The 5 Stages of Team Development
The tight structure supports team members to be open and honest in their assessment. 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. One possible misconception is that to move a group through the Storming stage, you have to prevent differences in opinion from emerging. The ideal situation here is not to avoid discussions and conflicts from happening entirely, but to ensure they are productive, respectful, and result in practical takeaways.
They are also overly positive about the project because it’s new — and new is always exciting. The renowned Bruce W. Tuckman — a researcher at the American Psychological Association — established a 4-step model in 1965 in his landmark paper titled Developmental sequence in small groups. The first version https://www.globalcloudteam.com/ is for teams who want to get to know each other better. The second version is for teams who want to explore how they are working together as a team. They’ll look to you for guidance and support, and when you establish a trusting two-way conversation, you’ll pave the way towards their professional growth.
How to help your team through the stages of team development
This is the stage when things begin to settle down as your team finds their groove. As they grow more comfortable working together, team members are more comfortable asking for help completing a task or getting constructive feedback. Your team starts to increase their productivity at this stage as they become more familiar with their teammates and their working styles. Establishing group collaboration early on can help reduce the impact of—or even prevent—this stage of group development.
- Even the most high-performing teams will revert to earlier stages in certain circumstances.
- For example, let the designers know that the user interface will be reviewed to see whether there’s an opportunity to make improvements.
- As leaders are active participants in the team, they should recognize their contribution to a problem and develop innovative solutions.
- Most high-performing teams go through five stages of team development.
- It’s no longer a game of cat and mouse where team members try to catch each other’s errors and criticize them.
- Surprisingly, leadership coach Alexis Haselberger told me that spending lots of time in this stage is, actually, not an issue.
- Many long-standing teams go through these cycles many times as they react to changing circumstances.
For more advice, check out these lists of team building books and team building tips. Managers and project leads need to keep their eyes open, but be mostly hands-off so the team can build muscle around working independently. The team needs clarity and connection more than anything else at this stage. Take the time to call out assumptions about the work and (more importantly) how you’ll work together.
The Impact Playbook: Motivating employees in a fast-changing world
The activity gets participants moving around and meeting each other one-on-one. It’s useful in the early stages of team development and/or for groups to reconnect with each other after a period of time apart. Using our tool, you and your employees can seamlessly work through the stages of team development through effective team meetings and one-on-ones, meaningful feedback, and progress tracking. In this stage of team development, team members fall into a rhythm as a cohesive taskforce. The skills of each member are validated and utilized to execute the necessary tasks.
In agile software development, high-performance teams will exhibit a swarm behavior as they come together, collaborate, and focus on solving a single problem. Swarming is a sometime behavior, in contrast to mob programming, which can be thought of as swarming all the time. The team development cycle starts over more often than you might think. Also, the team might invest in task management software to plan, organize, and manage the team’s tasks and activities. Ensuring that the team doesn’t go back to the storming stage is one of your topmost roles as the team leader.
The stages of team development
At this stage, the team might meet more often than not and communicate physically and digitally with office phone systems and video conferencing tools. And this would lead to an increase in team’s productivity and performance. Before identify and describe the stages of team development the discord and disharmony could eat deep into the team and revert it back to the storming stage, they are promptly resolved as they arise. Members of the team have learnt to accept each other regardless of their differences.
Due to her rank as the editor, Stella takes the lead and suggests the outline for the content plan. Yet, writers Adam and Daniel think they should take a different angle. At this point, Adam and Daniel form a clique against Stella — although everyone’s excessive politeness makes it seem as though nothing’s wrong.
Common Characteristic of the Storming Stage
They should be avoided at all costs, and that’s why the norming step should be carefully monitored for this kind of behavior. Each member should be recognized for their role and appreciated for it regularly to help counteract this. As a leader, it’s important to remember that you do not need to solve every conflict as it arises. It’s important for the team as a whole that they learn to deal with some of their issues. Of course, no good leader will let the conflict go on too long, and this is the challenge that the team leader must face – to intervene or to abdicate. According to a study, 70% of employees would be somewhat likely to quit their job to work for a company that invests in employee learning and development.
Forming stage discussion topics often include the project goal, team member roles, basic ground rules, and designation of authority. The forming stage is truly a honeymoon phase in teamwork—productivity is low, but the team members are too newly acquainted to encounter conflict. While working on a high-performing team may be a truly pleasurable and growthful experience, it is not the end of team development. There is still a need for the team to focus on both process and product, setting new goals as appropriate. Changes, such as members coming or going or large-scale changes in the external environment, can lead a team to cycle back to an earlier stage.
Norming Stage tips
They accepted their differences and worked together for the fulfillment of the common goal regardless. At this level, the products have been fully developed and tested as specified in the team’s mission and objectives. At this stage, the team is believed to have completed its tasks and can be satisfactorily dissolved.
They may be motivated but are usually relatively uninformed of the issues and objectives of the team. Team members are usually on their best behavior but very focused on themselves. 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.
eet to brainstorm, discuss, and establish team goals
Drop us a line at for a chance to be featured in this or one of our future articles. And, if you liked this blog post, share it with someone who might find it useful. Anyhow, I recommend that you use each stage to learn and understand something new about your teammates and work on improving your workflows. Finally, use this knowledge to help you overcome problems and reach your project goals with success. In turn, the level of effectiveness reaches its peak in the Performing Stage, when team members use well-oiled workflows and communicate feedback effectively to make the project smooth sailing. In the performing stage, everyone is devoted to reaching their goal as a group, and the team members have grown closer on a personal level.