Tuckman Model strategies to achieve and sustain High Performing Teams

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If there ever was a model that highlights why companies have few high performing teams, it is the Tuckman Model.  This model describes the path that most teams take from forming, to storming, to norming, and then performing.  When companies strive to achieve high-performing teams, they often fail to realize that the moment you reorganize, this takes any team that has been changed, back to forming.  In fact, if a company reorganizes enough, their teams rarely achieves the benefits of performing. 

What are some strategies in keeping teams in “performing”?  At a high level, it is to minimize reorganizations.  While some reorgs may be reasonable as part of an overall corporate strategy, others tend to be frivolous.  Realize that a reorg will take a performing team back to forming that means a significantly negative impact to velocity and productivity, leading to reduced delivery. If you have to reorganize occasionally, attempt to minimize the impact to high performing teams.   

At a more detailed level, what strategies aligned with each of the stage of the Tuckman Model can help you get to performing effectively or more quickly.  Let’s walk through the strategies at each stage. 

Forming

Forming is when the group of people are first introduced to each other. The cohort tends to be polite as they are trying to get to know each other.  Some people will be excited while others will be anxious (and sometimes both).  Forming may take time, as this is when people are getting to know each other and the work. People are trying to get to know each other and what they are there to do.

Strategies for moving through “forming” effectively and more quickly:

- Introduce a series of icebreakers.  Icebreakers provide a way for teams to get to know each other and start building psychological safety amongst each other.  When applied periodically, it can help groups more quickly get to know each other.  Consider the Constellation icebreaker as a start.

- Initiate team chartering.  In order to move from being a group of random individuals to a team of motivated people, it’s important to know what to strive for.  Team chartering is an explicit practice that helps the team understand their consequential purpose, the direction in which the team is moving, and objective of the work ahead.

Storming

Storming is when the group of people starts to play against each other and vie for position. Egos often are involved as each person is attempting to establish themselves with group. Some will want to be perceived as leaders, others may want to take a back seat.  Conflict will arise between people’s natural working styles.  This is also the time that niceness starts to wear off and where people start challenging each other. 

Strategies for moving through “storming” effectively and more quickly:

- Continue the path to psychological safety. Start establishing safety norms in meetings that encourage an equitable balance of speaking up and letting others speak.  Normalize conflict by discussing how you want to act when conflict occurs. Hold icebreakers that focus on sharing vulnerabilities.

- Conduct sessions that identify working styles such as Myers Briggs, Jung, DISC, Color, and more.  Each member of the team should take the test and examine how they themselves operate. Then share their results with other team members and understand how to best operate amongst each other.  

- Groom the work together.  This builds a common understanding of the work in a collaborative manner and keeps the team hyper-focused on the work ahead.

Norming

Norming is where team practices become clear and everyone is attempting to follow them.  Team roles are clear and accepted amongst the team. Team members have resolved their differences, begin to self organize around the work, respect how each other operates, and understand where to collaborate to get the work done. Team members begin to socialize, really get to know each other, and begin asking each other for feedback.

Strategies for moving through “norming” effectively and more quickly:

- Begin formal feedback loops amongst team members.  Get educated in how to give and receive feedback. Team members practice giving and receiving feedback.

- Apply regular retrospectives so the team can identify areas of improvement.  This is a whole team activity where everyone should be participating.  Reflection of the work should lead to improvement actions that are added to the team backlog of work and collaboratively completed. 

- Establish team measures on how the team inspects, adapts, and improves.  This may include team velocity, employee satisfaction, and delivery metrics. The team may experiment with increments of improvement to ensure they are moving in the right direction. 

Performing

Performing is when the team has a shared vision of their work, knows exactly what they are doing, and works independently with little assistance from their managers.  The team continually achieves its goals and seeks to go beyond their goals. Team members attend to their relationships and look after each other. Differences are resolved in a positive manner.

Strategies for achieving and sustain “performing” effectively:

- Initiate Peer hiring where team members own and interview new team members.  Team members determine fit and complementary skills such as problem-solving, technical, and interpersonal skills.

- Team members agree to and apply intrinsic motivators to encourage high performance.  This may include autonomy, mastery, and purpose, from Dan Pink’s list of motivational elements. When team members are paid fairly, these three elements and drive people to do their best work.

It is important to know that when a team moves through the Tuckman model, they may find themselves in several of the stages at the same time.  For example, while a team may be “norming” on team practices, they may still be “storming” on how to work together.  Understanding this model can help you appreciate where your team is today and what you can do to more effectively get to the next stage, ultimately learning to high performing.  More importantly, it can help an organization be more careful on their frequency of reorganizations as this can bring many of their teams from performing back to forming.  

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Reducing Teamicide with Lightning Bolt shaped Teams

Teamicide is the act of purposefully disbanding a team after they are done with a task or project.  While this may not sound particularly negative at first glance, an organization loses the benefit of achieving team productivity and cohesion each time they disband a team.  When teams form, they take time to gel as a team. This is an organizational investment that often isn't realized. 

To gain some perspective, let’s take a moment to review Tuckman's model that discusses the gelling process.  Established by Bruce Tuckman in 1965, this model has four sequential phases (e.g., Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing) that teams go through to effectively function as a unit, know each other's strengths, self-organize around the work, with optimal flow, and reduced impediments.  Regarding teamicide, if a team hasn't achieved the performing state, they will have invested in the time and team building effort without actually gaining the benefits of a performing team.   The irony is that while companies focus a lot on return on investment (ROI) regarding the product, they inadvertently achieve no ROI since they disband teams and not allow them to achieve performing.   

The next question is, why does management disband teams?  Do they not understand the harm they are doing to their organization when they disband teams?  Do they not respect the benefits of a performing team?  Or maybe they apply a move the team to the work approach when they really should be applying a move the work to the team approach.  Exploring the “move the team to the work” approach, this may occur because either there is a “form a team around a project” mindset or there is a belief that teams don’t have all of the skills or disciplines needed to handle the new types of work.   

How do we solve this problem and gain the most from performing teams?  The first change is to move to (or experiment with) applying the “move work to the team” method.   This assumes that we have teams that have the skills and discipline to handle a variety of work.  Therefore, the second change is to invest in building Lightning Bolt-shaped teams. These are teams where each team member has a primary skill, a secondary skill, and even a tertiary skill. 

The shape of a lightning bolt has one spike going deep (primary skill) and at least 2 additional spikes of lesser depth (secondary and tertiary).   The purpose of having various depths of skills is for the team to be able to handle a broad range of work and for team members to be able to step up and fill gaps that other team members may not have or need help with.  Note: some have used the term “T-shaped” teams, but I find that the lightning bolt shape is more appropriate to the several spikes of skills and the various depths that are needed.  

Creating a lightning bolt-shaped team takes an investment in education.  This takes a commitment to educate each team member in both secondary and tertiary skills.  As an example, let’s say that a developer has a primary skill of programming code.  As a secondary skill, they can also learn how to build database schemas and as a tertiary skill, they can write unit tests and run test cases.  The long-term benefit is that if the team members can develop additional skills, there is a greater likelihood that a team can work on a much wider range of work and be kept together allowing the organization to gain the benefits of a high-performing team.   This can reduce teamicide and increase the organization’s ability to produce more high-quality product.

Have you seen teamicide occurring in your organization?  Have you seen the benefit of allowing a team to remain together long enough to become a high-performing team?  If so, what level of skills were or are prevalent on the team?