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Assembling a team that will function as a hard-working unit that gets things done has been difficult from the first time our distant ancestors tried it. Yet no significant job can be finished without a team.

This creates a problem, because teams are made up of people, and they don’t always fit together well. So how teams come together and become efficient and harmonious is of interest. The businesses or organizations employing them often have time, money and reputation invested to make sure the team works.

In the West there has been one model of team building that’s come to explain how teams build. It’s based on Bruce Tuckman’s 1965 paper where he said teams have a life cycle of four stages: he called these forming, storming, norming and performing.

Researchers widely agree that a team does evolve if it is together for some time. Indeed it’s almost common-sense that when a group of people first come together they will want to know about the other members, will have to make adjustments and accommodate the others, could stumble into conflicts that need to be resolved, but eventually may develop into a harmonious unit achieving more together than each would have on their own.

Bruce Tuckman named the first stage in a team’s life Forming.

In the forming stage the team members are concerned to know what the other people are like, and find out what’s expected of them , by pushing the boundaries. This is not a time for innovation, and members generally just do what the team has always done and get help from other members.

Then comes Tuckman’s Storming stage.

This is something we do as it is common to resist being influenced by a group you’re part of. And Tuckman’s term for this second stage is excellent.

But then stage three begins to unfold, Tuckman said, the Norming stage.

The people begin to tell each other what they actually think, they gell into a group, and a new way of acting as a group develops unchallenged.

When this stage is fully developed Tuckman’s last stage flowers. Performing is his name for it.

It’s a dream time for the team’s managers. Everyone understands the others and suddenly it is easy to help each other and work as a team. People co-operate to get jobs completed, even switching jobs if that will help. The team leader will be unchallenged and team members look out for each other’s interests.

Tuckman further developed this four-stage model in the years after his paper was published. Never-the-less the general premise of these four stages is still widely accepted. He discovered them in the literature of the 1960s, stated them plainly and vividly, gave each stage a memorable label, and left for us a way of looking at how small teams develop that is grounded in what is real.

Len McGrane has written widely on corporate team building programs and teambuilding ideas. He recommends this team building web site for programs teamworx.cc

Tags: Team building, team building ideas, team building programs, teambuilding, Tuckman

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