How to empower your team at every stage of development

You have a mature, well-organized group now fully focused on reaching the project goals established in the Forming Stage. Now, these 5 stages are vital to help you anticipate your team effectiveness. Simply put, that’s your ability to be efficient and productive with your work, both as individuals and as a group.

• During the forming stage, team members are often optimistic and enthusiastic about getting started.
• The first version is for teams who want to get to know each other better.
• The challenge now is to move a bit faster while keeping the quality of your work high.
• During the first meeting, team members also learn their roles and what’s expected of them as they work towards attaining the shared goal.
• To run a great meeting, keep the team aligned, and the agenda short, specific, and action-oriented.

Once the team members get to know each other, they move on to the second stage. Storming is the most difficult of the five stages, as the team has to learn how to work together despite their individual personalities. In contrast, an ok team can mean delays, loss of quality, and a lot of additional work. After all, their ability to overcome obstacles and achieve their goals is a reflection of a management job well done. You book 1-on-1 meetings with team members to learn about each of their experiences. As you do this, you recognize clear and consistent points with each team member and the benefits of hosting a team retrospective.

What are the five stages of team development?

At the performing stage, you can shift your focus to monitoring progress and assisting in group decisions. You may want to stay aware of team dynamics and help solve any problems that do arise, but in general, you should be able to focus on finishing up your project at this point. As the name suggests, team development entails training and supporting stages of team development with examples a group of individuals so that they work as a cohesive unit to realize the intended outcome. An excellent example of team development is when colleagues from different departments partner to work on a project. As the work process is not yet decided, the team is making little progress, and their progress is often riddled with errors.

It’s important to remember that teams in the Norming stage may not yet have gotten everything right and still need guidance and consideration as they move towards becoming an effective team. It’s vital to stay alert to team dynamics and both individual and group performance – you may want to course correct or further strengthen certain aspects of how your team works together. Conflict can often arise if members of a team don’t feel as if their needs are being met by others on the team or the regular give and take of effective teamwork breaks down.

Signs and questions to look out for in the storming stage

However, the whole team must find a consensus on both to progress further. This stage aims for members to grow into finding their way to the performing stage by expressing expectations and finding a middle ground. Activities include; brainstorming sessions, meetings, and activities that highlight strengths and weaknesses.

Each one encouraging the team to reflect and analyse a different and crucial element of their behaviour. Broadly, team development can be understood as a framework or series of actions designed to improve the way a group works together. Focus on building a shared understanding across your team and with stakeholders. Recently, several teams in our engineering department undertook a massive, ludicrously complex, business-critical infrastructure project.

AI Meeting transcription

Where this exercise also excels is in giving everyone in the group room to respond and find better ways to work together in practical terms. All groups are composed of individuals with different needs, communication styles, and working practices. When bringing those individuals together and engaging in team development, leaders will need to find ways to help everyone work together effectively and grow as individuals and as a group. They are known as the stages of team development and they include forming, storming, norming, and performing. The company came out of the two months with an aligned and value-oriented
road map for rolling out a digital transformation across its network. The plan integrated both digital and traditional lean or Six Sigma improvements, accounted for resources and technology requirements, and reflected a clear strategy for building capabilities at scale.

You can use this understanding to set up better teams and get through challenges more smoothly. Fully understanding and recognizing each stage can also make it easier to determine how to delegate tasks within your team. Renowned psychologist Bruce Tuckman created an easily-understood model in 1965.

Storming

It is a period marked by conflict and competition as individual personalities emerge. Team performance may actually decrease in this stage because energy is put into unproductive activities. Members may disagree on team goals, and subgroups and cliques may form around strong personalities or areas of agreement. To get through this stage, members must work to overcome obstacles, to accept individual differences, and to work through conflicting ideas on team tasks and goals. You might start a new project and mix up your team make-up or try new things that result in some conflicts in perspective but also allow your team to grow. While it’s important to accept that remaining exclusively in the Performing stage – particularly for long-serving teams –  is unrealistic, it’s also worth remembering that this is the ideal state.

Others focus too much on replicating a single site experience, failing to appreciate wider network complexities. The team functions at peak efficiency, and little or no oversight are needed. At the performing stage, it’s easy to accomplish tasks since members are in tandem and understand the process. Team members thrive when handling individual and collective tasks since each individual’s skills are fully optimized. Although members understand each other, conflicts may still arise at the norming stage of team development.

Stages of Team Development and How to Implement Them

Also, consider breaking down the team’s large goals into smaller ones so the team can focus on accomplishing the smaller ones first before concentrating on the bigger ones thereafter. You have to utilize different methods of conflict management while leading members to understand and take comfort in their differences. This, in turn, leads to a very low level of productivity and the team is far from achieving their mission and objectives.

In this meeting, you take notes from each team member and apply these to your team principles. This way, each employee knows they can trust you, and each other going forward. You recognize that your team is new, and want them to feel supported, motivated and psychologically safe. So, you host a meeting where your team can get to know one another, their work style, and the way they feel appreciated.

Fourth, encourage continued growth in the performing stage

It’s a great opportunity to reflect on your accomplishments and think about what you learned. With little left to do, Daisy, Adam, Daniel, and Stella decide to throw a party for good times’ sake. They’re all radiantly happy — but also feel sad that their project is ending. The 3-month content project is mostly done, and everyone’s focus dissolves.