On the Edge of the Storm

In 1965, Bruce Tuckman published his paper Development Sequence in Small Groups, and introduced the world to the idea that teams go through four stages of development: forming, storming, norming and performing.

This is one of those ideas which, while it comes from a formal academic literature review of psychology research, is immediately intuitive. If we have ever worked in a team, we can easily recognise the feeling of the early days of a new team, when we are figuring each other out (forming), that period when we know each other well enough to challenge and complain, but not well enough to trust each other (storming), the point when we start to establish our ground rules of behaviour, whether implicit or explicit (norming), and the time when we know and trust each other well enough to help each other develop (performing).

One of the most important leadership lessons I have learnt is that every team which achieves high performance will work through these stages. No matter how uncomfortable they may be, you can’t skip them: you can only try to influence how fast you progress through them. It is the role of a leader (and also the role of team members) to acknowledge the reality of this development sequence and to help their teams accelerate through them.

A leader must recognise when people are being overly polite and avoiding conflict, and figure out how to help them say what they mean (moving from forming to storming). They must recognise when direct feedback is becoming unproductive or personal, help people express that feedback in terms of team culture and expectations (moving from storming to norming). And they must help people understand how the basis of norms and trust that they have built together can help them develop as a team (moving from norming to performing).

We must remember, though, that not all teams successfully make the journey through these phases: they can get stuck. The place that it’s most obvious to fear getting stuck is in the storming phase. This is an uncomfortable place to be: people are direct and challenging to each other, but, in the absence of trust and a resilient team culture, those challenges can feel like attacks rather than feedback.

While it is hard to be stuck in the storm, I think that, in our current circumstances, we are much more likely to get stuck in the forming phase. Over the last year, countless teams have come together across companies, across industries and across countries, and many of those teams are made up of people who have never met each other in real life. For the members of such teams to form relationships, agree how they will work together, solve challenges - and get comfortable enough to challenge each other about culture and behaviours - is extremely difficult. 

It can be tempting to stay in the reserved courtesy of the forming stage, where we don’t quite interact with each other as normal human beings, but where at least it is more comfortable. However, whether they like it or not, the storm is coming for many of these teams: when they finally get the chance to meet each other, the formalities will break down and the frank feedback will start. Leaders and teams should expect and embrace this moment.

There are many things to look forward to as lockdown eases at different rates around the world: we should look forward to the difficult conversations we will have as our teams head into the next stage of their development.

(Views in this article are my own.)