5 Stages of Team Development Complete Guide

Team members now see each other’s differences as strengths—everyone fits and has a role to play. In 1965, American educational psychological researcher Bruce Wayne Tuckman published Tuckman’s Stages as a way to improve teamwork and enhance company efficiency. His method originally only comprised four stages of team development until 1977, when he teamed with doctoral student Mary Ann Jensen to add a fifth stage. In this post, we discuss Tuckman’s five stages of team development, including how they apply to a modern workforce and how managers can use them to build team cohesion. Here, the group starts to grapple with competing opinions and differing views.

HR is important in this stage, since they may need to be called upon to settle disputes and assist the team. Norming is a great stage for a team, since many barriers phases of team development will have been broken down and the team can really start working in harmony. Encourage all ideas and provide positive feedback when an idea is presented.

Bonus Tip: Use a Productivity Tracker and Team Management Application

Even if you’re not “Agile” , you self-organize around tasks. You don’t wait to be told how to do your job – you determine the best way to meet your objectives and get on with it. For the team to perform at its best, a good leader will encourage creative conflicts and help celebrate and reward achievements. This empowers the team, especially if the leader steps back once a team is performing.

Mature team members begin to model appropriate behavior even at this early phase. The meeting environment also plays an important role to model the initial behavior of each individual. Members attempt to become oriented to the tasks as well as to one another. This is also the stage in which group members test boundaries, create ground rules, and define organizational standards. Discussion centers on defining the scope of the task, how to approach it, and similar concerns.

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Overall, the storming phase is when team members question team processes, and if not handled properly, it can thwart team performance. Team management is an important skill a leader needs to have, but it is also a very difficult task. Every group of people presents a unique challenge for a leader to tackle. The five stages of team development are designed to help with forming teams and allowing them to thrive at work. While these four stages—forming, storming, norming, and performing—are distinct and generally sequential, they often blend into one another and even overlap. For example, if a new member joins the team there may be a second brief period of formation while that person is integrated.

This is where it’s important to level with individual contributors and truly get to know what’s going on. This is a great time to reflect on what makes a high-performing team able to accomplish tasks and move through obstacles. You can also choose to end each meeting with insightful and constructive feedback that improves the group process. To take it one step further, leave specific time for this feedback when you outline the meeting agenda. That way, it’s built-in to the time and it’ll never go forgotten.

Practical Tips To Master the Adjourning Stage

At the end of the day, when your team implements the five stages of team development, it sets up everyone in all roles for success. I am the founder of Know Your Project IT Consulting and Training Company. In the five decades since Bruce Wayne Tuckman developed his stages of team development, workplaces and teams have changed—and for the better.

The forming stage is a honeymoon phase in team development. Conflicts are usually minimal since members are too newly acquainted to have any. As the name suggests, team development entails training and supporting a group of individuals so that they work as a cohesive unit to realize the intended outcome. An excellent example of team development is when colleagues from different departments partner to work on a project. In any team, members can’t work in tandem if there’s no chemistry between.

The forming stage

Even so, they’ll still need to collaborate and divide roles and responsibilities to ensure the project gets completed on time. Team development is the structured process of bringing together a group of diverse individuals and teaching them to appreciate their differences as they work towards a shared goal. And, when all is said and done, going through all five stages of team development sets the team up for success. There’s an increased chance of reaching the product goal within the timeline originally set during the forming stage.

• Yes no wheel February 19, 2023 I found this blog post very helpful.
• Groups are so in-sync during the performing stage that it seems to happen naturally.
• In an organization, the adjourning stage could translate into a change in employees’ job responsibilities.
• Your team feels confident, excited and satisfied with their work.
• This stage could be considered the less polite one due to frustration and disagreements.
• The team development cycle starts over more often than you might think.

When you do find a good solution or process to help resolve difficult situations, make sure you document those immediately. The team can consult this record when future problems arise and make adaptations as needed. Your teams will soon learn that conflict is not to be feared, and that they have the tools to find a productive compromise. To accommodate your remote teams and to make sure your first project team meeting is productive, use a video conferencing platform like Zoom. This way team members can meet from anywhere and share their screen so that everyone can see the project details simultaneously. Record and store the meeting in Teamwork.com so that team members can revisit it at any time if they need a reminder of the discussion.

Why Are the 5 Stages of Team Development Important?

This means it’s all the more important for managers and team leaders to prioritize and facilitate team development. It’s critical that virtual teams learn to collaborate and communicate effectively. In the business world, it’s a well known fact that teams are essential for success. But what’s not so well known is the fact that teams don’t always start out efficient and organized. It takes time and effort to get a team from point A to point B — and that’s where the five stages of team development come in. The norming stage of team development is the calm after the storm.