Challenges and Benefits Within the Team Lifecycle

Thesis: The team life cycle is full of challenges and benefits. The key to having a functional team be successful in accomplishing their task is dependent on the results after taking on its main challenge, conflict.

In 1965 Bruce Tuckman published a model for team development which later became better understood as the team life cycle. “Tuckman's model explains that as the team develops maturity and ability, relationships establish, and the leader changes leadership style. Beginning with a directing style, moving through coaching, then participating, finishing delegating and almost detached. At this point the team may produce a successor leader and the previous leader can move on to develop a new team. This progression of team behavior and leadership style can be seen clearly in the Tannenbaum and Schmidt Continuum - the authority and freedom extended by the leader to the team increases while the control of the leader reduces.” (Alan Chapman, 2001-2006, 2.)

In the original published model, Bruce hypothesized that team development consisted of four stages: forming, storming, norming, and performing. In 1977, Bruce Tuckman and a graduate student named Mary Ann Jensen added a fifth and final stage in the group life cycle after reviewing 22 studies other studies of the team life cycle model. They named this stage adjourning.

Although the first four stages of the life cycle are proven to exist, not all of the stages are necessary and teams may also go through some stages faster than others. Deciding factors in omitting stages or moving through them swiftly include whether or not teammates already know each other and the length of time it takes for the group to get to know each other and become cohesive.

The first stage in the process is one in which very little progress is made on the task, the forming stage. During the forming stage, team members get together and most of the time the assignment at hand is already known. In this stage of the team life cycle, the assignment becomes well defined and broken into tasks, team objectives are made and the members start to form ideas and opinions of each other. Also, roles of group members will begin to take form however these roles usually change before the life cycle of the team is complete.

Although it would not be detrimental to the team if no one knew anyone on the team, it would be very beneficial to a team if the members in the group already know each other. This would allow for a shorter period of time to be spent in this stage and increase the amount of time the group has therefore increasing the efficiency of the group. Although it is not impossible, group conflict is improbable during this stage.

The second stage of the group life cycle is storming. Since this is usually the stage where conflict arises and begins to create problems for the group a huge challenge for groups during this stage is conflict resolution. Conflicts in this stage include disagreements which turn into arguments about the management of the group and the allocation of resources to complete individual tasks. Teams that communicate well during this stage will are usually able to get past the inevitable conflicts encountered during this stage. When this happens teams are able to perform better on their assignment because less time is spent in conflict and resolution and more time is spent being productive.

The third stage in the group life cycle is norming. Because the “honeymoon” is over conflict resolution usually does not take as long because the group will try to avoid conflict all together.

In the fourth stage, performing, all conflict within the group should be resolved and the remaining tasks left to complete the assignment should seem easily attainable. After the group development through the previous stages, team members are now closer and they also know each others strengths and weaknesses within the group. More progress is made