Andrew: 0:00

I guess norming is a bit, it's like the makeup sex part of the tuckman models, isn't it? Uh, we've all, we've had a big fallout and let's now

Mark: 0:09

Is this something you coach your teams with? Slate. Okay, now you're in stage three. That's the makeup sex.

Andrew: 0:25

So today we're gonna be talking about some stuff that we've been. Uh, researching and looking into for the book. Uh, maybe a couple of particular things that, uh, have caught our interest that are well known, I would say well known, but, um, not necessarily understood in depth, but they are concepts that feature quite regularly in conversations around teamwork. I think, uh, in, in organizations as far as I've been aware.

Mark: 0:58

One, one of the, we've spoken about this a lot, but I'm really fascinated by how common it is to hear about this model that many of the listeners will have, come across before and referenced as the forming, storming, norming, and performing model, which is from a researcher called Tuckman. But it's really interesting when you dig in a, into a little bit more detail of where the Tuckman model came from. And Andrew, you've got much more insight to, to this than I do. So maybe you could talk a little bit about where Tuckman came from, who he was, what, what the model was.

Andrew: 1:34

what is commonly referred to as the forming, storming, norming performing model. Um, I think it's a really interesting model concept to discuss as a foundational piece to any, any work on, on teamwork because it is so common. his work published in a, a paper in the Psychological Bulletin, in 1965, and the original work was called The Developmental Sequence in Small Groups, catchy Title um, as well, there's many worst academic paper titles for sure.

Mark: 2:13

I'm really interested in that because Tuckman's research wasn't observational. It wasn't experimental and he wasn't an organizational psychologist. And that's probably obvious.'cause in the sixties you didn't really have organizational psychologists. But also this paper really extended his PhD dissertation. So he wrote his PhD dissertation in 63 and then he went on to write this within, within two years, published this within two years and. The, the thing I find fascinating about this model is almost everywhere I go, when you are, when you talk to somebody who's interested in teams, but isn't an expert, isn't a researcher, isn't a, an organizational psychologist, lots of people reference the Tuckman model often without knowing it's called the Tuckman model. They just talk about the stages as if they're implicit stages of a team. But Tuckman was an educational psychologist and an instructional designer by, by trade. That's kind of where he came from. So can you sort of lead us through maybe some of his, some of the background and then maybe actually came up with that paper itself?

Andrew: 3:19

Yeah. Well when this paper was published, he was working at the Naval Medical Institute. sort psychology was his background. And the thing to go back to, I think importantly, whenever you're talking about this model is, go back to the title that. Non catchy title of developmental sequence in small groups. Small groups being the important clue. It's not a paper that says, this is how teams form it's developmental sequence in small groups. Now, bit of context or disclaimer on that is that at that, that period of, of the, um, evolution of teams research, actually the kind of concept of small groups and teams was used reasonably interchangeably. So can take it a little bit with a pinch of salt, but when you dig into the paper itself, the small groups thing becomes important because, uh, this was not a study on as we would commonly, uh, understand them nowadays. was on, mainly it was on therapy groups. And the kicker is that it wasn't. Empirical work. So Bruce Tuckman was not sitting watching groups and their behavior and observing their behavior and noting it, um, or running tests or experiments on, on, uh, uh, research participants. What he did was he reviewed a whole group of a whole bunch of literature the subject of small groups, mainly in, in, in therapy, group therapy, and then looked for patterns essentially.

Mark: 5:11

Let, let me dig into that a little bit more, just'cause I, I want, because it's taken a couple of conversations. The first time I heard you say this, I was completely rocked on onto my heels by, by what you were saying. The first thing is, it's important to understand that small groups isn't just a euphemistic phrase for a team. And, and actually reflecting on what we spoke about in the last episode, we were talking about how humans get to collaborate, but we specifically were talking about shared intentionality, and that's one of the things that is different in this interpretation. I think that that's one of the things that is important to say that we're saying that these small groups didn't have that shared intentionality. They were just groups of people that had come together. And you mentioned group therapy. Can you just expand on that a little bit more because I had to double check with you as well. What do you mean by group therapy? I.

