What the Tuckman Model is
The Tuckman Model (نموذج تاكمان) describes the stages a team may pass through as it develops from a group of individuals into a team that does its work. The psychologist Bruce Tuckman set it out in an article titled Developmental Sequence in Small Groups, published in 1965 in Psychological Bulletin (volume 63, issue 6), which gave four stages. Later, with Mary Ann Jensen, he added a fifth stage, adjourning, in an article of 1977 titled Stages of Small Group Development Revisited, published in Group & Organization Studies (volume 2, issue 4).
The model is useful to the human resources officer, the manager and anyone leading a project, because a new team may seem to stumble in its first weeks, and the model offers language to name what is going on. Is this a stumble of the team, or a stage in its formation? The model describes a sequence over time. It does not diagnose a particular fault.
The stages of the Tuckman Model
Five stages follow one another in the model:
| Stage | What marks it |
|---|---|
| Forming | Members get to know one another and turn toward the task, they tend to depend on the leader, and reserve prevails. |
| Storming | Members resist the influence of the group and the demands of the task, and conflict over roles and influence may occur. |
| Norming | Resistance recedes, a sense of belonging to the team forms, and norms and rules take shape to which members adhere. |
| Performing | The team’s energy turns to the task, roles become flexible and functional, and the team turns to solving problems. |
| Adjourning | The task ends and the team disbands, and attention moves to closing the work and to disengagement. |
The descriptions in the table are condensed from the two articles, and each stage holds more than this in the original sources.
How Tuckman described each stage
Tuckman described each stage in two dimensions together. The first is group structure, which is the relationships among members. The second is task activity, which is what the team does in its work. Storming, for example, shows in relationships as friction over influence, and in the task as resistance to what the task demands. The model is thus not about feelings alone or about output alone, but about the two moving together.
The model sets no duration for any stage. It does not say that a team spends two weeks in forming or a month in storming, so attributing durations to it adds something that is not in it.
What distinguishes the Tuckman Model from the GRPI model and from the self managed team
The model is related to concepts that are mentioned with it when teams are discussed, and each of them has its own subject:
- The GRPI model is a diagnostic tool that examines goals, roles, procedures and relationships to find where a team is stumbling. The Tuckman Model describes the sequence a team passes through over time. The first answers the question of what the team is missing, and the second the question of which stage the team is at.
- A self managed team is an arrangement that gives the team decision rights, and it is not a developmental sequence. A self managed team may pass through Tuckman’s stages as a team run by a manager does.
- Organizational culture is the values and customs of the whole organisation. The norms of the norming stage are the customs of a single team, which may agree with the organisation’s culture or differ from it.
What a team may need at each stage
The model is descriptive and recommends no action. Studying it can nevertheless help a manager think about what might help, and we suggest the following as working hypotheses and not as rules:
- In forming. The team may need clarity about the goal, the roles and the way of working, because members do not yet know what is expected of them. An early meeting with each member, as in a one on one meeting, may help. Learning early what each member contributes to the team’s work is a matter taken up in Belbin Team Roles.
- In storming. Disagreements may need to be named instead of hidden, and the team may need to agree on how a decision is made when members differ. Psychological safety is related to this: it is a member’s belief that they can object without it being held against them.
- In norming. The rules the team has agreed on, such as meeting times and the way of replying, may need to be written down, so that a verbal agreement does not turn into a difference in understanding.
- In performing. The manager may need to step back from detail and remove obstacles, and continuous feedback may need to carry on instead of waiting for the end of the project.
- In adjourning. The team may need a review of what it learned, recognition of what it achieved, and a settled answer on where members go next, because the disbanding of a team may leave a mark on those who were its members.
A manager’s style may change with the stage, and that is the subject of situational leadership: more direction at the start of a team, and more delegation once its performance has settled. That link is a judgement of ours, and Tuckman did not state it.
A hypothetical example of a project with a new team
Suppose a project of 12 weeks brings together 6 members from 3 departments who have not worked together before. In the first week the members ask their manager about every small point and hold back their opinions, which is close to the description of forming. In the third week two members disagree over who approves the design and part of the work stalls, which is close to storming. The team then agrees that the design is approved after review by two members, the disagreements calm, and that is close to norming.
The weeks in the example are hypothetical, because the model sets no durations, and another team may move through the stages at a different speed or may not pass clearly through one of them. A simple calculation can be added. The number of possible pairs among 6 members is 6 × 5 ÷ 2 = 15, and if the team grows to 9 members the number becomes 9 × 8 ÷ 2 = 36. As the number of members rises, so do the pairwise relationships that may need coordination, and that may lengthen the time before the team moves to performing. This is a hypothesis of ours, which the model does not state.
Signs that may indicate a team’s stage
A manager may notice behaviours that bring a team closer to one stage than to another. The table is a practical interpretation that we suggest, and it does not come from Tuckman’s two articles:
| Stage | Signs that may be observed |
|---|---|
| Forming | Questions about roles, silence in meetings, and turning to the manager for every decision |
| Storming | The same decision reopened more than once, side conversations, and contest over who decides |
| Norming | Shared working habits, saying we instead of I, and accepting disagreement without tension |
| Performing | Decisions taken inside the team without returning to the manager, and members swapping roles when needed |
| Adjourning | Falling enthusiasm as the end approaches, and questions about where each member goes after the project |
These signs are possibilities, since a behaviour may appear for another reason unrelated to the stage. Silence in meetings may point to forming, but it may also point to weak psychological safety, to exhaustion or to lack of time. We therefore suggest asking the members themselves before judging, and not relying on observation from a distance.
Mistakes a manager can make in interpreting the stages
- Rushing storming. A manager may try to skip the conflict by imposing a decision. The conflict may then be postponed and not disappear, and it returns in another place.
- Taking forming as a lack of competence. Reserve in the first weeks may be part of getting to know one another and not an inability to do the work.
- Interfering too much in performing. A manager can hold back a team that has begun to work on its own by continuing to require small decisions to pass through the manager.
- Neglecting adjourning. Members may move to another project without a review, and the experience of the team may be lost before it is recorded.
What the adjourning stage added
The description of 1965 stopped at performing. The adjourning stage came in the article of 1977 to describe what follows: the end of the task and the disbanding of the team. Its addition seems suited to temporary teams such as project teams, which end when their task ends. A permanent team may reach this stage only when it is dissolved or reorganised.
Adjourning may bring a sense of loss or anxiety for some members, and it may bring relief for others. Reactions differ between individuals, so a manager does not assume a single feeling in everyone. A closing review and open recognition may soften the effect of disbanding, and that is a practical suggestion and not text in the model.
The limits of the Tuckman Model
It is a descriptive model drawn from a review of studies of small groups, and the groups reviewed may have been of various kinds and not only work teams. It is therefore not taken as a law that applies to every team in the same sequence. A team may return to an earlier stage when a member changes or the task changes. A new employee may, for example, join a team that is in performing, and employee onboarding then means integrating that employee into the team without assuming that the team has not changed.
To take storming as a failure is a mistaken interpretation of the model. In Tuckman’s description it is a stage of development and not a defect in the team. The model does not say, however, that every storming ends in agreement, and in the description of the stages we found nothing that settles what happens if it does not end. That is a point at which other tools complete the picture.
We suggest using the model as a mirror that names what is going on in the team and opens a conversation about it, and not as a way to classify a particular team once and for all. A manager who tells a team that it is in storming gives its members a shared language, and may lose the opportunity if the remark becomes a judgement on their performance.
This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.
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