9.2 Tuckman's Stages of Team Development

Tuckman and Jensen's model of team development matters in change for two reasons: change teams and change agent networks are themselves new teams that must pass through the stages, and the change itself can push established teams backwards through them.

The five stages

Stage 1 — Forming

When a team is formed there will initially be:

• A high dependence on the leader for guidance and direction
• Team members asking many questions seeking direction
• Lack of clarity about individual roles and responsibilities

At this stage, team leaders need to offer clarity about purpose and objectives, helping the team to develop a sense of mission.

Stage 2 — Storming

Typically there follows a period of uncertainty as team members attempt to establish themselves in relation to other team members, the team leader and the team's mission. Team members may:

• Bring and assert a variety of experience
• Test, debate and challenge assumptions made
• Strongly express differences of opinion
• Seek status using personal styles and approaches

Storming is uncomfortable but necessary. A team that never storms has usually suppressed disagreement rather than resolved it, which shows up later as Lencioni's fear of conflict and lack of commitment.

Stage 3 — Norming

During norming the team is establishing ways of working together that are focused on achievement of outcomes:

• Storming is progressively replaced by consensus-building within the team
• Roles and responsibilities are being understood
• The team is developing a sense of mission
• Questions — whether of the leader or of other team members — are asked with the intention of resolving issues

Note that questioning does not stop at norming; it changes character. In forming, questions seek direction. In norming, questions are asked with the intention of resolving issues.

Stage 4 — Performing

Arriving at this stage:

• The team has established skilful and effective ways of working together
• Trust in colleagues is high
• Communication links with team colleagues are well established
• The team has a strong sense of common purpose
• The team works autonomously with shared confidence in the team's processes
• Team members support each other through the peaks, troughs and challenges that arise
• The team wants to improve still further and to share learning from their experiences

Stage 5 — Adjourning (also known as mourning)

When the change is successfully completed, the team's purpose is fulfilled and everyone can move on to new things, feeling good about what has been achieved. The leader will need to show empathy, recognising the potential for a sense of loss in the team and perhaps insecurity about the future.

Adjourning is routinely neglected. A change team that has worked intensely together for eighteen months is disbanded with a thank-you email, and the individuals experience an ending with none of the acknowledgement CM3 recommends elsewhere for endings. It is also, in Bridges' terms, an ending that deserves proper handling.

Distinguishing the middle stages

The exam most often tests norming versus performing, because both are positive stages. The reliable markers:

Watch the tense on "sense of mission". The team develops a sense of mission at norming, and by performing it has a strong sense of common purpose. Similarly, high trust in colleagues is a performing marker.

The stages are not automatic

CM3 is explicit: the phases of team development are not discrete, such that once one phase is reached the team automatically moves forward to the next. While the sequence is a good outline of a typical progression, it is not inevitable.

In practice, teams may go backwards, oscillate between the stages, or simply get stuck. This can be caused by:

• Change in personnel
• Major and irreconcilable differences of opinion
• Shifts in strategy
• Changing performance standards
• Loss of commitment by team members
• A failure to meet targets

Why this matters during change

The list of causes is essentially a list of things a change initiative does to teams. A restructure changes personnel. A new operating model shifts strategy. New metrics change performance standards. Each can knock a performing team back to forming or storming.

This reframes a common complaint. When a previously effective team becomes fractious and slow after a change, the diagnosis is often "resistance". Tuckman offers a better one: the team has regressed to an earlier development stage, and the intervention required is the one appropriate to that stage — clarity about purpose, objectives and roles for a team knocked back to forming, not a persuasion campaign.

It applies equally to change teams themselves. A change agent network assembled from twenty departments is a brand-new team at forming, and expecting it to perform in its first month misreads the model. Budgeting time for it to storm and norm is realistic planning, not indulgence.