The 4 Stages of Team Development Team Building for High Performance

The goal here is for each team member to get a robust sense and characterization of the people they are working with. Even if you haven’t watched a buddy cop movie, these steps will likely feel familiar to you. They are the narrative essence of the team development process. Each stage represents a pivotal moment in the development of any team, in movies, or at work. Knowing them will help you get the most benefits of team building. It's critical that leaders understand team development is a process that doesn't happen overnight.

• The norming stage of team development is the calm after the storm.
• For instance, a team sponsor will ensure that the team has the budget and the staff hours available to support the project.
• Focus on building a shared understanding across your team and with stakeholders.
• It can be riddled with conflict as the individual personalities and work styles clash within the team.
• Finally, it gives team members a chance to meet one another and develop some fun, initial rapport.
• Emma-Louise Elsey has been coaching since 2003 and is the Founder of The Coaching Tools Company and Fierce Kindness.com.
• Full knowledge of the skills that everyone brings to the table, like development, web design, marketing, or product knowledge.

The leader can also organize socialising events to encourage healthy team-bonding that moves a group into the performing stage. They tend to move through a number of stages - forming, storming, norming, and performing - as group members establish roles, relationships and figure out how to work together. After reading everything above, you have a pretty good idea where your team is at – but does the rest of the team agree? We all perceive things in our own unique way based on past experience and what we know now. Double down on building personal connections among teammates. When it’s time to celebrate meeting a milestone, consider indulging in a team dinner or day out doing something fun together.

What are the 5 Stages of Team Development?

And although it may be slightly cliche, there’s a lot of truth to it. When you’re on a team full of high performers and go-getters, even the most daunting of goals or end-result becomes a lot easier to face head-on and accomplish. On-Demand DemosEmpower your team to build a culture of productive meetings with these on-demand product tutorials.

When you can identify which development phase your teams are in, it’s much easier to provide exactly the direction they need so they feel more focused and connected. 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. 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.

They have moved beyond understanding differences to valuing them and leveraging individual strengths. Team members also hold themselves and each other accountable. At this point, leadership can shift among team members and is flexible to the situation at hand.

Moving beyond initial hurdles, teammates acknowledge the common goal and focus on making significant progress. Behaviors during the Storming stage may be less polite than during the Forming stage, with frustration four stages of team development or disagreements about goals, expectations, roles and responsibilities being openly expressed. During the Storming stage, team members may argue or become critical of the team's original mission or goals.

Managing Agile Teams With Scrum

Use it to open up a discussion around conflict with a team. Performing teams also get the job done with minimal supervision and conflict. Conflicts are no longer threatening and different perspectives are seen as valuable.

Team members usually play to their strengths and help each other out, thereby enhancing teamwork and cohesion in your organization. Bottlenecks get addressed promptly and with purpose since the team can easily collaborate and create the solutions required to get everyone back on track. In any team, members can't work in tandem if there's no chemistry between. A team's effectiveness gets enhanced by a commitment to ongoing growth and development.

#5 Adjourning Stage

All teams are made up of individuals with varying skill sets, perspectives, and needs. As groups work together, conflicts in thinking, approach, or working practices can and will arise. After delineating the roles of everyone in the team, it’s important to clarify expectations for how they should work autonomously and together. This exercise is an effective way of clarifying how your team should work together while also setting clear expectations around personal responsibility, reporting, and individual action.

There’s an increased chance of reaching the product goal within the timeline originally set during the forming stage. During the Norming stage of team development, team members begin to resolve the discrepancy they felt between their individual expectations and the reality of the team's experience. If the team is successful in setting more flexible and inclusive norms and expectations, members should experience an increased sense of comfort in expressing their "real" ideas and feelings.

If you've reached the fourth stage, pat yourself on the back. Once you're aware of their flaws, you either learn to embrace them or the relationship will end quickly. The team has just been introduced and everyone is overly polite and pleasant. At the start, most are excited to start something new and to get to know the other team members. To run a great meeting, keep the team aligned, and the agenda short, specific, and action-oriented. Mara Calvello Mara Calvello is a freelance writer for Fellow, in addition to being a Content Marketing Manager at G2.

