the second domain of the three domain model of leadership described in previous article. The skills related to managing self, such as emotional competencies, time management and active listening are foundational for managing and leading teams. The skills of team building play a pivotal role in achieving the goals of the organization. These skills are even more important in health sector both in clinical and public health settings.

Each team member should also try to analyze their reason for inciting potential conflict from the other person’s point of view. Moving from Storing to Norming likely means many problems or difficulties will have been surfaced and resolved. This doesn’t mean your team won’t see additional challenges or that there won’t be opportunities to improve. The first version is for teams who want to get to know each other better.

The niceties start to wear off a bit, and the honeymoon period is over. Differences in opinions, interpersonal issues arise, personality clashes, and work styles start to come out from different team members. When this happens, teams need to work their way out before they get stuck. Agile coaches and ScrumMasters can facilitate and help the team through this. Consider getting them aligned to the ‘social contract’ or ‘team rules’ or even the general code of conduct (HR policy – if it gets to that).

Make Change Management A Story Of Personal Growth And Development

Job enrichment is one important way of acquiring new skills and keeping team members motivated. As your team settles into a more regular pattern, it’s vital that you continue to take opportunities to celebrate one another and keep team spirit high. Happy teams are productive teams and so taking the time to improve team bonds through the team development process can help improve overall efficacy.

Storming often starts when there is a conflict between team members’ natural working styles. People may work in different ways for all sorts of reasons, but if differing working styles cause unforeseen problems, they may become frustrated. This frustration and rough patch is essential for groups to move onto the next stages of group development. While storming may feel like the end of the world to the students at the time, help guide the students through these conflicts. The storming period can last for an undetermined amount of time, and can ebb and flow as membership changes over. It’s up to the students to decide how to resolve this conflict and continue moving forward with their organization.

It’s best that you use each stage to learn and understand something new about your teammates and work on improving your workflows. Then, use this knowledge to help you overcome problems and reach your project goals with success. For your team to be as successful and as high-performing as possible, it’s important that all five stages are utilized to their fullest potential.

Team Norms And Cohesiveness

After reflecting as individuals, the team builds a collective map which can serve as the basis for further discussions and actions. Each one encouraging the team to reflect and analyse a different and crucial element of their behaviour. This might mean doing regular one to ones to develop and empower your team members or engaging in thoughtful group discussion around priorities and tasks. In this method, invite participants to write a few words of what they most value about their colleagues on a piece of paper before passing it along to the next person.

The escalation of conflict is enemy images, resulting in violence, dehumanization process leading to open hostility and polarization where co-existence is no longer possible. A conflict brings down the productivity of the team and vitiates the work environment preventing members to put in their best. An important skill for team leader to have and impart to team members is negotiation skill. At an organizational level, the process of conflict resolution is an opportunity for growth and change in a work environment. Conflict resolution is important for the bottom line on an organizational level as well as for personal achievement to see change in overall success.

There are a few things you can do to reduce the intensity and duration of your storms. One way is to touch base with your team regularly through short stand up meetings. Failure to address problems here can result in long-term issues, but once this stage is passed through successfully, things will get easier.

Getting Real Value From Team Values

One of those rules can be to remember to always listen to one another. No question is stupid, no idea is too silly to bring up, and no one is too “senior” to ask for help. At the end of the day, you’re all working towards a common goal, to get there, you need a foundation built on listening to what the others on the team have to say. And, if any other roadblocks are met, the team is able to work together to come up with the necessary solutions to get back on track.

For any team, it’s crucial to understand and observe these patterns, especially at the informing and conforming stages, before the team has a chance to deform. To avoid a team’s decline, watch and catch it early before it has the chance to manifest. This presents an opportunity for you and your teams to get creative, invent different patterns, practices and constantly evolve your way of working.

The stages of group development in organizational behavior and management are a theory of team development — a group-forming model that consists of 5 distinct stages. If you are at this stage, the team dynamics and good norms have been accepted. Team members can respectfully challenge each other to grow, people’s needs are being met, and everyone is focused on the same goal.

It is especially important for team members to manage this phase with patience and tolerance. The diversity and differences of the team members should https://globalcloudteam.com/ be emphasized as well as a common goal. There are some teams that never move from this stage to the next because it can be de-motivating.

Particularly when people with vastly different roles work together, expectations around needs, dependencies, and how to ask for help can be very different. Avoid misunderstandings and conflicts in this area by using this exercise to help everyone in a group coordinate around what they need to succeed and find ways to articulate those needs effectively. Where this exercise also excels is in giving everyone in the group room to respond and find better ways to work together in practical terms. Disagreements and differences of opinion will always happen when passionate and talented people get together – the key is to not get bogged down and find productive ways to navigate those differences.