Team development: Tuckman’s 5 stages and how to lead each one

What is team development?

Team development is the process by which a group of people who have just started working together becomes a cohesive, productive team. It doesn’t happen all at once: it goes through recognizable phases, including a mid-way dip in performance that tends to alarm anyone who doesn’t know it’s normal. Understanding it lets a manager know where their team stands and what to do about it.

The reference model was formulated by psychologist Bruce Tuckman in 1965, after reviewing some fifty studies on groups, with four stages: forming, storming, norming and performing. In 1977, together with Mary Ann Jensen, he added a fifth: adjourning. It is still the most widely used framework in team management sixty years later.

Teamwork is one of the pillars of organizational efficiency. In a company it happens when several people work together toward a common goal: it creates synergies, generates proactivity, flattens structures and stimulates interpersonal relationships.

But, like any piece of machinery, a team needs time to perform at its best, because first it has to get through several phases. That journey is team development, and knowing it changes the way you manage: many of the problems a manager reads as individual failings are, quite simply, the stage the group is in.

Before we start: this article is about how a team evolves over time and what to do at each stage. If what you’re after is developing individuals — learning paths, career plans, internal mobility — rather than the team as a unit, head to the guide on talent development in companies.

The stages of team development

Tuckman set out four stages in 1965 — forming, storming, norming and performing — and added the fifth, adjourning, in 1977. Every team goes through them, although not always at the same pace or in a straight line.

Stage 1: Forming — laying the foundations for success

The initial stage is forming. Members barely know each other and lack confidence when interacting. The group tends to be unproductive, because each person is still adjusting and discovering the role they will play.

What you’ll see: plenty of politeness, few awkward questions and a heavy dependence on the manager for every decision.
The manager’s typical mistake: mistaking the absence of conflict for a healthy team. At this stage nobody argues because nobody dares to yet. A buddy system during onboarding shortens this stage considerably.

Stage 2: Storming — learning to work together

At this point team members learn to work together. Since it isn’t yet settled what role each person will take, relationships generate conflict: everyone is fighting to find their place. Different personalities and different views on how the project should move forward end in disputes.

What you’ll see: disagreements about method rather than about the goal, subgroups forming, and performance dropping compared with the previous stage.
The manager’s typical mistake: trying to shut down the conflict to restore calm. This is the stage most teams fail to get past, and skipping it isn’t an option: it can only be worked through. The guide to conflict management at work goes into the detail of how to do that.

Stage 3: Norming — building group cohesion

When the team finds its rhythm, everything starts to settle. People feel comfortable cooperating: they ask for help, and they give and receive constructive feedback. Group productivity increases as they get familiar with each other’s ways of working and the whole gains efficiency.

What you’ll see: unwritten rules appear that everyone respects, and disagreements get resolved without the manager stepping in.
The manager’s typical mistake: easing off. This is the moment to write down what is working, because that is what will hold the team together when someone new joins.

Stage 4: Performing — reaching full potential

Here the group is united and everyone works together toward a common goal, reaching their full potential. The team follows the established workflows smoothly. It is the peak of team development and the manager’s objective should be to get here as soon as possible.

What you’ll see: the team makes decisions without checking in, spots its own mistakes and can absorb changes of scope without falling apart.
The manager’s typical mistake: assuming the stage is permanent. It isn’t: a change of objectives, a reorganization or a new joiner sends the group back to storming.

Stage 5: Adjourning

Also known as the mourning stage, this is the final phase, when a project ends or the group breaks up. It is natural for members to struggle to fit into other teams, precisely because of the strong dynamic they had built.

What you’ll see: motivation dropping in the final weeks and conversations that look backward more than forward.
What a good manager does: take the opportunity to recognize performance, praise each member’s achievements and document what was learned so it doesn’t disappear with the group.

The 5 stages at a glance

If you take only one thing away from this article, make it this table. It helps you place your team today and anticipate what comes next:

How to guide your team at each stage: practical strategies

When forming a new group it pays to keep the five stages in mind so you can help each person reach their full potential. There is no single formula for achieving cohesion, but there are dynamics that help. The key is applying them at the right moment: a good practice at the wrong stage is worth nothing.

Set the team goal — stage 1

Even before people start collaborating, it is important to set a common goal, to make sure everyone is moving in the same direction. It is also worth assigning each member a specific role, with a clear distribution of tasks from the outset. It is the first thing to do, and doing it late stretches the forming stage unnecessarily.

Don’t avoid conflict — stage 2

Establishing group collaboration from the moment the team is formed helps reduce conflict, although it doesn’t eliminate it. In fact, disagreements are useful for stimulating good collaboration. When they appear, it is more productive to resolve them than to try to avoid them: if the team already has collaborative skills, they get resolved faster.

Tackle conflict assertively — stage 2

Resolving conflict is a valid way to build an honest, unprejudiced workplace. The manager is the one who sets the standards for solving internal problems. A group that works together to solve problems enjoys greater mutual trust. Emotional intelligence is the competency that shows up most here.

