Imagine you're a project manager at a newly formed international team responsible for launching a global marketing campaign. With members from different cultures and backgrounds, the team faces issues like misunderstandings, poor collaboration, and confusion about individual roles. To effectively groom this diverse team into a cohesive, high-performing unit, understanding Tuckman's model of team development stages is crucial.
Dr. Bruce Tuckman, an educational psychologist, proposed a model that represents the development process of a team in different stages. The model consists of four stages:
Forming: This is the initial stage, where team members are polite and excited about the new start. However, individuals are somewhat cautious and unclear about their respective roles.
Storming: In this stage, disagreements arise about roles, conflicts over leadership and decision-making styles emerge. This is a critical phase for team development.
Norming: The team finds ways to resolve conflicts, learn to appreciate each other's strengths and shortcomings, and establish ground rules. Team collaboration improves significantly.
Performing: The team becomes effective and efficient, working towards a common objective and resolving conflicts in a mature manner.
Stage 1: Forming Establish clear objectives, roles, and responsibilities at the outset. Encourage open communication and give team members time to know each other.
Stage 2: Storming Facilitate open dialogue to address conflicts. Encourage team members to express their viewpoints, and promote active listening for understanding and resolving differences.
Stage 3: Norming Promote respect for diverse ideas, cultures, and personalities. Develop common work strategies and reinforce positive team collaboration.
Stage 4: Performing Maintain open communication and high morale by recognizing team and individual achievements. Encourage team autonomy in decision-making to increase efficiency.
This model provides a framework to understand why teams behave the way they do. It enables managers to develop and apply the right strategies to help the team transition smoothly through each development stage. Misunderstood or poorly managed stages can result in underperforming teams, which ultimately hinder the achievement of project objectives.
Using Tuckman's model, you can nurture and guide your team effectively, understanding when to motivate, mediate, regulate, or delegate, based on the team's development stage. It ensures team members can move from being a group of strangers to a high-performance unit, capable of achieving great results collaboratively.
A newly formed project team experiences internal conflicts and disagreement over roles and responsibilities. The project manager can best support the team by:
Overlooking the disagreements and focusing on tasks.
Promoting open communication to resolve conflicts and clarify roles.