Four Stages of Team Development What You Need to Know

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. The fifth stage of group development, also known as the mourning stage, is the final stage a team will go through. After a project is over or if a team is disbanded, team members who worked together will go into a small mourning period.

four stages of team development

While these four stages—forming, storming, norming, and performing—are distinct and generally sequential, they often blend into one another and even overlap. For example, if a new member joins the team, there may be a second brief period of formation while that person is integrated. A team may also need to return to an earlier stage if its performance declines.

Scaling success

They start tolerating the whims and fancies of the other team members. They accept others as they are and make an effort to move on. The danger here is that members may be so focused on preventing conflict that they are reluctant to share controversial ideas. In the Performing stage, the team makes significant progress towards its goals.

This is when you will see the results of how a leader has constructed their team. At each step, it should be remembered that at no point should a leader be focusing solely on productivity. He or she is working with people, afterall and is working to build genuine relationships.

High-Performing Teams

By now team members work together easily on interdependent tasks and are able to communicate and coordinate effectively. There are fewer time-consuming distractions based on interpersonal and group dynamics. For this reason, motivation is usually high and team members have confidence in their ability to attain goals. These statistics are based on people problems in startups, and it isn’t quite clear what percent of larger company failures could be directly or indirectly attributed to people and team issues.

four stages of team development

Getting through the storming stage signifies the resolution of conflicts and the emergence of unity among the members. In norming stage roles of individual members are decided, and a consensus is reached on who should be the leader or leaders. This leads to an increase in team performance as members learn to collaborate and focus on team objectives. While working on a high-performing team may be a truly pleasurable and growthful experience, it is not the end of team development. There is still a need for the team to focus on both process and product, setting new goals as appropriate. Changes, such as members coming or going or large-scale changes in the external environment, can lead a team to cycle back to an earlier stage.

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  • This is known as the “win-lose” stage, as members clash for control of the group and people begin to choose sides.
  • It’s essential to avoid seeing new team members as nothing more than automatons who execute duties.
  • The Forming stage begins with the introduction of team members.
  • Later, during the norming and performing stages, norms focus on relationships and levels of performance.
  • Norms are effective because team members want to support the team and preserve relationships in the team, and when norms are violated, there is peer pressure or sanctions to enforce compliance.
  • Members start to feel part of a team and can take pleasure from the increased group cohesion.

You and your teammates trust each other enough to get a little creative and innovative, while still delivering top-notch work on time. When you start to sense that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing, you’ve made it into the “norming” stage. The challenge now is to move a bit faster while keeping the quality of your work high. There’s a new initiative to run at and you’re keen to get started. You’re not sure who is doing what, or how to break this epic project into smaller components. ThoughtHub is a collection of knowledge to help you learn more about your favorite topics.

Navigating the “forming” stage

It’s important for the team as a whole that they learn to deal with some of their issues. Of course, no good leader will let the conflict go on too long, and this is the challenge that the team leader must face – to intervene or to abdicate. Every team moves through the four stages of development, and may slip back a stage or two as new challenges or opportunities arise. Being resilient, laying aside ego and working together will allow the team to meet the challenges and emerge stronger than when they started. The forming stage involves a period of orientation and getting acquainted.

four stages of team development

They may be feeling some anxiety because of uncertainty about their individual role or future responsibilities. They may feel sadness or a sense of loss about the changes coming to their team relationships. And at the same time, team members may feel a sense of deep satisfaction at the accomplishments of the team. Individual members might feel all of these things at the same time, or may cycle through feelings of loss followed by feelings of satisfaction. Given these conflicting feelings, individual and team morale may rise or fall throughout the ending stage.

Performing

Here are 6 ways Teamwork Spaces can power your marketing team. Successful team members think their ideas and contributions are valuable, so they are not afraid to express their thoughts and opinions. On the other hand, members pay attention to what others say since they trust their colleagues’ ability, integrity, and honesty. This is also the time in which teams can celebrate everything they have achieved together.

With remote teams, it’s easy to run on assumptions until you’re almost up against a deadline — and then you discover that you didn’t get the outcome you needed. Help your team check in with each other by holding daily stand-up meetings or mid-week progress reports to see if everyone is on track and has the materials they need. Any insights should be shared in a public forum so everyone in the company four stages of team development can learn. Disagreements are unavoidable on teams, especially when each person on the team has a different perspective on how to approach the issues the team encounters. When you all work in the same location, it can be easier to hash out problems quickly. On a remote team, you need to be more thoughtful about the tools and the processes that you use to identify and deal with disagreements.

Leadership strategies to facilitate successful team development

Performing a full and deep up-front analysis of an entire network can leave a manufacturer out of steam before a transformation can get off the ground. Instead, robust, accurate-enough insights can be gleaned from a well-developed extrapolation methodology. Implemented successfully, these solutions deliver irresistible returns. “Storming” can be thought of as “weathering the trying times that will come with the stresses of a project.” The latter doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue – so storming is efficient. It’s easy for everyone — including you — to get in a tunnel and focus on their own lists of tasks. Make sure everyone steps back each day or week to take a look at the larger picture.