The Four Stages of Team Development

Steven Cesare, Ph.D.

A business owner from Michigan called me the other day to talk about her organizational culture. She shared a common set of paradoxes: results are fine, but they should be better; management team is stable, but becoming complacent; accountability is stated, but inconsistent. The intuitive business owner sensed a malaise permeating her company; a company possessing significantly more potential than presently displayed.

Being the capitalist that she is, she assessed, drafted, and implemented a litany of initiatives to energize her dormant company, reposition it within the local industry, and elevate performance expectations from top to bottom; including herself!

I love saying it: “Never Forget That You are a Role Model.”

She hired an accounting consultant to refine her company’s financial system (e.g., chart of accounts, reporting, cost tracking). She contracted with a design firm to craft a new company logo to stimulate a more strategic brand identity to represent Version 2.0 of her company. She selected an IT company to redesign the company webpage to be more vibrant, fresh, and user friendly. She partnered with a knowledgeable Human Resources consultant, that you and I both know, to revamp her company’s people systems.

Central to the people system goals, was the intent of leveraging the intellectual capital of her management staff by heightening their company-wide awareness, while maximizing value-added input regarding problem analysis, resolution, and follow-up. This team was strategically conceived to be goal-oriented, collaborative, and committed to the company’s reshaped culture, business operations, and leadership model.

Meeting for one hour each week, at the prescribed time, “The Sync Team” works from an agenda of applied concerns, fosters honest debate, and focuses solely on the goal of organizational improvement not personal posturing. Notably, when the team was conceptualized, I oriented the business owner to the four stages (Tuckman, 1965) that every effective team must traverse, as guidance to ensure she managed her high expectations and accelerated timeframes aptly; indeed, this is a very slow, challenging, frustrating process.

Forming

This initial phase is characterized by novelty, uncertainty, and curiosity of the team’s purpose, scope, and function, as well as each individual team member’s view of how s/he will fit in with the other team members, his/her respective status, and his/her contribution value. (A well-defined team charter is crucial to the incremental formation of team progression, evolution, and success at this stage.)

Storming

This inevitable phase manifests friction as boundaries are tested, uncertainty perpetuates, and personal agendas surface. Interpersonal confrontation is likely, power is pursued, and the optimism evident in the Forming phase is forgotten. Accordingly, some members may leave the team, either of their own choice or that of the team. (Conflict, ambiguity, and inefficiency must be addressed openly at this time.)

Norming

If the team works through the Storming phase, this stage occurs when common goals are affirmed, individual differences are acknowledged, while roles, responsibilities, and guidelines are accepted. The measure of success is now the team, not the member. (Alignment is now achieved.)

Performing

Full speed ahead! The team now operates at full potential balancing actual productivity with authentic respect. Synergy, creativity, and confidence reign supreme where sabotage, doubt, and passive-aggressive inefficiency once flourished. (It has taken a lot of time, but that investment was worth it.)

“Yes.” I still coach the dynamic business owner to temper her exceedingly high expectations as “The Sync Team” navigates its inexorable gestational path, reminding her to remain calm and work through the team instead of dominating it, and to insightfully communicate through the burgeoning culture of Version 2.0 of her company.

Wait a second! Now that I think about it, what development stage is your management team currently in?

Oh yeah. I almost forgot. What are you doing about it?

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