Personal Narrative: Tuckman's Stages Of Group Development

Remember the Titans movie presents an opportunity to look at the development stages of leadership over the course of a season. The movie takes place at a high school in Virginia in 1971. The school replaces its current Caucasian football coach – Bill Yoast with an African American coach – Herman Boone. Herman Boone as the head coach and Bill Yoast as the assistant coach form a successful football team through struggles and racial issues between team members and the people of the town they lived in.

The features of effective team performance are set out in Brian Tuckman’s phases of team development theory, ‘Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing.’ This outlines the phases that a team will go through in order to become effective and reach maturity. At the ‘Forming’ stage of team development individual roles and responsibilities are unclear and each member of the team is concerned to avoid conflict with each other. From this point the team will go through the ‘Storming’ phase which is when they start to conflict as individuals put forward ideas which will be challenged by others in a bid to gain power and position over others. After this the ‘Norming’ phase follows and it is at this point that individual roles are defined and accepted

The same constraints do not apply to stage 3, which is storming. The low score in Stage 3 is due to us focusing primarily on getting the task completed rather than any issues with the teamwork style. According to Whetton and Cameron, storming stage is when the team development stage is which members question the team’s direction, the leader, roles of other members, and task objectives. In the case of our team, “we focus on getting our work done” (2011) instead of questioning the leader or having any disagreements amongst team members. Base on the score of 24, we operate the most in stage 4 which is the performing stage.

As a team leader it is the goal to have the group perform well and as quickly as possible and work through their differences. Many studies suggest that interprofessional teams do not perform effectively due to friction, hostility, and barriers to knowledge sharing (Mitchell, Parker, & Giles, 2011). Forming a team usually is recognized by the stages known as forming, storming, norming, and performing (Mind Tools, 2012). Formatting an agenda that includes expectations, rules, and

The author examines four stages of group development that allows the emerging member to discern purpose, role, and collective views. In stage one, dependency and inclusion marks a member’s reliance on the leader or other extroverted members. In stage two counter dependency and fighting is expected as members seek liberation from their leader and strive to merge their goals. In stage three, trust and structure begin as clarity of goals and relationship building take root. In stage four, members have surpassed the hindrances of lower team functioning such as dissatisfaction of roles, and have embraced goal achievement and task accomplishment. In this final stage, “teams are highly cohesive and can expect to be successful” (Wheelan, 2016, p. 29). That said, the author informs

The five stages of team development were first introduced by Bruce Wayne Tuckman in 1965. His research into the way teams function and coordinate provided reoccurring trends towards very specific points in the life of a team, which became the premises of each of the first four “Tuckman’s Stages.” The fifth stage was co-created by Mary Ann Jensen over a decade later. The five stages discussed in this essay are as follows: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning.

Forming a team consists of interdependence, sharing responsibility (each group member is in charge of their own part), and working towards a common goal to achieve success. The stages of team formation are necessary for the team to grow together, to resolve problems, find solutions and to give results. Group development was established by psychologist Bruce Tuckman in 1965. He developed the stages of forming, storming, norming and performing. Adjourning is the fifth stage that was added ten years

Team building is centered on helping other move through different stage of a group development which helps each other strengthens their relationship within the team and other member’s to understand the roles and responsibilities required. (Bierema, L. 2014) Tuckman’s stages use the forming; storming; norming and performing model for group development. This was first proposed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965. (Bierema, L. 2014) When it comes to the current team I am linked with, we are currently not involved in any of these stages. Since this chapter, I have brought this suggestion my management so start this process. Prior to me starting in this department, current supervisors would do what they felt was correct which can contradict what the correct

Because we are trying to unify a team, it is important to address the goals of the group as a whole. “An effective leader's persuasion is of the subtlest kind, for he or she must interpret reality to offer images of the future that are irresistibly meaningful. In the choice of words, values, and beliefs, you as a leader "craft" reality to ensure commitment and confidence in the mission” (Conger, 1991, p. 44). Our common goal must be compelling and our story engaging. However, we must also ensure that our goals are realistic and achievable. It is one thing to spew ideas of grandeur, but another to accomplish them. Without this critical element, we may be setting ourselves up to create influence only

The storming stage occurs when there is conflict between team members when using their different working styles as the different styles may create a unique problem when the different tasks are performed.

Storming: This stage is characterized by conflict and resistance to the group’s task and structure. The team is struggling through its differences.

As the team begins to work together, they move into the “storming” stage. This stage CANNOT be avoided. Team members may challenge each other and also the team leader, and how things should be done. While differences surface, this may cause some loss of performance or focus on the task

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

The Tuckman Model of Group Development has 5 stages: Forming, Storming, Norming, and Adjourning (Maples, 2008). During the first session of MOP, everyone was tasked with forming their own small project team. The very first class workshop activity involved meeting two new people and introducing one of them to the entire class. The aim of the activity was to indirectly assess who we would want to be in a team with, based on our perceptions of a person’s behaviour, values, and work ethic. Most people would want to be in a team with people similar to them on a surface level (age, gender, ethnicity) and on a deeper level (personality, attitudes, believes, values) (Liang, Shih, & Chiang, 2015). We were free to choose whoever we wanted in our team under the condition that the team we form is diverse.

Phil Jackson famously stated that "The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team." Given this scenario, I have formulated a series of recommendations to address the key issues. The case is a prime example of a dysfunctional team trapped in the storming phase. The team’s three core problems are team dysfunctions, intragroup conflicts, and role ambiguities. In the hopes of resolving these issues, I have developed a strategic approach with different options and emergency tactics to pursue based upon the results of its first stage.