Team Leading and Management

Working in Teams

Session Outline

Tuckman’s group stage theory

Learning Objectives

understand how team theory can assist with understanding team behaviour

Starting Activity

My Best and Worst Moments in a Team

Discuss with your assessor your best and worst moments in a team.

Bruce Tuckman (1965) Suggested a team development model. It is simple to

understand and relates to both academic groups and the workplace. In its original form it had four stages (1–4) and was later adapted in several ways to add more stages.

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Stage 1 – Forming

Team members are introduced and get to know each other and begin to understand the reason for the team’s existence.

Tuckman

Stage 2 – Storming

Storming, meaning stormy relationships where differences in views and opinions have occurred and conflicts and arguments emerge.

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Stage 3 – Norming

The group sets out the normal expectations and standards, agrees goals and how to achieve them.

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Stage 4 – Performing

The team starts to achieve the outcomes needed to successfully complete the team’s agreed goals.

TuckmanStage 5 – Adjourning

The completing of the project and dealing with the issues learned and the loss, sadness or relief of leaving the team.

Stage 1 – Forming Characteristics During the forming stage team members will be

getting to know each other. There is likely to be quiet, uncommunicative phases until each member knows the team. Team members will be watching and listening to others and the leader. Members will offer guarded information about themselves.

Stage 1 – FormingBehaviours Members will present themselves. Try to understand and relate to the team goal. The team will try to define and explore the team goal. Try to set out steps to achieve the goal. Try to fit themselves into a role in the team.

Stage 1 – FormingLeader’s actions Use ‘ice breakers’ to help the team to get to know

each other. Set out a management vision for the team. Explain and make clear the dimensions and

limitations within which the team must work: time, budget, and so on.

Move the team onto the storming stage at the correct time.

Stage 2 – Storming Characteristics Once a team has gotten to know each other, you can

expect there to be some stormy times as being polite and reserved gives way to real feelings and emotions. Control and personal influences on who is in control and what needs to be done must be argued out. Disagreements will occur and will need to be resolved.

Stage 2 – StormingBehaviours Team members start to reveal their true selves, for

better or worse. Team members start to be impatient and frustrated

with the progress the team is making. Team members ‘tread on each other’s toes’ and they

defend their positions or leave. There will be general feelings of instability and

mutiny.

Stage 2 – StormingLeader’s actions Accept that the storming stage is vital to the team’s

success. Do not be put off or intimidated by the instability and

aggression of this phase. Remind the group that this stage is a natural point in

the development of the group. Manage the tensions and aggressions and turn them

into positive actions. Surface and address the conflicts – the team cannot

move on until this is done. Know the point to move the team on to the norming

stage.

Stage 3 – NormingCharacteristics When the team has resolved the conflicts from the

storming stage they will move on to agree the normal standards and expectations of being a group member. The focus of the team moves from conflict to performance. In the best teams genuine reflection takes place and the team performance is reviewed and improved until it is sufficient to complete the task.

Stage 3 – NormingBehaviours The rules of membership and performance that may

have been overlooked in the conflict of the previous stage are now taken very seriously.

There will be a move from ideas generation to planning and decision-making.

There will be limited discussion and much more action.

Subgroups, both formal and informal, may be formed to progress towards the final goal more quickly.

There will be very little explicit conflict; there may however be some tacit (behind-the-scenes) conflict.

Stage 3 – NormingLeader’s actions As leader you must keep the team focused on the

task and its timely completion. Control the team and ensure they are following the

agreed plans to completion. Control the amount of informal subgrouping that may

occur. Watch out for and control tacit conflict (a spillover

from the storming stage). Control and relieve stress and pressure; act as the

team ‘lubricant’. Inject some humour and fun.

Stage 4 – PerformingCharacteristics This is the achievement stage and is characterised

by action and completion. The norming stage will have set milestones to complete the task; these will be achieved and performance evaluated. Successful teams will now be adaptable, performance-driven and task-centred. The team is likely to be proactive and not require motivation or management. The team will viciously support each other and will aggressively attack any outside person that criticises the team.

Stage 4 – PerformingBehaviours Productive and output-driven, there will be very little

unnecessary communication. The team will be cohesive and stick together. The team will be proactive and fast to respond to

problems. The team will respond to criticism from within the

team but be intolerant of criticism from outside of the team.

Stage 4 – PerformingLeader’s actions Watch out for teams running out of control and in the

wrong or inappropriate directions. Reassert the output standards required and monitor

team performance against the required standards. Devise praise methods and rewards as milestones

are met. Relax and let the team perform without intervention

from leadership; monitor and do not interfere – you will be treated as an outsider if you criticise.

Stage 5 – AdjourningCharacteristics The team’s reason for existing is gradually achieved

and this can leave a vacuum that is hard to fill. Team members will gradually drift away and spend less time on this team’s tasks. They may already have started to be involved in other teams.

Stage 5 – AdjourningBehaviours elation at the success of achievement and then a

sense of deflation as the challenge has disappeared a sense of loss as the tight cohesive social group is

gradually disbanded divided loyalties as team members move on to other

teams relief at being free of a dysfunctional team

Stage 5 – AdjourningLeader’s actions Manage the finishing post so that the team finishes

with a ‘big bang’. Maintain the cohesive nature of the team until the

end. Arrange reward, praise systems and a final ‘wake’ –

actively mourn the end of the team. Manage and trap the organisational learning that the

team has created. Arrange network structures after the death of the

team.

Which Stage is Which ?1 2

3 4

Norming

Performing

Forming

Storming

Which Stage is Which ?1 2

3 4

Norming

Performing

Forming

Storming

Which Stage is Which ?1 2

3 4

Norming

Performing

Forming Storming

Which Stage is Which ?1 2

3 4

Norming

Performing

Forming Storming

Which Stage is Which ?1 2

3 4

Norming Performing

Forming Storming

Tuckman in the Movies !!!