There Are Many Ways For A Team To Grow With Team Development

The team development model of:

Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing was proposed in 1965 by American psychologist Bruce Tuckman.

The Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing model describes a set of stages in training that a group must go through in order to be able to achieve maximum potential.

As the name implies, the Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing model show the four ordered stages a team must go through before they become like a well-oiled machine.

Forming

The first stage of training, forming, is when the team is just getting to know each other. Each has his or her own ideas, which are usually independent of the other. There is minimum cooperation and integration of ideas.

While each team member’s behavior might not be exactly destructive or confrontational, there is little coherence between them during this stage, as they all are focused mainly on their ideas.

A supervisor might also be able to recognize the more mature-minded members of the team from their attempts to blend in and consider the ideas of others.

This stage is when the concept of Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing is introduced to the team.

Storming

This is the stage where the concepts of each member come together for the first time. This is where members of the team experience their ideas being criticized, improved, and commented on by their colleagues.

Storming not only refers to the concept of “brainstorming”, but also to the “stormy” stage of team development.

Some immature members will not appreciate their ideas being criticized, and their behavior might serve as a deterrent for the team to move on to the next stage of thier development.

It’s up to the supervisor or team leader to decide how to deal with this kind of attitude.

Norming

Once the “stormy” phase is over the team reaches the stage where they start to work together collectively. They’re more familiar with each others attitudes, work ethics, and tastes in terms of ideas and work output.

What you should look out for in this phase, is the tendency for team members to completely lose their individual tastes and ideas, and slowly become accustomed to agreeing with each other all the time.

Performing

This is the last stage of team development where the team starts to work together as a single unit. They still have some disagreements—which in turn help in the stimulation of ideas but in the end. Their output is a collective one. They are also able to work smoothly even without too much supervision.

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