We know that building a team is not all about ‘trust falls’, away days and retreats. Therefore, how can managers build lasting bonds and the kind of trust that makes teamwork a breeze?

I started off my career as a Bomb Disposal Officer in the Army, working in situations where working well together as a team was potentially a life or death situation. Since then, as a consultant and leadership coach, I have worked within and alongside organisations in the commercial, governmental and voluntary sectors, equipping teams with the skills they need to be more effective in working together. The bulk of my work revolves around facilitating strategy, giving people the tools they need to make good decisions, and through this building teams that are resilient to change and uncertainty.

There is not always the luxury of having time out and fun activities to build a team. Fortunately, these things are not actually necessary. You can build a successful team in the harshest of environments if you understand certain fundamentals. Here are the things that I have found are most effective in turning a bunch of individuals into a high performing team.

“Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.”

Steve Jobs

Be a leader who understands how teams develop

A well-functioning team is dependent upon good leadership. If a team is failing in some way, then the manager has to make the assumption that they have to shoulder the bulk of the blame and take responsibility for finding a solution.

One thing that can really help a leader build and manage a team is understanding the natural evolution that a group goes through on the way to becoming an effective team. One great model of this that I have found particularly helpful (and memorable) is the Tuckman Cycle. Bruce Tuckman did research that demonstrated that every team goes through stages of:

• Forming
• Storming
• Norming
• Performing and
• Ajourning

A manager can do things to speed the process through these steps to the performing stage. It is especially important to get through the painful ‘storming’ phase but you cannot completely short circuit the system to get straight to performance. There has to be some pain to get to the gain.

Another model, the Drexler-Sibbet model of Team Performance, is a helpful complement to the Tuckman model. The Drexler-Sibbet model poses a set of questions that a team needs to work through in order to progress through each level of performance. As a leader, this is invaluable in working out how to support the team best.

You can see how the two models combine in the picture below.

All teams experience a level of change and you can progress or regress through these models. Therefore a leader needs to assess which stage their team is at and how to answer the key questions. A good leader thinks of strategies to facilitate progress towards peak performance. These can be planned from the beginning.

Gather people to a common vision and set of values

One thing that can help people quickly form as a team and work through initial ‘storming’ challenges is to have a vision for people to gather to and for them to share a common set of values. People need to know where they are going and how they are going to get there. A clear mission gives people the definition of success they need to make progress, while shared values and principles provide the guidelines for behaviour and decision-making that will shape the journey. If these are established early on it will help attract the right team members and then engage people effectively so they can quickly get to the settled ‘norming’ phase.

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Invest time in individuals

Stephen Covey wisely said: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” This is vitally important for the leader and manager. It is very easy to plough into a team environment and start pushing people to do things in a particular way but investing in individuals first can save a lot of time, effort and heartache.

Listening to your team members and understanding the needs and desires of your employees (as well as their skills and experience) will contribute to the effective management and working of the team. Giving time to individuals builds up capital in the relational bank account; an investment you can then draw upon when challenges hit, but hopefully with less chance of going overdrawn.

Give people clear roles and responsibilities

Team members, as well as needing to know where they are going, also need to know their part in the plan. Their roles and responsibilities need to be clearly laid out in such a way that they should be stretched but be able to play to their strengths. One of the most successful tools for establishing the roles within a team is the Belbin Team Roles model.

Meredith Belbin did extensive research into how effective teams function and worked out that there are nine functions or roles that need to be fulfilled for a team to work properly. Some people may take on more than one role but all the following bases need to be covered:

• Plants are highly creative and good at solving problems
• Resource Investigators connect with the world outside the team, bringing in external views on opportunities and competition
• Monitor Evaluators provide a logical, impartial view and help to weigh up options
• Co-ordinators focus on the objective and delegating tasks to team members
• Implementers plan and implement a workable strategy
• Completer Finishers bring high standards, see errors and add polish to the final solution
• Team workers help the team gel and identify things that need doing to help the team
• Shapers challenge and provide momentum by driving the team forward
• Specialists provide in-depth knowledge within a key area

The approach is explained more fully in his book Team Roles at Work (2010).

Overcoming challenges together

When people know where they are going, how they are getting there and what their role is then work starts getting done efficiently. At this point, the team can grow together as they face and overcome challenges together. Successfully tackling a work problem can bring more progress than a plethora of away-days. Helping someone through a problem is far more productive than catching someone in a ‘trust fall’ exercise. The important thing for the manager to remember at this point is that they need to be playing their part in the team, bringing leadership, keeping up good communication, supporting individuals and helping the team to make decisions.