Andrew: 6:05

there we were talking about different papers, so it's not but we're talking about. Uh, they sort of sat around in a circle and problems, and sometimes we're talking about psychological therapy, so people who are in an institutional setting are going through prescribed therapy, as a course of, uh, treatment. So, uh, the point on shared intentionality think is important because if you take the comparison of a group therapy session uh, a work team, as we talked about in our, in our last chat about the of, of, of, of humans and then into our understanding of, of contemporary team research, one of the big things is about having that, um, purpose un an understood common purpose. Um, in a, in a group therapy session, you, there's a salient. purpose in terms of you're all sharing your issues or going through a process of, of discussion, but the purpose is really individual. the, the goal or the return that you get from the participation in the group therapy session is one that you take away personally, um, as opposed to there being a, a clear that you are all, um, working towards together. the, the structure, the configuration, and the constitution of these small groups that Tuckman was looking into, um, are very different what would consider to be as we understand them in, in, in norm, uh, work environments today or sport or whatever. I. Uh, that's in itself. Interesting. When you think how commonly the forming, storming, norming performing process is referred to in those contexts?

Mark: 8:13

Yeah, it's, it's a really interesting, um, Reflection that it's now so commonly used specifically in company teams, particularly company teams. Um, and, and certainly that that's where I come across it. But that wasn't the, that wasn't the background at all. And, and to, to, again, just draw attention to the point that you made. This was as, as far as I understand it, when he moved to this Naval organization, what was, what was that again? That's right. Yeah. The Office of Naval Research. And so when, when he moved there, his supervisor had a stack of papers that he wanted reviewed, and he gave them to Tuckman, said, please review all of of these papers. And the the other thing that I'd read was that when he originally went to publish the paper in 65, it was actually rejected because the papers that he were referencing weren't of sufficient quality. To be cited and he had to reframe his, uh, his publication or, or to, to be publication, to actually reflect the fact that he's just looking at them to demonstrate themes that might appear in, in those, those scenarios. It's not actually a meta-analysis of other papers

Andrew: 9:30

the meta analysis to be today and what it was in the 1960s, obviously things have moved on. Um, I would also say have some sympathy I have some sympathy with good old Bruce, um, in that, um, most papers are rejected, you know, the first time that they go to a journal, so, um,

Mark: 9:51

unless they're written by ai, in which case it's totally fine. All bets are off. It's written, written by ai.

Andrew: 9:57

the, when, when, uh, when you're as fortunate enough as he is to have your work become mainstream. Um, the, the, the context that, uh, is well understood, uh, in inside your, your world, which is one of rejection and, uh, reviews and, uh, revise and resubmit as, as a researcher, um, the, the concept of it being rejected can be taken out of context. So let's say, um, may it, most papers, it may well be rejected. Um, that doesn't mean that it was, uh, bad, but I see your point, which is the, um, if, if the substance of the rejection was well, the papers that you're reviewing aren't, uh, really robust enough to to, to yield you useful results. Um. Yet that same piece of work has become this, um, commonly referred to, uh, paragon of, uh, of, of, of, of what teams go through. Then. It's an interesting one. But presumably he got more robust

Mark: 11:02

Well, and, that that's the big thing that, that none of this is a criticism of Tuckman because s psychology itself is an incredibly young discipline. Organizational psychology is even younger than that, as we talked about in, in the last episode where we were talking about the, uh, the development of management thinking. So, so Tuckman, What what, what I found really interesting about Tuckman is that he was a self-professed educational psychologist, and, and actually this was a, a foray into this organizational setting, organizational be behavioral psychology setting because he, he. Studied, um, educational psychology. He got his PhD from Princeton. He published this paper, and then he went back as a professor to focus on educational psychology, instructional design. Um, he even wrote a paper later in his career about procrastination, but it was procrastination amongst students, uh, and how that impacted learning. So there, there is a really interesting parallel here with John Sweller who talked about Cognitive load theory, who was also an educational psychologist who came up with this idea of cognitive load theory, which was very specifically around how do people learn. And that has to an extent been co-opted into some other popular teams, um, uh, theories about how to actually structure teams together. And so taking cognitive load theory, which is an individual instructional design concept, but taking that to apply to teams. So there's, there's a few really interesting parallels here. Firstly, that Um, educational psychology seems to have quite a good lead in to this org psych that, that we're talking about. But also there is quite, there is this really interesting pattern that has emerged in a lot of the research that we're looking at that the, the, the research becomes talked about and becomes popular and then becomes referenced because it's popular, not necessarily because it had validity. And I don't, I'm not in that saying that Tuckman doesn't have validity. It's a very, very useful set of, um, uh, set of patterns and processes to look at when you're considering a team. It helps have a conversation. It's just not experimentally valid. And as far as I could tell in the research that I was doing, nobody has come along afterwards specifically to validate tuckman's processes. Other people have come along, uh, to develop theories of team development, but nobody has specifically tried to validate what Tuckman was doing. All of that said, it's moved us along. It's moved the entire discussion about, about teams along, and it has enabled people outside of that psychology field. Everybody that I work with, people in, in teams, in normal management settings to have conversations about how well are their teams doing, what stage are they at?