Define a communication plan — stages 2 and 3

A communication plan lets the team know how to pass relevant information on to each other. When it works, each person understands their responsibilities, works properly and knows where to find what they need, and the team has the tools to tackle problems constructively.

Build on each member’s strengths — stages 3 and 4

The manager should assign responsibilities and roles according to each person’s strengths. Reinforcing them makes for better joint work, because everyone has a specific function where they contribute most. It works once the team knows each other well enough for that distribution to feel fair, and not before. An effective feedback system is what sustains it over time.

Leadership in team development: the keys to success

A good leader is the foundation of a team’s development. Without solid leadership, performance suffers at any stage. But what essential skills does a leader need?

• Communication skills. Active listening matters as much as speaking.
• Empathy. To manage communication with each member in a personalized, assertive way.
• Emotional intelligence. The ability to motivate each person and handle the team’s internal relationships.
• Critical thinking. Analyzing and evaluating each process to make decisions aligned with the goal.
• Coordination. Managing timings and aligning everyone’s efforts in the same direction.
• Motivation and inspiration. Inspiring and motivating people to perform at a high level while feeling comfortable.

Those six skills are the starting point, but the most common mistake isn’t lacking them: it’s applying them the same way all the time. The leader’s role changes from one stage to the next, and what works in forming gets in the way during performing:

What the evidence says about what makes a team work

Tuckman’s model explains when things happen, but not what separates a team that works from one that doesn’t. For that there is a landmark piece of research: Google’s Project Aristotle, which analyzed 180 of its own teams to find out what made them effective.

The finding was counterintuitive: how a team works together matters far more than who is on it. The five factors they identified, in order of importance, are:

• Psychological safety. By far the most decisive: that each person can take risks, admit mistakes or raise doubts without fear of looking bad.
• Dependability. That work gets delivered on time and to the expected standard.
• Structure and clarity. Roles, goals and plans defined without ambiguity.
• Meaning. That the work matters personally to the person doing it.
• Impact. That the team believes what it does serves a purpose.

Cross-referencing both frameworks is what gives you something operational: psychological safety is precisely what allows a team to work through stage 2 instead of getting stuck in it, and structure and clarity is what shortens stage 1.

Tuckman’s model has limits

It is worth knowing what this model is not before using it to make decisions. Tuckman himself published it in 1965 as a hypothesis to be tested, based on a review of some fifty studies of therapy and laboratory groups, not as a verified law of how work teams behave. These are its three practical limitations:

1. It isn’t linear. A team at stage 4 goes back to stage 2 as soon as the goal changes, someone new joins or the function is reorganized. Going back and forth is the norm, not climbing a staircase.
2. It gives no timings. The model describes the sequence, not its duration. Two teams of the same size can take three weeks or nine months to reach stage 3, depending on their shared history and how clear the brief is.
3. It predates remote work. In distributed teams the signals of each stage are far less visible: conflict isn’t heard, it shows up in silences and in emails that get steadily more formal. You have to go looking for it deliberately.

None of this invalidates it: it is still the best available map for working out where a team is. But use it as a map, not as a calendar.

Tools for team development

A team working well doesn’t depend on effective leadership alone. Choosing the right working tools is essential for the machinery to run. Which ones are worth considering?

Tools for generating ideas, lists and mind maps

One of the great strengths of teamwork is dynamics such as brainstorming. Tools like Todoist or MindMeister let you capture the group’s ideas in an orderly, hierarchical and visual way, make lists and stimulate creativity. There are options of every kind: you’ll need to weigh up which suits your group best.

Time management tools

These serve to optimize processes and monitor the time invested in each task. They help managers check how much effort each piece of work takes. Programs such as RescueTime Teams or Sesame Time let you manage time spent by project and by task.

Cloud tools

These are the software packages related to data security, remote meetings or file storage. Their main purpose is to improve the team’s organization and productivity. This is where Microsoft Teams fits, bringing the whole team together in chats, rooms and meetings, along with Google Drive, for storing files, sharing documents and creating workspaces.

Employee management and company culture tools

These let you categorize each member’s productivity, understand their behavior, bring new people on board and work on workplace culture. Software such as ActivTrak analyzes employee behavior and provides data to improve processes on objective criteria.

Tools to support team training

One of the factors that most contributes to an employee feeling valued is supporting their training: it lets them grow and aim at new challenges. But training alone isn’t enough: it has to be done with valuable, agile and engaging courses. Developing soft skills has proven to be one of the most important elements for teamwork, so it pays to have a complete catalog that answers the needs of every kind of profile.

That said, no tool solves a stage that isn’t the one you’re in. This is the pairing that works in practice:

Boost your team’s training with isEazy Skills

Course catalogs such as isEazy Skills support the development of any kind of worker, covering every need, profile and role. These are agile, interactive and accessible training courses, with a dynamic learning experience that captivates professionals of every kind. With its 100% practical methodology you can train your team on the specific behaviors and situations they face day to day.

So what are you waiting for to get to know isEazy Skills? Request a demo now!