Bruce Tuckman's Model Of Team Development

FORMING:This is the introductory stage where individuals come together to become a team. At this stage, individuals are trying to find their place and as a result, we could have a lot of conflicts and other negativity appearing but this helps the group understand themselves better and value each other more.

Remember the Titans movie presents an opportunity to look at the development stages of leadership over the course of a season. The movie takes place at a high school in Virginia in 1971. The school replaces its current Caucasian football coach – Bill Yoast with an African American coach – Herman Boone. Herman Boone as the head coach and Bill Yoast as the assistant coach form a successful football team through struggles and racial issues between team members and the people of the town they lived in.

In a previous class, we learned about a theory on group dynamics called the Tuckman stages. This theory states that in order for a team to effectively produce at its highest potential, there are four phases that are indispensable and unavoidable. Without giving attention to these phases, Tuckman believed that most teams would concentrate almost solely on content and virtually ignore the process, explaining why outwardly strong teams produce underwhelming results. Summarizing these four phases, Tuckman named them forming, storming, norming and performing. While reflecting on the dynamic for my most recent group collaboration project for this class, it is helpful to consider the Tuckman phrases and whether or not they were

This balance is often observed difficult to achieve, especially within the solution teams. This is mainly attributed to the team formation stages as described by the Bruce Tuckman’s model (1965). According to Tuckman, the team formation goes through the forming, storming, norming and performing stages in progression. In the forming stage, there is a high dependence on leader for guidance and direction. In the storming stage, team members vie for position as they attempt to

The Tuckman Model of Group Development has 5 stages: Forming, Storming, Norming, and Adjourning (Maples, 2008). During the first session of MOP, everyone was tasked with forming their own small project team. The very first class workshop activity involved meeting two new people and introducing one of them to the entire class. The aim of the activity was to indirectly assess who we would want to be in a team with, based on our perceptions of a person’s behaviour, values, and work ethic. Most people would want to be in a team with people similar to them on a surface level (age, gender, ethnicity) and on a deeper level (personality, attitudes, believes, values) (Liang, Shih, & Chiang, 2015). We were free to choose whoever we wanted in our team under the condition that the team we form is diverse.

Whether groups are formed for social or task oriented purposes, the ability to produce and maintain a sense of affiliation, peer support and collaboration is important for overall group functioning. The cohesion of a social group is produced through the establishment of a set of group norms, which are later defined as a guide for conduct accepted within a group of individuals. However, in order for a group to perform and produce results, the team leader should guide his/her team through the proper stages of group development, which includes the following steps: forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. Although teams should follow all these stages of group development, the forming and the norming stages are the most important,

There are many theories on the ways that group form and become efficient and effective teams. One of the best-known team development theories was first developed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965 and has formed the basis of many further ideas since its conception.

Tuckman (1965) suggests that understanding is required in order for teams to reach maturity. Tuckman phases of team development are:

The features of effective team performance are set out in Brian Tuckman’s phases of team development theory, ‘Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing.’ This outlines the phases that a team will go through in order to become effective and reach maturity. At the ‘Forming’ stage of team development individual roles and responsibilities are unclear and each member of the team is concerned to avoid conflict with each other. From this point the team will go through the ‘Storming’ phase which is when they start to conflict as individuals put forward ideas which will be challenged by others in a bid to gain power and position over others. After this the ‘Norming’ phase follows and it is at this point that individual roles are defined and accepted

In 1965, B. Tuckman published his idea of how groups assemble by using his ‘Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing model’. You could say that his theory is a helpful explanation of team development, but they may differ from one individual to another. The model does explain how the team develops its maturity, through establishing working relationships. It also connotes the leadership style changing; from a directing style, to coaching, then participating and delegating before almost being detached.

Tuckman 's model suggests that as the team moves through the stages of development members are concerned with resolving both inter-personal relationships and task activities. During the forming stage, members complete initial assessments of inter-personal relationships and norms, and attempt to identify the nature and extent of required task activities. The storming stage is characterised by intra-group conflict in respect of both inter-personal relationships (as behaviour norms and leadership have yet to be established) and task activities (caused in part by emotional

Tuckman (1965) proposed that when developing teams, groups proceed through four general stages of development, namely: Forming, storming, norming and performing.

The five stage Tuckman’s theory (1965) namely forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning focuses on the way in which a group handles a task from the beginning to completion. The main group work approaches are cognitive behaviourist, feminist, psychoanalytic and humanistic approaches. Knowledge of theory enhances effectiveness of group work.

However, there was no evidence of teamwork in this video. There was no defined process of people working together to accomplish a common goal, which is the definition of teamwork. Instead there was a group of knowledgeable people, who did not want responsibility and had no initiative for such project. In fact, Tuckman’s group development model should have been added to the agenda as a refresher course for all members. Schermerhorn defines Tuckman’s development model in stages. Stage 1 of the model is forming, and this was evident in the beginning of the meeting with the initial formation of the group discussing where tasks are understood by members and resources and information that delegated by the leader, in this case Joe. But it wasn’t long into the meeting where storming was evident. Individuals began to question and challenge the given task. Members disagree on the goal of the team and resist the given task. At this point personal to emotional excuses began to surface. I do not think I witnessed the rest of the stages, except the adjourning part. There was no norming stage where the team moves toward harmonious working practices where there is agreement. In fact, Joe the acting leader had to assign different tasks according to his perception of each one. And there was no performing stage displaying functional, interdependent roles that were focused on the performance of the group tasks among the members. In fact, group cohesiveness was not

Bruce W Tuckman (1965) developed a model to describe the differing stages of team development. He gave us a way of interpreting the various stages groups pass through into making an effective team. As you can see from the illustration below, teams go