Andrew: 14:01

contributed to creating starting of a language that was a vocabulary that allowed people to describe what was going on in teams. Because remember, not all groups are teams, but all teams are groups. So if you've done some research on small group formation, then you've not necessarily studied teams, but some of the behaviors and processes that you, you observe may well be things that you might see in teams. Um, perhaps because wasn't observing specific teams, perhaps because, or he wasn't observing anything, he was looking at literature, but perhaps because that literature was, um, representing. Small group formation in this very different setting. you know, sometimes that parallel example allows us to create some useful ideas that, um, because they were generated elsewhere, they give us a different, uh, perspective on things. be that. But, you know, specific things that he looked into and he almost structures the paper around our task and, and group structure, group structure and task. And of course there two, um, central features of what you would look into when you were discussing So those, uh, that language was, was there for the taking. Um, and. Maybe to some extent as well, because it was done on groups and because it didn't have some of the complications of teamwork, um, it was slightly sim simplistic. And, and I don't mean that as a, uh, as a critical, uh, way of, of, of framing it. What I mean is that it means that it generically kind of could be applied to lots of teams. and if you think teams are very context dependent, having something that's generic enough that gives you some, some starting point is probably, uh, tells you, takes you some of the way of understanding why Tuckman's model has been so popular when it comes to describing team formation. it's something to get you going. this idea of forming storming norm performing. One of the arguments is, well, not all groups, all teams will go through those stages in that order, um, in that manner. but lots will, it's salient enough to a lot of team experiences that it, that it applies.

Mark: 16:42

I think there are lots of really interesting extensions of the, the Tuckman model, and particularly Susan Wheelan seems to have done lots of work with much more rigorous, um, uh, an analysis of team behaviors later. But we're not going to talk about Susan Wheelan today, hopefully will get an opportunity to come back and, and talk about her research because she has a model which really does rest on Tuckman. So as much as we're saying this wasn't necessarily, um, demonstrative of something that was, was extremely well observed, there are definitely people that have come along behind and built on. Tuckman's model as, as the, the, the foundations of a conversation about, uh, team stages. But before we get distracted by any, any more sort of theoretical dis discussion of the, the, the research that has existed in this space, I think it is definitely worth going back and actually then saying there is value in what Tuckman proposed in as much exactly as you said, is it gives us a common language to discuss team behavior in. So maybe you could help us dig in a little bit more into the stages that, that we have in the Tuckman model.

Andrew: 17:54

Okay so he's we've talked.. we've mentioned it already. just to repeat, forming, storming, norming, and performing. Convenient. Nice little rhyming. I'm sure that had something to do with the, its catchiness of, uh, of how it, um, how it caught on. Um, so this, I think one of the important things is to remind us this, talking about kind of lifecycle or maturation. Uh, so the groups go through these as evolutions towards, uh, better, uh. Better performance, which is why the, the, the final one's called performing. Um, so, but certain things happen at the different stages. So, uh, what he talks about is, um, the forming stage. So the first stage, uh, when there's uh, familiarity, familiarity is low. So there'd be higher uh, with, uh, among, among the members. And I guess we go through this, it's interesting to think, well, what would your experience be a team? So do these things, least on, uh, kind of eyeballing it, so to speak. Does this make sense? So anxiety would be, uh, high. It may not be, um, at that point obvious who's in charge. Um, mutual trust is low, but, um, a leader will probably emerge at some point around That early stage. So even at that early stage, uh, kind of candidacy for leadership, um, will start to be apparent. So that's an interesting thing in itself. Like, uh, I always think I always like to think of Tuckman'cause I feel as though, uh, if you watch an episode of The Apprentice, they kind of almost deliberately try and force the stages of Tuckman's model on the apprentice group. So it's like, we'll chuck you in together and your task is you must identify a leader. And that almost precipitates this, the storming phase. fact that they're being forced to choose a leader, um, creates tension, uh, immediately. So they're, uh, almost, uh, deliberately playing with the forces they know exist in order to precipitate tension and conflict.

