

It is a period marked by conflict and competition as individual personalities emerge. The storming stage is the most difficult and critical stage to pass through. Team members are asking such questions as “What does the team offer me?” “What is expected of me?” “Will I fit in?” Most interactions are social as members get to know each other. A member who asserts authority or is knowledgeable may be looked to take control. Uncertainty is high during this stage, and people are looking for leadership and authority. The forming stage involves a period of orientation and getting acquainted.

Most high-performing teams go through five stages of team development. Team progress through the stages is shown in the following diagram. He called the stages: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. Bruce Tuckman, an educational psychologist, identified a five-stage development process that most teams follow to become high performing. Research has shown that teams go through definitive stages during development. This process of learning to work together effectively is known as team development. Through this process, you begin to operate as a team instead of a collection of individuals.
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Over time you get to know each other, to know what to expect from each other, to know how to divide the labor and assign tasks, and to know how you will coordinate your work. Initially you are not a team you are just individuals assigned to work together. When your team first gets together, you likely sit around and look at each other, not knowing how to begin. You have probably had an experience when you have been put on a team to work on a school assignment or project. But this does not happen automatically: it develops as the team works together. In teams, the internal characteristics are the people in the team and how they interact with each other.įor teams to be effective, the people in the team must be able to work together to contribute collectively to team outcomes. External characteristics are what we see and interact with, but internal characteristics are what make it work. This is like describing a car by its model and color without considering what is under the hood. Our discussion so far has focused mostly on a team as an entity, not on the individuals inside the team.
