You can’t expect a new team to perform well when it first comes together.
Forming a team takes time, and members often go through stages as they change from being a collection of strangers to a united group with common goals. Bruce Tuckman’s Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing model describes these stages and is a model that has really resonated with me throughout my career, and one that I have used when building winning teams myself. When you understand it, you can help your new team become effective more quickly.
In this blog, we’ll look at how you can use this model to build a highly productive team.
About the Model
Psychologist Bruce Tuckman first came up with the memorable phrase “forming, storming, norming, and performing” in his 1965 article, “Developmental Sequence in Small Groups.” He used it to describe the path that most teams follow on their way to high performance.
Let’s look at each stage in more detail.
Forming
In this stage, most team members are positive and polite. Some are anxious, as they haven’t fully understood what work the team will do. Others are simply excited about the task ahead.
As leader, you play a dominant role at this stage, because team members’ roles and responsibilities aren’t clear.
This stage can last for some time, as people start to work together, and as they make an effort to get to know their new colleagues. Done well and enough time invested at this early stage will improve the chances of your teams success. It’s important to make the time here to give the right impression, embed your culture, mission and values with your new recruits and share the future with them and what part they will play in that, and what opportunities that can bring.
Storming
Next, the team moves into the storming phase, where people start to push against the boundaries established in the forming stage. This is the stage where many teams fail.
Storming often starts where there is a conflict between team members’ natural working styles. People may work in different ways for all sorts of reasons but, if differing working styles cause unforeseen problems, they may become frustrated.
Storming can also happen in other situations. For example, team members may challenge your authority. Or, if you haven’t defined clearly how the team will work, people may feel overwhelmed by their workload, or they could be uncomfortable with the approach you’re using.
Some may question the worth of the team’s goal, and they may resist taking on tasks.
Team members who stick with the task at hand may experience stress, particularly as they don’t have the support of established processes, or strong relationships with their colleagues. Your role as Manager/Director at this stage is to keep them on the right path, re-enforce the boundaries and the ‘why’, regularly praise and run team events and incentives to keep motivation and morale high.
Norming
Gradually, the team moves into the norming stage. This is when people start to resolve their differences, appreciate colleagues’ strengths, and respect your authority as a leader.
Now that your team members know one another better, they may socialise together without intervention, and they are able to ask one another for help and provide constructive feedback. People develop a stronger commitment to the team goal, and you start to see good progress towards it.
There is often a prolonged overlap between storming and norming, because, as new tasks come up, the team may lapse back into behaviour from the storming stage.
Performing
The team reaches the performing stage, when hard work leads, without friction, to the achievement of the team’s goal. The structures and processes that you have set up support this well.
As leader, you can delegate much of your work, and you can concentrate on developing team members.
It feels easy to be part of the team at this stage, and people who join or leave won’t disrupt performance.
Do you have a performing team? For recruitment support, or advice on how to get your team to a performing level drop us a line on 01143211873