Mark: 20:20

Well, it, it's really interesting to reflect on a, on a couple of things from that. One is. In the setting that most of the research papers that Tuckman was looking at, they probably would have been facilitated. The, the leader was established in that, in that group. And so it's, it's, absolutely right. There is a lack of familiarity amongst the individual members of the team. And also they don't really know the processes. They, they are looking around. And if we reflect back on this conversation we had, uh, in the last episode about human collaboration, our, our genetic biological PrepU predisposition to collaborate, one of the things that we demonstrate is when we go into a new setting, the first thing that we do is we look around and we are not comfortable and we are looking for any social norms and we re reestablish social norms in that situation. It's what we're biologically wired for. So we go into that setting and, and again, you know, this is where. T Tuckman almost certainly had a mental model. He was looking for these things. He could demonstrate them. But you go into a situation and especially where you don't have a named facilitator or somebody that has, uh, a, a specific authority, you are looking for those, those norms. You're looking to establish the rules of, of the group, and you're trying to establish as quickly as possible, what do I do here? What do I expect of other people? What are we all here to do? How do I get out of this situation if I, if I need to? And then probably there is this who's in charge. And I, I think there is a, a very interesting piece that with almost every team that I've seen, there is actually a desire to have a leader. Now sometimes people decide that it's themselves that need to be the leader, but teams naturally, innately jostle for position to identify a leader.

Andrew: 22:07

Oh yeah. research project investment teams where you've got, uh, judges in to determine of a group of, uh, businesses gets awarded funding. so this is a group of highly, highly skilled. Experienced people, but they've not worked together before. every time I go into the room to observe them, uh, and it's not the same people every time, it's different people every time. It's just amazing to see that, uh, after, yeah, after having done it so many times you just watch that, those initial exchanges where they're not doing it explicitly. So it's, it's in, in nature, you'd call it pecking order. what they're implicitly doing through a, a polite negotiation is they're determining where everybody sits. Uh, and it's the natural human instinct to create some form of hierarchy to, because it gives you structure, it gives you an, an ability to distribute and it gives you an ability to create efficiencies in terms of decision making. Um, thing that interests me about what your example when you're talking about, you know, generically to do with. Work, my specific example and everything in between. The thing that interests me is that we're talking here about, you know, Tuckman, small group formation, but this doesn't happen in a vacuum. These teams are doing the work. So take some group therapists, I think of actual teams in modern organizations. most teams aren't kind of picked from zero. There's different levels of, uh, involvement with the team, uh, at any given point in time. But team does the work in order to go through these stages, right? So the forming and the storming part, uh, they're the supposedly the trickier bits. Um. But as you go through those stages, you're still actually using the work that you're tasked to perform, go through those stages. It's not like you get sent on some away weekend where you go and make bridges out spaghetti and until you've gone through the storming bit, and then you come back and now you can go and do your work. You use the work to, to, um, uh, to, to, to build familiarity, to determine leadership, to, um, let conflict, uh, come outta the woodwork. And I find that really interesting as well, because, uh, it will have an imprinting effect. And I, I need to go on safari on, on the literature to see how much that's been studied, but the, there's that, um, kind of difficult to disentangle interdependence between, uh, the work that you've gone through to establish. All those things to go through those first two stages of, of Tuckman's model as you, as you might call it. But what's the, what's the scar tissue that comes with that? What baggage do you bring forward with you once you're into norming and performing? Um, the fact that you've had over certain work tasks in order to get through the storming bit. What is the legacy of that conflict? I find that fascinating. You know, and in fact in the, in, in that research project I'm talking about, we now give advice, uh, to the, uh, the, the people are in those decision making groups. We give advice to'em and say, try to avoid building using work that you're about to engage in together.'cause the, the kind of paradox is that, and this is the same for so many teams. The work that you have in common might be the only common ground you have with someone. So it's natural to go to that, to build common ground. But certainly in that particular context, in a judging context, what they're doing is if they use their opinions of the businesses that they're going to be judging as a means of building rapport. it could create injustices for the, the, the different candidate businesses because, you know, some might get more attention than others, or someone's slightly, uh, draft version of their opinion on something might influence someone else's thinking at a point where you don't have all the information in front of you yet.'cause you haven't listened to a pitch and you haven't got'em to answer questions. So you, you've influenced someone's thinking before you've gone through the bit that you're supposed to go through before you talk to each other about it.

