If you put a group of competent professionals into a room (physically or virtually), give them the perfect conditions, it will take a 4-6 months before the group starts to function as a team.
Why does it take so long?
A group of people go through different stages on the way to becoming what we would think of as a team. Bruce Tuckman, in his seminal work Development Sequence in Small Groups, developed his widely-accepted theory that a team must go through four stages of development to becoming a high-performing team. This would be expanded in 1977 to introduce a fifth stage, but for this article, let’s focus on the first four stages. And it takes time to move through these stages. Here are the stages.
Forming
Stage 1 is the forming of the team, bringing the people together, discussing and agree on team goals, roles, and tasks. At this stage most people will be generally agreeable and polite with each other – no-one really tries to rock the boat, or disagree strongly, they mostly want to be seen as a team player and want to show that they are good what they do and can get along well with others.
Storming
In stage two however, this can change. Personality clashes may occur, and the stress on individuals and the team as expectations rise and the reality of the complexity of the team’s tasks appear. Tuckman called this the Storming phase, named because of the appearance of conflict within the team. It needs to happen, and it take a good leader and trusting team to move through this stage. Healthy conflict, where ideas and ways of working are challenged within the team, is essential for the team to move forward. The best ideas often come about through questions, counter-proposals – good strong collaboration and discussion.
Norming
Stage three then takes the team to Norming, where the team accepts and even respects each other’s differences and skills. The team has worked out each other’s preferred mode of working and their true strengths in the Storming stage, so the team is able to settle into a groove.
Performing
As the word suggests, the team really hit their stride and performing to their full potential. The team members bring out the best in each other. It sounds like a dream, right? For many teams unfortunately it is.
There are ways to help the team move through these stages, but even so it takes on average 6 months to build a great team (give or take a couple of months).
Liked this post? Here’s a some other of my posts on teamwork and agile.
