“We’re Storming, we’re definitely Storming!”  This was the response I received from an executive team I was working with as a client in my leadership development coaching practice.  I had just explained the stages of team development which are commonly known as Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing, and asked where the team thought they were in their journey to becoming the high-performance team they desired to be.  Their answer was unanimous and emphatic across the entire group of seven team members, including the Founder and CEO.  While I wasn’t surprised by the answer given the recent addition of some new members to the exec team, their desire to get out of this phase as quickly as possible needed to be addressed.

The Stages of Team Development Model was introduced by Psychologist Bruce Tuckman in 1965, and it outlines the phases a team goes through as they develop.  Click here for a more thorough explanation of the model, but the basic overview goes like this…

Forming: Team members get acquainted and establish initial relationships, focusing on defining roles and goals.

Storming: Conflicts arise as individuals express different opinions and vie for positions, leading to challenges in collaboration.

Norming: The team begins to resolve conflicts, establish norms, and work more cohesively towards common objectives.

Performing: The team operates at a high level of efficiency and collaboration, achieving goals effectively as a unified group.

Every team goes through these phases, but not all teams make it out of the Storming phase to experience the efficiency and effectiveness of Norming and Performing.  This is often hindered by a lack of trust, and the team never finds a way to embrace a healthy level of conflict in service of the greater group goal.  The result can be devastating and lead to the complete demise of the team and even the organization they work for if this lack of trust persists at the highest levels.  The exec team I was working with could feel the discomfort of this phase and was antsy to climb out of it quickly, but there’s a lot to be learned when we are Storming as a team.  This is the phase where we begin to get a glimpse of each team member’s subject matter expertise as they share their opinions and experiences.  This is also where we learn about preferred communication styles and just how different we all are.  This is critical to the foundation of how we learn to adapt and collaborate with one another to not just tolerate conflict, but to embrace it at a healthy level.  The trust that develops in the Storming phase is what enables a team to move further down the model and develop into a high-performance group.

What I love about Tuckman’s model is that it’s applicable to all sorts of teams.  We see this play out in business, but also in sports teams.  For any athletes out there, I’m sure you can easily think back to a time when the team you were on was in this Storming phase as players were beginning to share their opinions, challenge captains and even coaches, and you all needed to find ways to address the high emotions that can come with conflict, especially during high-pressure moments like gamedays.  The level of trust that is required between you and your teammates to be successful in these challenging situations is part of what makes playing team sports so rewarding, and many of us can remember teams that we’ve watched completely fall apart under pressure because the players hadn’t developed this trust and ability to navigate conflict.

I was recently talking to Deven (Owsiany) O’Crump about her experience on the USA Women’s National Rugby team.  Deven recalled one of her proudest moments was being named captain of the inaugural team to be contracted and paid in the new residency program as the USA was beginning to invest more in developing the sport.  She recounted her pride in knowing that the head coach had recognized her “ability to create a culture that inspires collaboration and the ability to push each other.”  She said that even though “I was probably on the younger side, which is a bit odd to be captaining people who are older than me, everyone very much respected it. And for that time, it was the perfect fit.”  She went on to reference Tuckman’s model in the conversation and noted that her leadership style was what the team needed in those early days of Forming.

I like development models that are simple, easy to remember, and wrap your head around but also inspire some action steps to keep progressing on your goals, and I find that Tuckman’s model checks these boxes when I’m working with teams.  Take a moment to think of a team you’re involved with now and assess where the group is on the development curve.  Once you have an idea of what phase you’re in, this can unlock all sorts of ideas on how to keep striving for that high-performance end of the curve where real magic happens within a team as the individuals understand their roles and the roles of others, trust each other and can embrace healthy conflict in service of the greater group goal.

To learn more about how we use this and many other tools to help teams develop, drop us a line at The Next Playbook to chat about your team’s goals.

-Derika

P.S. To hear the full conversation with Deven, join us at The Next Playbook Podcast and sign up for our Newsletter to hear about new posts. You can also follow us on social media via Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.

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