Mark: 27:02

it's really interesting, the forming stage, almost that relative helplessness of the forming stage is you have a group of people, they have come together and often groups don't form The constitution of a group isn't all new, all at once. Uh, and and I think that's maybe one of the weaknesses of, of the Tuckman model, which is obviously if you review a a, a paper that is talking about a small group, it is going to go through very specific. Stages if all of those individuals have come together into the, the group at once. But I think what we obviously see most of the time is that a group is formed, it, it acquires new members over time, it loses members and it acquires members over time. So for me, that forming stage is quite brief because it is the, this relatively helpless stage. If you've got a, a group of new people and they're looking around and they're trying to see who the leader is, and then you quite quickly move into the storming phase because that is this period that we've just talked about with all different kinds of human techniques being used to establish some pattern of hierarchy and dominance in inside the group, which is positive. It, it's useful to have a leader, it helps a group perform. I, I think a completely flat structure with no leader and the leadership role can move around as well. It's dynamic and it's not, it's not fixed.

Andrew: 28:28

is, uh, if you want to identify the storming phase, uh, one of the things that you would look out for is that testing. it would be testing of the leadership and perhaps bids for Leadership. Uh, so there's a bit of negotiating negotiation emerges around about those initial structures that are, that are put in place. Um, and, and that's where the conflict comes because people have, I guess people have got to grips with the group, the characters, what's going on. And now you're starting to form opinions of whether the initial or the initial, um, way in which people fit together are appropriate for the group as it goes about his work. Uh, so he talks about, uh, he also talks about, um, a little bit more. Nuance to the power structures that e exist in the group. Uh, I, I think the interesting thing about storming is that it's mostly about power, actually. Uh, so you can see that the, the social dynamics really coming to the fore. Um, and that's what leads to the tension. so you might get, subgroups or, you know, referring some to something we talked about last time. You, you'd probably start to see dyads and triads forming. and that doesn't mean that that's natural and that's not a problem in and of itself, but those dyads and triads will naturally, be, uh, the, the, the, the, the center of gravity that creates them be differing views on things like power structures. So there will be fact, you, negative way of calling it would be factions, but that will start to emerge in a storming phase as well.

Mark: 30:28

Something interesting occurs to me just, just as you're talking, which is you see this happen all the time in groups and, and it can happen for lots of different reasons. There can be dissatisfaction with the overall direction of that group. So it could be the direction of the organization changes. A team is asked to do something that some of the team agree with and some don't. This is the kind of pattern that I would see reasonably regularly. You have the followers of, of the overall organization goal and then the detractors from the, the organization goal, which would then form, and it, it's typically always gonna be, there is a dyad and then a triad. So two people and then three people and they form within, within the group. And I think a really interesting extension to the Tuckman model is to, rather than think these are stages that teams move through, these are behaviors that are constantly exhibited by teams. So you, you see forming patterns and storming patterns and they're blended into that team because storming always happens. There is always. Conflict in teams. Sometimes that conflict is relatively well tamped down, and it doesn't come to the fore. It's, it's very minor. Sometimes it explodes. And, uh, I, I think as we see from some of the later researchers that hopefully what we will talk about in a future episode, we'll see that there is much more of a, a, an expectation of movement backwards and forwards through the model. Whereas Tuckman's was mostly a progressive model of, you see the team move in maturity. It doesn't always move through all stages, but movement is generally all in one direction. Later researchers tended to be, oh, you can slip backwards. And I think an extension even further of that would be, well, actually all of these different types of behavior happen, but in different amounts in teams. And they can explode at any point Exactly like you're saying about those investment teams. Everybody is always jostling for position. You get a new team member, there's a new jostle for, for position. It, it's, it's very, very dynamic and not a clear linear progression through, through those stages.

