Tuckman Model of Team Development: Corporate Training Case

Introduction

At a former place of employment (referred to here as Company X), members of the IT staff and members of other departments were required to collaborate on a joint effort to create a corporate manual explaining the company's new computer operating system to all employees. The manual was to cover proper internet safety practices, daily use of the operating system, and orientation to various new applications. In other words, effective communication was needed between staff members to create a comprehensive manual and to ensure that the transition to the new system was seamless. Transitions are always challenging, but conflicts between the worldviews of the staff members on the team made developing the manual extremely difficult. There was a clash between the worldview of the technical IT staff and managers from HR and other departments who were more people-oriented.

Eventually, the project arrived at a successful conclusion, but unfortunately there was a great deal of conflict that could have been avoided had a more coherent goal and set of objectives been established at the outset. A firmer sense of purpose combined with effective leadership at the beginning of the group's formation would have been preferable. The conflict is described below in the context of one of the most widely used models of team development: Bruce Tuckman's model of forming, storming, norming, and performing.

Team Scenario

At Company X, a new software system had been instituted. This required the formation of a work team comprised of technical staff from the IT department, HR staff with in-depth knowledge of the types of personnel who would be using the new system, and technical writers from the IT department. While the composition of the work team certainly made sense on paper, different staff members had not worked together very much due to the relatively enclosed structure of the organization. This proved to be extremely challenging at first, and group members were in continual friction — partly because there were two group leaders from different divisions with equal power over the development of the project. More effective icebreaking techniques would have been useful at the beginning, as well as the development of a clearly articulated common goal and vision statement. However, despite these initial obstacles, the barriers were eventually overcome and a final, high-quality product was produced that was useful for all organizational members.

The group conflict actually proved to be illustrative not of particular individual personality problems, but of larger organizational issues. There was a distinct lack of unity between all organizational divisions, which had previously been problematic, and these underlying issues were exacerbated by the creation of the work team with a joint goal. Rather than a sense of higher organizational priorities, priority was given instead to team membership in factions and to certain group members who provoked conflict — although over time a bridge was built between the different organizational members.

Applying the Tuckman Model: Forming and Storming

Any discussion of teamwork in modern organizations must engage with Bruce Tuckman's model of forming, storming, norming, and performing (and, in some versions of the model, adjourning). Tuckman developed his model to describe the sometimes rocky transition workers experience when they must operate within work teams. At the onset of most teams' development, the team is not really functioning as a team but more as a group of disconnected individuals. They must gradually get to know one another during the forming stage, trying out different roles and exploring different group orientations. The group leader is relied upon for guidance. During the forming phase, there is "high dependence on leader for guidance and direction. [There is] little agreement on team aims other than received from leader. Individual roles and responsibilities are unclear" (Chapman, 2013). Ideally, the group leader or leaders are "prepared to answer lots of questions about the team's purpose, objectives and external relationships" (Chapman, 2013).

However, the leaders at Company X were themselves unclear about the general direction of the project, and as a result, standard operating procedures were often ignored. Meetings frequently devolved into talking about the project rather than actually working on it, and despite all team members being part of the same email chain, there was often a stony silence outside of scheduled meetings, even online. Fortunately, meetings were scheduled on a relatively frequent basis, which ensured that channels of communication remained open to some degree.

During the forming stage of this team, there was no clear leadership at the onset of the project. HR and the IT department had a joint responsibility to produce a high-quality training manual, and neither department was given priority. At the beginning, this seemed a sensible decision, given that the information conveyed had to be both clear and technically adept. However, the IT staff had little knowledge of the human-focused language typical of HR, while HR had very little technical knowledge. There was a lack of clarity about whether this document was primarily a technical work or whether it was to be user-friendly in a more conventional sense.

The second phase of the Tuckman model is storming. Even the most well-regulated and well-managed teams have a certain degree of built-in friction. During this phase, "decisions don't come easily within [the] group. Team members vie for position as they attempt to establish themselves in relation to other team members and the leader, who might receive challenges from team members" (Chapman, 2013). The storming phase is not necessarily a bad thing: an overly harmonious group with a very unified worldview may avoid conflict but will ultimately lack creativity and productivity. As Smith (n.d.) notes, "conflict within a group can allow dissatisfied members to voice their complaints, and the group may restructure itself to deal with internal dissension and dissatisfaction. However, conflict within a group often leads to internal tension and disruption. Members' attention may be diverted from the goals of the group to focus on the conflict." This had been the case in the past when IT staff members alone developed training manuals — there was a great deal of agreement and cohesion, but the final manuals were often unwieldy and overly technical for laypeople to understand. The challenge of the storming phase is to use it so that it brings light as well as heat to the group discussion.

During the storming phase, even under the best of circumstances, "clarity of purpose increases but plenty of uncertainties persist. Cliques and factions form and there may be power struggles. The team needs to be focused on its goals to avoid becoming distracted by relationships and emotional issues" (Chapman, 2013). A critical component of the storming phase is the need to find equilibrium and to learn how to compromise. There is often a low level of trust, and people place their personal agendas ahead of the needs of the group. During this phase, the different members of the team were extremely reluctant to concede points to the other side, and there was a tendency to frame issues in terms of right and wrong rather than weighing the pros and cons of different decisions.

On this particular work team, the storming period was quite prolonged, although the conflicts were less personal than ideological. The IT staff was very proud of the new operating system and wanted it to be clearly and thoroughly described in the corporate manual. HR, however, found IT needlessly obsessed with what it regarded as minutiae rather than with content valuable to all persons in the organization on a daily basis. The leader of the HR component of the team was visibly exasperated with the head of the IT department, and this created a kind of bipolar factionalism between the two sides. There was no single, calm, steadying leader pointing out that the ultimate goal was to produce a high-quality manual — not to engage in a turf war.

Productive possibilities did emerge during the storming phase, however. Eventually, the two major leaders were able to reach a degree of rapprochement. The notion of leaders coaching team members proved helpful: when it became clear that members were not getting along, the team leaders developed rules of engagement, such as prohibiting blanket dismissals (team members could not say things like "that is silly") and requiring everyone to say something positive about an idea as well as something critical. These new rules enabled the leaders to press a reset button. A clear team vision statement and goal was written out, along with the objectives and deliverables of the project. There was some continued storming in terms of prioritization, but the general goal of creating a feasible and readable layperson's manual was finally at the forefront of the team's agenda.

One problem that exacerbated the conflict between IT and HR was that both departments had rarely worked together in the past. Rather than a coherent, united workplace, Company X had a relatively diffuse organizational style. IT often operated in a bubble, without having to deal with the persistent challenges of working with non-technical staff. Avoidance was the usual strategy when members did not wish to confront confusion or complaints, and there was a general sense of contempt that ordinary workers did not appreciate the computer system's complexity. "Avoidance is a coping strategy when people are uncomfortable and want to distance themselves from others" (MacAdam, 2004). Similarly, HR staff tended to grow annoyed at IT for making things too complicated when employees complained or required extended training. The vital role computers played in the organization was largely forgotten except when something went wrong.

Conclusion

Difficulties with intercultural dialogue are not merely consigned to foreign cultures: they can also occur in the "language" spoken between different departments. This was clearly seen in the group conflict at Company X. Although the work team was eventually able to produce the desired product, the process of doing so was far more painful than might initially be expected. There was individual conflict on the team between the leaders, which at times allowed members to take over the agenda. Refocusing the group during the storming phase proved critical. However, the organization as a whole should take note of the problems manifested by this work team, given that they likely highlight more pervasive organizational issues that could prove problematic again in the future.