5 Stages of Team Development: Forming Teams

If one or a couple of team members are willing to take on this responsibility, they are the most likely candidates for becoming the group leaders at the following stages. While most teams progress through the development cycle naturally, by knowing what it is you can actually help them get out of sticky situations. So keep on reading to learn more about the team development cycle or scroll down for a visual infographic on the topic.

In the performing stage, consensus and cooperation have been well-established and the team is mature, organized, and well-functioning. There is a clear and stable structure, and members are committed to the team’s mission. Problems and conflicts still emerge, but they are dealt with constructively. The principal work for the team during the Forming stage is to create a team with clear structure, goals, direction and roles so that members begin to build trust. During the Forming stage, much of the team’s energy is focused on defining the team so task accomplishment may be relatively low. After the chaos of the storming phase, things start to settle down as the team moves into the Norming phase.

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Use this exercise at the end of a project or program as a way to reinforce learnings, celebrate highlights and create closure. One of the stumbling blocks many individuals and groups face when making change is knowing how to start while also being intimidated by the potential largeness of the task. One of the key ways to influence proactive change in a group is to empower your team to make small but meaningful changes incrementally and experiment to find what works.

Participants experience the practice of more compassion and the benefits it engenders. Forming is the first stage of team development and is where a team first comes together, gets to know one another, and becomes oriented with the goals and purpose of the team. This is where it’s important to level with individual contributors and truly get to know what’s going on. This is a great time to reflect on what makes a high-performing team able to accomplish tasks and move through obstacles. Draw a simple four-stage diagram and ask each person to place a dot or sticky note next to the stage they think the team is at. After reading everything above, you have a pretty good idea where your team is at – but does the rest of the team agree?

Team members will be tired of conflicting ideas and work harder to solve problems and reach the best state possible for the group to achieve. When a group of any kind first meets, it’s critical that things start off on the right foot. This is where teams get to know each other, the abilities of their teammates and the details of the project they will all work on together. The goal at the end of the forming stage is to have a team that is comfortable with one another and excited to begin work on a project. The five most famous stages of team development are known as Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing and Adjourning. For your team to work collaboratively with few interruptions, they need tools that operate intuitively and will save them time.

The Stages of Group Formation for Team Development

Solving problems face-to-face instead of over email or chat is a good investment right now because you’ll get a richer sense of who your teammates are as people. The forming-storming-norming-performing cycle repeats more often than you might think. The individual roles your team members play are incredibly important to team performance. These roles could be the official title they were hired to do, or the role they fit into naturally within the group dynamic. For example, if you’re working cross-functionally, the individuals from one team are assigned the role of reporting back to their team what they’re working on.

Tuckman asserted that each of these phases was necessary in order for a team to learn, grow, and deliver results of the highest quality. This paper became https://globalcloudteam.com/ the groundwork for the stages of group development. Tuckman’s foundation helps team leaders understand how team dynamics change as a project progresses.

The five stages of team development are designed to help with forming teams and allowing them to thrive at work. By taking these steps, leaders can help their teams progress through the stages of group development and achieve their goals. It’s important to remember that not all teams will linearly go through these stages, and it’s okay for teams to revisit earlier stages as needed. The key is to remain flexible and adaptive in your approach to team management, always keeping the team’s needs and objectives in mind.

Employee engagement best practices for a thriving workforce

In this respect, all information provided is without guarantee of correctness, completeness and up-to-dateness. Provide positive feedback along the way and especially at the end of the project. Implement quick and effective problem-solving strategies with your HR team. Maintain open and consistent communication, especially if things go wrong and changes need to be made. Utilise a white board or post-it notes to make every team member’s ideas seen.

• Define the communication rules to help your team with any conflicts in the future and establish collaboration tools to facilitate the change.
• We all perceive things in our own unique way based on past experience and what we know now.
• Whether you’re building a new team or working on a specific project with cross-functional partners, it’s important to establish your team’s mission early on.
• There will be a lot less arguing and planning and more working with one another.
• This first stage of the team development cycle brings a lot of uncertainty.
• As team members grow together, they might experiment with complementary practices such as pair programming or become more cross-functional.

The leader can then concoct an improvement plan to move team members through the development phases. The norming stage of team development is like a months-old couple that accepts each other’s quirks and flaws. Team members adjust to teammate behaviors and devise strategies to overcome differences.

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Team members refocus on established team groundrules and practices and return their focus to the team’s tasks. As team members grow together, they might experiment with complementary practices such as pair programming or become more cross-functional. Another helpful tool for easing the Storming phase is the Sprint Retrospective.

This is also a good time to clarify which times zones everyone works in so people don’t have to wait an entire day for an answer to important questions. You can foster the empathetic capacity of participants to “walk in the shoes” of others. Many situations do not have immediate answers or clear resolutions.

Team Building Stages: 5 Steps

A strong team leader is the backbone of every high-performing team. Without strong leadership, teams may struggle reaching the performing stage. four stages of group development By developing your own leadership skills, you can model collaboration best practices and help your team reach their fullest potential.

It can be tempting to avoid conflict, but doing so doesn’t help team building. A team that works together to resolve issues will trust each other more. They can rely on each other to do the hard work they were hired to do, despite any differences that arise. For smaller, cross-functional teams, use your main project objective for your team’s mission statement. For example, a cross-functional team between web development and marketing may have a project goal of decreasing page load time to 1.5 seconds. The forming stage involves a period of orientation and getting acquainted.

How Can Leaders Help at the Forming Teams Stage?

With this method, you can invite your group to identify small changes they can make now and work towards better working practices as both individuals and a team. In this method, invite participants to write a few words of what they most value about their colleagues on a piece of paper before passing it along to the next person. After going around the circle, invite each person to share which comment they liked the most. By sharing what everyone values about each other, you can build self-confidence and team bonds that can help the group move from Norming to Performing effectively.

This is the hardest stage in the development of any team, and undoubtedly your team will be at its least effective here. This stage is marked by conflict and competition as personalities and working styles begin to evolve and the group members of your team are unfamiliar on how to communicate with each other. Teams may also disagree on the common goal and subgroups or cliques may form.

As roles solidify, it’s important to make those responsibilities clear and distinct so that everyone knows who is doing what by when. If you haven’t already, consider creating a RACI chart to let each team member know who’s responsible, accountable, contributing, and informed for a specific initiative. As a team leader, it’s your goal to support and empower your team to help get their highest-impact work done. When your team members feel comfortable with each other, it’s easier to collaborate and work together. Alternatively, if your team is having challenges meshing, it may take them longer to get work done. To guide your team as it develops, it helps to understand the stages of group development.

As we go along, we will explain each of these stages in greater detail. They are norming when they have learned how to work together, creating a sense of normalcy. When they are storming, they are working together to come up with ideas.

They may also take on more self-management activities and may look for ways to improve their skills. At the performing stage, relationships are formed and there is a clear and stable structure. The team is mature, organised and has a sense of consensus and cooperation.