Different expectations of behavior

The leader of the team will then describe the tasks to the group, describe the different behaviours to the group and how to deal and handle complaints. In Tuckman's 1965 paper, only 50% of the studies identified a stage of intragroup conflict, and some of the remaining studies jumped directly from stage 1 to stage 3. Some groups may avoid the phase altogether, but for those who do not, the duration, intensity and destructiveness of the "storms" can be varied. Tolerance of each team member and their differences should be emphasized; without tolerance and patience the team will fail. This phase can become destructive to the team and will lower motivation if allowed to get out of control. Some teams will never develop past this stage; however, disagreements within the team can make members stronger, more versatile, and able to work more effectively together.

A group might be happily Norming or Performing, but a new member might force them back into Storming, or a team member may miss meetings causing the team to fall back into Storming. Project guides will be ready for this, and will help the team get back to Performing as quickly as possible. A team is a group of individuals who work together toward a common goal. Each member of a team is valuable to the common goal in their own way, using a unique set of skills to fulfill a team role. And yet, everyone on the team shares the same orientation and attitude. Though this may sound easy on paper, balancing individual and common goals within a team is quite difficult, especially during periods of stress, failure, or discord.

It illustrates how teams in different fields undergo five similar stages of group development. Understanding the stages of team development enables you to build successful and high-performing teams. Stage two of five is considered the most critical but also the most difficult to go through. It can be riddled with conflict as the individual personalities and work styles clash within the team. It’s also common for team performance to dip a bit in the storming stage as members can sometimes disagree on goals, strategy, responsibilities, and roles.

Managing Teamwork - Stages of team development

Once you’ve weathered the storm, pun intended, your team can move into norming. Here, team members have figured out how to work together and there’s no more conflict or internal competitions lingering. The first stage is forming, which is when the members within the team first come together to meet. It can be considered the period of orientation when everyone is getting to know one another and becoming acquainted. Now that we know where the stages come from, let’s break down the ins and outs of each stage and what you can expect from your team in each.

15% Solutions show that there is no reason to wait around, feel powerless, or fearful. They get individuals and the group to focus on what is within their discretion instead of what they cannot change. A large part of moving from Norming to Performing is empowering the members of your team to do work that excites and engages them individually as well as a group.

An excellent example of team development is when colleagues from different departments partner to work on a project. Think of this phase like when you move in with a friend you’ve never lived with before, and you slowly start to notice the little things about them that get on your nerves. While some teams think they can skip this stage, it’s important to dive into it with the expectation that there may be some conflict. In order to not get bottlenecked in the storming stage, members have to work together and play to each other’s strengths to overcome obstacles and stay on pace.

Using the Stages of Team Development

More than that, the Tuckman model gives each team leader an intuitive framework to help them understand their role at each stage of the development process. They can use this to properly set priorities, benchmarks and goals, helping them make adjustments when needed and support their teams in their progress. Supervisors of the team during this phase are almost always participating. Even the most high-performing teams will revert to earlier stages in certain circumstances.

Remember that rules are created to help your team stay focused on what matters most─performance. Create a weekly work plan with tasks and share it with the team. Members might disagree over how to complete a task or voice their concerns if they feel that someone isn't pulling their weight. They may even question the authority or guidance of group leaders.

Norming Phase

As shown, performance fluctuates as teams move through the phases. Review the characteristics to help identify the team's current phase, then apply the corresponding proven strategies to help them advance. Features of Norming include reconciliation, relief, lowered anxiety, members are engaged and supportive, and developing cohesion. Strategies for this phase include recognizing individual and group efforts, https://globalcloudteam.com/ providing learning opportunities and feedback, and monitoring the 'energy' of the group. Teams go through phases of development, and Dr. Bruce Tuckman established a popular and durable framework on the subject. According to Dr. Tuckman, all phases—Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning—are necessary for teams to grow, tackle problems, find solutions, plan work, and deliver results.