BruceTuckman Team Development Model
1
BRUCE TUCKMAN’S
FORMING, STORMING, NORMING & PERFORMING
TEAM DEVELOPMENT MODEL
Abstract:
Energy and productivity
This model describes the phases which teams tend to go through from their inception to the successful completion of the project, and highlights the areas which may cause the team and the project to fail.
adjourning
forming performing norming
storming
Time
There has never been a time of greater conflict between members of newly formed teams than in today’s world of cyclonic corporate change, where relationships are made and changed through global mergers, demergers, portfolio careers, cost cutting redundancies and a widespread lack of ability in organisations to nurture and retain their home grown talent. © 2010 Carol Wilson
www.performancecoachtraining.com
2
For some 40 years, Bruce Tuckman’s classic model has been delivering comfort and new perspectives to managers either charged with running a team, or trying to function within one, assuring the players that they are not alone and that the discomfort of conflict is a normal part of the journey towards an effective and enjoyable unit.
Dr Tuckman created the model back in 1965 and a decade later added a fifth element,
ADJOURNING, to describe the break up of a team after its project is completed. The model was part of a growing awareness, led by the organisational psychologists of the period, of the extent to which the success or otherwise of a business depends upon the relationships between its people. It resonates with Hersey and Blanchard’s well known
Situational Leadership model.
Dr Tuckman first published the FSNP model without any fanfare or presage of how celebrated it would become, in an article for the Psychological Bulletin entitled
“Developmental sequence in small groups”. (63, 384-399). His work has gone on to develop many aspects of organisational psychology without much reference to this early model (he currently holds a professorship at The Ohio State University) yet the FSNP
BRUCE TUCKMAN’S
FORMING, STORMING, NORMING & PERFORMING
TEAM DEVELOPMENT MODEL
Abstract:
Energy and productivity
This model describes the phases which teams tend to go through from their inception to the successful completion of the project, and highlights the areas which may cause the team and the project to fail.
adjourning
forming performing norming
storming
Time
There has never been a time of greater conflict between members of newly formed teams than in today’s world of cyclonic corporate change, where relationships are made and changed through global mergers, demergers, portfolio careers, cost cutting redundancies and a widespread lack of ability in organisations to nurture and retain their home grown talent. © 2010 Carol Wilson
www.performancecoachtraining.com
2
For some 40 years, Bruce Tuckman’s classic model has been delivering comfort and new perspectives to managers either charged with running a team, or trying to function within one, assuring the players that they are not alone and that the discomfort of conflict is a normal part of the journey towards an effective and enjoyable unit.
Dr Tuckman created the model back in 1965 and a decade later added a fifth element,
ADJOURNING, to describe the break up of a team after its project is completed. The model was part of a growing awareness, led by the organisational psychologists of the period, of the extent to which the success or otherwise of a business depends upon the relationships between its people. It resonates with Hersey and Blanchard’s well known
Situational Leadership model.
Dr Tuckman first published the FSNP model without any fanfare or presage of how celebrated it would become, in an article for the Psychological Bulletin entitled
“Developmental sequence in small groups”. (63, 384-399). His work has gone on to develop many aspects of organisational psychology without much reference to this early model (he currently holds a professorship at The Ohio State University) yet the FSNP