How to manage progress through the team development stages

It is useful to know the five steps of the Tuckman Model 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.

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?