Celebrating success

Finally, when something is done well it should be celebrated. This does not mean popping the champagne (although there are times for that), it could be as simple as praising a team member for a job well done. This should be done in a team or public setting so that people can share in the success and be encouraged to press forward in what they are doing. Then, at the end of a project, throw a party.

Congratulations, you have a fully functioning team!

You will always be better or worse at various things compared to other people.  It is a simple fact of life, so rather than fighting against that or hiding your weaknesses, how much better, to be honest, and find other people who can balance out any shortcomings? The starting point for finding these people is your personal network. The best folk who can help you and you can help in return is your network.

This is the basis of a team: a complementary group of people who can achieve vastly more together than they can apart.  They are more than just the sum of their parts because when people are free to maximise their strengths, secure that others can work in areas where they are weaker, then their effectiveness is multiplied many times over.  Whether that is a team of just two people or an organisation of thousands, the principle still remains if there is trust and a complementary mix of people involved.

Here we are looking at key relationships rather than large teams; a network rather than a group that is already working together.  Who are the people who can really bring out the best in you?  They are likely to be people who you trust and respect implicitly.  These people could be family members, friends, a spouse or partner.

There is some truth behind the phrase ‘opposites always attract’ as, even when romance is involved, there is a balance between shared interests and complementary gifting.  When people have differences yet choose to operate together then one person’s weakness is covered by another person’s strength.

Start with the people you know

Who is in your network? Who are the key people in your social circles? It is worth spending some time really thinking through the most important relationships in your life.  These could be friends who have supported you or inspired you, people who have acted as a coach or a mentor, or folk who have been teachers or confidants.  These people are your closest and most important network and yet they are often overlooked or taken for granted.  If you need assistance, advice or even a business partner this should be the place where you start your search.

Networking can act as a trigger. As you identify people and think about how they have helped you, it can help you to discover areas in your life where there is a gap; somewhere you might like someone to play the role of coach, friend or partner.  Once you are consciously aware of the need you are more likely to find the right person to help fill the gap.  If they are the right person then they will be looking for you too – even if they don’t realise it yet!

“Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” 

Helen Keller

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Analysing your network

One think that can help understand your network better is creating a graphical representation. Draw concentric circles onto a page.

• The inner circle represents those you are in contact with daily
• The next circle out are weekly connections
• The third circle monthly
• The fourth circle for those you see yearly

Beyond that, the extra space can represent either people you have been out of contact with or those you might like to connect with but haven’t yet.

Now draw two lines through the circles (so it looks like a target) and create four quadrants. These can represent:

• Family
• Friends
• Colleagues
• Acquaintances

You can see an example below. If you want you can print this example off and use it as a template to draw on.

Once you have added enough names to your social circles you ask some questions to analyse your network. For example:

• Who can most help you with the challenge you are facing right now?
• If you could pick anyone for your team, who would they be and why?
• Which people are positive influences who you want to connect with more?
• Which people are negative or energy-draining? How can you manage them better?
• Who would you like to move closer to your inner circle?
• Is there anyone that you know of, but are not yet in your circles, that you would like to connect with? How could you be introduced?

So, take some time to think about who you know and unlock the power of your relationships. Have a go with creating your circles now.

“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.” Isaac Newton

How does a team develop and achieve high-performance? What phases does it go through and what are the 5 stages of the Tuckman model?

Whatever our team role, whether we are a leader, manager or team member, it is really important to understand the stages a team progresses through before it reaches a high-performing level. 

And this is not just about work teams. Any group we are a part of has to work through steps of development. Every social circle, club or family, must progress through challenging phases, to function well. 

Not all teams are functional – let alone high-performing

I looked around the room. Various factions sat apart and determinedly avoided eye contact with each other. The whole group glowered with distrust. Somehow, in a matter of days, I would have to take this bunch of misfits and develop them into a team. Success was critical. We were about to deploy on a military operation where, if we could not work together, we faced not only the failure of our mission but also our own physical well-being.

I am sure you can empathise. Whether you are a leader or have been a member of a newly formed team, I am sure you can recall similar scenes. Experience tells us that a bunch of people is not a team. It is just that, a group of random individuals. But we also know that teams are vitally important. They help us achieve what we could not do alone. So, how does a group of individuals develop into a team and how can we help manage that process?

What is team development and why is it important?

Research has shown that a group must progress through certain development stages to become a high performing team. A leader is responsible for managing this process, but it is one that affects us all, no matter our role.

