Tuckman's stages of group development

The forming–storming–norming–performing model of group development was first proposed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965, who said that these phases are all necessary and inevitable in order for a team to grow, face up to challenges, tackle problems, find solutions, plan work, and deliver results. He suggested that these inevitable phases were critical to team growth and development. This series of developmental stages has become known as the Tuckman Ladder.

Research process

Tuckman reviewed a collection of fifty published articles concerned with group development over a period of time in order to classify the types of study they related to, group purpose and a hypothesized series of stages. The articles referred to studies of groups working together within a variety of therapeutic and professional settings, and to groups with inter-personal development as their purpose and groups with other task purposes. It was his analysis of these fifty articles which led Tuckman to formulate his four-stage model. Disagreements and personality clashes must be resolved before the team can progress out of this stage, and so some teams may never emerge from "storming" or re-enter that phase if new challenges or disputes arise. In Tuckman's 1965 paper, only 50% of the studies identified a stage of intragroup conflict, and some of the remaining studies jumped directly from stage 1 to stage 3.

Norming

"Resolved disagreements and personality clashes result in greater intimacy, and a spirit of co-operation emerges." that involves completing the task and breaking up the team (in some texts referred to as "mourning"). After being invited by the journal Group and Organizational Studies to publish an update of the model, they revisited the original model and reviewed 22 further studies published after the initial model appeared. They concluded that an important step in the small group life cycle was the ultimate separation which occurred at the end of this cycle. This final stage involves the disbanding of the team after achieving its goals. Members reflect on their accomplishments and experiences, often experiencing mixed emotions.

White-Fairhurst TPR model

Alasdair White and his colleague John Fairhurst examined Tuckman's development sequence when developing their own White-Fairhurst "Transforming, Performing, Reforming" (TPR) model. They simplify the sequence and group the forming-storming-norming stages together as the "transforming" phase, which they equate with the initial performance level. This is then followed by a "performing" phase, which leads to a new performance level which they call the "reforming" phase. Their work was developed further by White in his essay "From Comfort Zone to Performance Management", in which he demonstrates the linkage between Tuckman's work and that of Colin Carnall's "coping cycle" and the "comfort zone theory".

Leadership strategies to facilitate successful team development

A healthcare research study "Maximizing Team Performance: The Critical Role of the Nurse Leader"

|Coordinating behaviors

Purposefully picking the team
Facilitating team to identify goals
Ensuring the team development of a shared mental model

|Storming (resolving conflict and tension) In project management, the Tuckman Ladder's phases are not always realized in a linear fashion; it is common for teams to progress to the next phase and then wind up back at a previous phase as the project timeline progresses.

Tuckman's stages of group development

Research process

Norming

White-Fairhurst TPR model

Leadership strategies to facilitate successful team development

See also

References

Further reading