12.1 Team Development Stages and Models
Key Takeaways
- Team development runs through creation, development, maintenance, and leadership, and teams can regress when membership or objectives change.
- Tuckman’s forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning is the sequence model the syllabus expects you to apply, not just name.
- Belbin describes contribution roles, so balanced teams cover action, social, and thinking contributions rather than duplicating one type.
- Katzenbach and Smith distinguish a real team, with shared goals and mutual accountability, from a working group of individuals reporting separately.
- Team development is influenced by size, co-location, membership churn, clarity of objectives, psychological safety, and the leadership style applied.
Why team management matters on the APM PMQ
Team management is learning objective 13 in Area C (People and behaviours). The syllabus expects you to understand stages of team development (creation, development, maintenance, and leadership), factors that influence team development, and classic models (Belbin, Margerison-McCann, Myers-Briggs, Hackman, Tuckman, Katzenbach and Smith). You also need the characteristics and benefits of effective teams, and how leadership differs for virtual and hybrid teams.
Projects are temporary organisations. People often join from different functions, suppliers, and locations with little shared history. Weak PMQ answers list team theories. Strong answers diagnose stage and composition, apply a model to the scenario, and recommend leadership actions that move the team toward performing — including when the team is remote or hybrid.
Stages of team development
Teams do not appear fully effective on day one. Development can be framed as creation → development → maintenance → leadership, and through named stage models.
Creation, development, maintenance, leadership
| Stage focus | What happens | Project manager emphasis |
|---|---|---|
| Creation | People are selected or assigned; purpose, roles, and boundaries are set | Define objectives, RACI, ways of working, onboarding, success measures |
| Development | Relationships, norms, skills, and trust form; conflict and clarification are common | Facilitate storming constructively; train; coach; protect psychological safety |
| Maintenance | Performance is sustained through feedback, recognition, workload balance, and re-norming after change | Monitor climate and capacity; refresh goals after scope or membership shifts |
| Leadership | Direction, motivation, and decision climate are actively shaped for the team’s context | Situational style; remove blockers; manage upwards; model behaviour |
Leadership is not only a late stage — it runs through all stages — but maintenance and performing fail if leadership withdraws after kick-off.
Tuckman’s stages (core PMQ model)
Bruce Tuckman described progressive stages (later extended with adjourning):
| Stage | Typical behaviours | Risks if mishandled | Leadership response |
|---|---|---|---|
| Forming | Politeness, dependence on leader, unclear roles, high uncertainty | Superficial agreement; hidden confusion | Provide structure, vision, introductions, early wins |
| Storming | Challenge of roles, methods, and authority; conflict surface | Personal attacks; cliques; unresolved deadlock | Facilitate task conflict; set norms; do not suppress all disagreement |
| Norming | Shared standards, cooperation, clearer roles, rising trust | Groupthink if challenge disappears | Reinforce healthy norms; keep constructive challenge alive |
| Performing | Focus on goals; flexible problem-solving; mutual support | Complacency; burnout if pressure never eases | Delegate; remove blockers; protect capacity |
| Adjourning | Closure, handover, emotion at end of temporary team | Knowledge loss; demotivation near end | Celebrate, capture lessons, support transition to BAU or next roles |
Teams regress when membership, goals, or context change sharply (new supplier, crisis, hybrid shift). Storming after a mid-project reorganisation is normal — re-form and re-norm deliberately.
Scenario: stage diagnosis
A multi-supplier digital programme has been running for three months. Meetings are polite but risks are never challenged, and decisions wait for the project manager. That is closer to prolonged forming than true performing. Leadership should force role clarity, invite structured dissent, and stop being the single decision bottleneck so the team can move through storming into norming.
Factors influencing team development
Development speed and quality depend on more than time elapsed.
| Factor | Influence on development |
|---|---|
| Clarity of purpose and goals | Shared mission accelerates norming; vague goals prolong forming/storming |
| Membership stability | Constant churn resets stages; planned transitions need re-onboarding |
| Role clarity and authority | Ambiguous RACI fuels conflict and duplicate work |
| Skills mix and competence | Capability gaps create dependency and frustration |
| Leadership style | Over-control blocks ownership; neglect allows toxic norms |
| Organisational culture and matrix pull | BAU priorities and dual reporting slow team identity |
| Physical/virtual proximity | Distance needs deliberate relationship design |
| Reward and recognition systems | Individual-only rewards undermine mutual accountability |
| Workload and stress | Chronic overload damages maintenance of performance |
| Diversity and inclusion climate | Inclusive climates unlock contribution; exclusion wastes talent (links LO14) |
Team models examinable on PMQ
Belbin team roles
Meredith Belbin identified contribution roles people tend to play. Balanced teams cover action, social, and thinking roles rather than nine clones of one type.
| Cluster | Roles (examples) | Contribution if used well | Risk if dominant alone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Action-oriented | Shaper, Implementer, Completer Finisher | Drive, organisation, quality close-out | Conflict, rigidity, perfection delays |
| People-oriented | Coordinator, Teamworker, Resource Investigator | Facilitation, harmony, external contacts | Indecision, avoidance of hard calls |
| Thinking-oriented | Plant, Monitor Evaluator, Specialist | Ideas, critical appraisal, deep expertise | Detachment, analysis paralysis, siloed knowledge |
Use Belbin to spot gaps (for example no Completer Finisher before go-live) and to value different styles — not to stereotype or exclude people.
Margerison-McCann Team Management Wheel
Margerison-McCann links work preferences to types of work on a wheel (for example advising, innovating, promoting, developing, organising, producing, inspecting, maintaining, with linking at the centre). The practical exam message: people prefer different parts of the work cycle; linking behaviour (coordination, communication, integration) holds the team together. Mismatch between preference and assigned work reduces motivation and effectiveness.
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
Myers-Briggs describes preference pairs (for example Extraversion–Introversion, Sensing–Intuition, Thinking–Feeling, Judging–Perceiving). On projects it is a communication and collaboration aid, not a hiring test or a fixed ability score. Useful applications: adapt meeting design (thinking time for introverts; structured debate for decisive types); avoid assuming one decision style is “professional.” Weak use: labelling people to dismiss their views.
Hackman’s conditions for team effectiveness
J. Richard Hackman emphasised enabling conditions more than personality slogans. Core conditions commonly summarised for exam use:
- Real team — clear boundaries, stable membership for a period, collective task interdependence.
- Compelling direction — clear, challenging, consequential goals.
- Enabling structure — sound task design, norms, team composition.
- Supportive organisational context — rewards, information, resources, education that reinforce teamwork.
- Expert coaching — process help at the right times (start-up, mid-point, end).
If a “team” is really a set of individuals with unrelated tasks and individual KPIs only, Hackman predicts weak teamwork regardless of motivational speeches.
Katzenbach and Smith
Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith distinguish a working group (individual accountability, interaction mainly to share information) from a real team (complementary skills, common purpose, performance goals, common approach, mutual accountability). High-performing teams also show deep commitment to one another’s growth. For PMQ: if mutual accountability is missing, you may have a group with a shared project code, not an effective team.
| Concept | Working group | Real / high-performing team |
|---|---|---|
| Accountability | Mostly individual | Individual and mutual |
| Purpose | Organisational mission shared loosely | Specific team purpose owned jointly |
| Products | Individual work products | Collective work products |
| Meetings | Inform and decide for personal action | Problem-solve for shared outcomes |
A project team is polite, dependent on the project manager for every decision, and unclear about roles after kick-off. Which Tuckman stage best describes this?
According to Katzenbach and Smith, what most clearly distinguishes a real team from a working group?