The process of development is also continual. Our situation changes, as do the challenges we face. The people in our teams come and go. Sometimes things just seem to go wrong, and a team becomes dysfunctional. Therefore, team performance needs continual management.

We are all responsible for this management, to some degree, as we are all members of teams. That could be a work team, sports squad, music band or just your family. Structures, locations, and purposes of groupings may vary but they are still teams if they share a common goal. That is what defines a team: people with varying roles but a common purpose.

Whether we are officially leading that group we can make an important contribution to team development. And that is not just in playing our team role effectively. Through understanding team development, we can all help our teams become more effective.

A career of managing team development

I started off my career as a Bomb Disposal Officer in the Army, working in situations where working together as a team was potentially a life or death matter. Creating and maintaining high-performing teams really mattered.

Since then, as a senior manager, then consultant and leadership coach, I have worked within and alongside organisations in the commercial, governmental, and voluntary sectors. In each role I have equipped teams with the skills they need to be more effective in working together and managed the development of the team as well as the roles of the individuals within that team. I will share some specific examples of these as we progress.

How to build a strong team

Team building is not reliant on away days and fun activities. These things are great but are not the foundation of team development. You can build a successful team in the harshest of environments if you understand the fundamentals of team roles and development.

A well-functioning team is dependent upon good leadership. If a team is failing in some way, then the manager must shoulder the bulk of the blame and take responsibility for finding a solution. But that does not let team members off the hook. Any individual can make things better (and they certainly can make things worse) for the rest of the team at any stage in its development.

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”

Henry Ford

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The Stages of Team Development according to Bruce Tuckman

So, what are the stages of team development?

A group needs to evolve through certain steps to become an effective team. The most well-known (and memorable) theoretical model of this development process is the Tuckman Model.

Bruce Tuckman did research that demonstrated that every team goes through various stages. He first identified four stages and then, upon further research, amended this to five stages of team development.

The 5 stages of team development:

1. Forming
2. Storming
3. Norming
4. Performing
5. Adjourning

A manager can do things to speed the process through these steps to the performing stage, but any team member can also help. It is especially important to get through the painful storming phase, but you cannot completely short circuit the system to get straight to performance. There has to be some pain to get to the gain.

Tuckman Model

Forming

Going back to the story I started with. As the group sat in that room on the first day, we were in the forming stage. Fortunately, we had a clear mission statement, and I knew we had lots of quality people. But given the dark-cloudy looks I was getting I knew that the storming stage would soon be upon us.

Storming

Therefore, right from the start, I forced the issue of integration. I immediately re-structured the group into smaller cross-functional teams that broke down the various cliques. They would have to learn together and learn to rely on one another from the start. The storming phase could commence – as people worked out their exact roles, preferences, and approaches – and the intense work gave them focus. The enemy was now the challenge rather than other team members.

Norming

If these smaller teams still struggled it was easier to identify the problem. Team dynamics and individual characteristics were easy to identify. In a couple of cases, I moved people around until we reached the norming phase.

Performing

I would love to say we were in the performing stage before we deployed but that would not be strictly true. We finished our training and were able to operate but it was some time into the task before I would have called us a high performing team. We had been effective to a degree until that point but there was a moment where we got into a flow. We were not just getting work done, we were being creative, teams worked fluidly and independently, and results were exponential. This was high performance.

Adjourning

Sadly, all things come to an end. At the end of our tour of duty we handed over to another team and we went into the adjourning stage. We celebrated our success, shared our experience, and went off to join other teams.

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How to manage progress through the team development stages

It is useful to know these steps because it helps, particularly as the leader, to identify what stage of development your team is at. But just knowing which stage does not necessarily equip us to manage the team progression.

Being properly equipped is often down to knowing the right questions to ask. As a leader, I am constantly asking questions or myself, my situation and my team. Therefore, I have found another theoretical process, the Drexler-Sibbet model of Team Performance, a really helpful complement to the Tuckman model.

The Drexler-Sibbet model poses a set of questions that a team needs to work through to progress through each level of performance. In this model, there are seven (rather than five) stages of progression. The stages and questions are as follows:

1. Orientation: Why am I here?
2. Trust Building: Who are you?
3. Goal Clarification: What are we doing?
4. Commitment: How will we do it?
5. Implementation: Who does what, when, where?
6. High Performance: Wow!
7. Renewal: Why continue?

