How to Coach Yourself and Others Influencing, Inter Personal and Leadership Skills | Page 94

7. Team Building
Effective leaders build a team environment in which members pool their resources and
rely on each other to achieve common goals. As people combine their energies, the
cooperative action of the group creates a greater result than the individuals could
accomplish working separately. A leader promotes a team environment by:
 Establishing an environment of trust.
 Setting up systems and structures to require teamwork.
 Encouraging team communication to build team identity.
 Fostering the evolution of natural leadership abilities in group members.
 Establishing team goals and team rewards (i.e., reward team effort).
 Celebrating group achievements, even those which are minor.

Bruce Tuckman’s 1965 Forming Storming Norming Performing
Team-Development Model
Dr Bruce Tuckman published his Forming Storming Norming Performing model in 1965.
He added a fifth stage, Adjourning, in the 1970’s.
The Forming Storming Norming Performing theory is an elegant and helpful explanation
of team development and behaviour. Similarities can be seen with other models, such as
Tannenbaum and Schmidt Continuum and especially with Hersey and Blanchard’s
Situational Leadership® model, developed about the same time.
Tuckman’s model explains that as the team develops maturity and ability, relationships
establish, and the leader changes leadership style. Beginning with a directing style,
moving through coaching, then participating, finishing delegating and almost detached.
At this point the team may produce a successor leader and the previous leader can move
on to develop a new team.
This progression of team behaviour and leadership style can be seen clearly in the
Tannenbaum and Schmidt Continuum – the authority and freedom extended by the
leader to the team increases while the control of the leader reduces.
In Tuckman’s Forming Storming Norming Performing model, Hersey’s and Blanchard’s
Situational Leadership® model and in Tannenbaum and Schmidt’s Continuum, we see
the same effect, represented in three ways.
Tuckman’s Forming Storming Norming Performing Model – Original Model
The progression is: Forming -

storming

-

norming

-

performing

Features of each phase:
forming – stage 1
High dependence on leader for guidance and direction. Little agreement on team aims
other than received from leader. Individual roles and responsibilities are unclear. Leader
must be prepared to answer lots of questions about the team’s purpose, objectives and
external relationships. Processes are often ignored. Members test tolerance of system
and leader. Leader directs (similar to Situational Leadership® ‘Telling’ mode).