Let’s use another example to highlight the different stages and questions. Another very different and yet equally challenging management role I had was leading a large group of volunteers for a non-profit organisation. I did not have any of the levers of military rank, money, or contracts to make people work together or at all.

Drexler-Sibbet Model of Team Development

Orientation: Why am I here?

This question needed to be answered even to just recruit volunteers. The good news is that most people want to make a difference. What a good leader does is cast vision and link people’s values to that purpose.

My team was responsible for production; the setting up and running of large events. There were plenty of people supporting the organisation, my challenge was to link those individuals who enjoyed that sort of physical work and show them that they could contribute to achieving the overall mission by serving on my team.

Trust Building: Who are you?

Trust is the foundation of any relationship. The way to kick-start any relationship is by quickly building rapport. People do start to get to know each other as they work together but this is where I find creating opportunities to socialise really fast-forward this stage.

These can be as simple as water-cooler moments or coffee breaks where people can chat. For my team, we found that in what was a long hard day of work, eating together at lunch really helped team building and fostering inter-team relationships.

Goal Clarification: What are we doing?

The next step is to turn the vision into a tangible mission or goal. A leader’s responsibility is to articulate this end-state or success criteria.

With my production team, the mission was to set up, manage and then set down all the equipment in order to enable a successful event. The events supported the overall purpose of the organisation so in this way, I could link the what to the why.

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Commitment: How will we do it?

Then you need to work out how to achieve the mission. In other words, you need a plan. This is breaking down the overall goal into smaller tasks and activities.

In my case, we systematically took each bit of equipment we needed to set up and worked out an overall sequence (effectively a project programme) and then worked out an efficient process for each individual task. The team played a significant role in this last part. They used their creativity and experience to find the best ways to do things; I then captured and managed the activities.

Implementation: Who does what, when, where?

This question of who links the individuals to the plan. Answering the who question is about delegating tasks and roles according to skill, preference, and experience. For working out roles within a team I have found the Belbin Team Roles model the most useful and comprehensive.

As my team grew the crew leaders took on more of this responsibility of working out the who. They knew the plan and they knew their people best. They also knew how to take on new recruits and train them up.

High Performance: Wow!

The only part of this model that I dislike is the ‘wow’ instead of a question for performing teams. It can give the impression that once you get there all you need to do is just exclaim “wow!” and watch the magic happen.

But in my experience, what great teams do that keeps them at the top and maximising their performance is continual learning and improvement.

Therefore, there are some questions that teams should remember at this stage and these are the ones related to continued learning. I use a simple model based on traffic lights for this. I ask:

• Stop – What do we stop?
• Start – What do we start?
• Continue – What do we continue?

I would reflect on these questions at the end of every event. I would discuss these with my crew leaders and they, in turn, did so with their crews. In this way, we created an environment of continual learning and empowered everyone in the team to challenge and improve performance.

Team performance review process

Renewal: Why continue?

If the vision (why) and mission (what) remain the same, then things can generally continue. But projects end and team members come and go as a normal process of life. Therefore, we always need to answer this question, which as you will notice, takes us full circle.

With my production team, every new event was a small renewal and an opportunity to reinforce the why. So, we met at the beginning of the day to remind ourselves of how our actions would contribute to something much bigger.

The team grew and changed. When people joined our team, we made them part of the family. When people left, we grieved but also celebrated what they had done and shared their excitement for what they were moving on to. We made the process as natural and positive as possible. We ate a lot of cake along the way!

As a leader, when a team is functioning well, it is often easy to neglect the continued answering of this question. But you do so at your peril. Hard work is hard work. It makes people ask, “why bother?” Leaders need to reinforce the vision to stop people from becoming disillusioned.

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Combining team development theories for effective management

To bring all this theory together I have put the two models side by side in the picture below. The colours show how the 5 stages of the Tuckman model relate to the 7 stages of the Drexler-Sibbet model.

The Tuckman and Drexler-Sibbet Models combined

Putting team development theory into practice

Hopefully, you are now clear on the stages of team development and the questions that need to be answered to manage the building of a team from a group of individuals to a high-performance team.

Remember too that all teams experience change. That change might be faster or slower depending on the circumstances but that is why teams need continual leadership. Without this management, a team can get stuck, or even worse, can regress back through the development process.

Finally, remember that we all have a part to play, leaders or not. By understanding the stages of team development, we can all help our teams to improve, whatever our role or the purpose of that group.

So, think about the teams you are a part of. What stage are they in? Is it forming, storming, norming, performing or adjourning? Which question do you need to answer to help them evolve?