Andrew: 32:25

the allure of the tuckerman model is exactly what you're talking about is that, um, I think this is the thing with team, attitude towards teamwork more generally in that, there's a, there's an appetite to reduce it down to this thing that like, okay, the appeal of the, of the tuckman thing, right? We go through forming and storming and then we get to norming and performing. Once we're performing. That's it. Like, you know, teamwork is done, is level complete We, we've, we, we've done teamwork and now we're a team that, that's highly performing and we can just go about and crush it every week.

Mark: 33:09

Now we can do our marginal gains. Now we can bring our mattress to the hotel.

Andrew: 33:12

Exactly. get why that is appealing.'cause that sounds fantastic, that you no longer have to give any thought and attention and effort and there no longer has to be any struggle. And I suppose the, the danger of that is that when you inevitably do encounter future of conflict or future issues, um, becomes somehow kind of evidence of the fact that you are a team that shouldn't exist in the first place.'cause clearly you, you haven't been able to make it work. Um, you've gone through the process you've gone through that supposedly linear process. You've now arrived at a future point where there's conflict. This therefore discredits the integrity of the team overall. So we should disband the team or we should give up on trying to do teamwork. back to what you were saying, I think we're both aligned on the fact that the. Viewing teamwork much more as a, an ongoing process and practice. You know, this is why we call it team craft, is it's something that you practice on a daily basis and, where you chart in terms of your performance on a, on a day or week or month by month, basis, will sit in the, you know, we've had a terrible day, we've had loads of conflict, and it's gone badly, or, um, we've absolutely nailed it this week and we should be really chuffed with how we've, we've done and over the, the trend of over, uh, months and years is that you achieve hopefully, uh, an, an average that's, that's increasing on an aggregate level, but you get down to the granularity of it, then it's, it's a lot more undulating, it's a lot more variable. Um, I've mentioned complex systems because the other thing that's in there with teamwork, I believe is. There's lots of research where the idea is that you could, you view a team as a complex system? A complex system is self-Organizing has emergent characteristics, um, multidimensional. So that means that, uh, and unpredictable. that means that quite a lot of the time with complex systems, you talk about disasters because they couldn't be predicted and it all went wrong. also you can get really, really positive periods of stability and performance with complex systems that aren't necessarily due to unbelievable, mastery of the whole process. But it's just kind of positive inputs here and there that, that, that leads you to a trend that's, that's, that's good. But um, all of that is governed by a view of teamwork as something that is. Just maintained on a daily basis, and you have good days and bad days, and you, and conflict, conflict is inevitable. There's a load of literature on conflict as as being something that's really positive for teamwork, which, um, you know, uh, I agree with, there are kinds of conflict that are entirely detrimental to, to, to teams. But, uh, conflict is part and parcel of, of the daily experience of, of being in a team. And I think that's the, that's probably one of the dangers of, of uh, as you say, is you just go through the stages and once you've gone through them, you're done. Not the case.

Mark: 36:45

there's a really good opportunity for us to come back and talk a little bit more about complex systems and multi-team systems specifically, but let's drag ourselves back to get all the way through Tuckman's model.'cause so far we've, we've formed and we've stormed, we haven't yet normed. So what, what are the characteristics of the norming phase?

Andrew: 37:04

Yeah this is this moment, according to Tuckman, where sense prevails, or perhaps you might call it pragmatism prevails. So about, um, a respected team member challenges the group to get to a point where let's just get things moving forward. Let's resolve our differences, let's make some compromises and let's move forward. some sort of, uh, pragmatism prevails. people have got the emotion off their chest, I think is the best way to put it. the, the storming phase is probably in general, and, maybe that off your chest, people feel as though they've been and they've got themselves as individual characters out there and understood. And now it's about trying to piecing it back together into a way that makes sense for everyone or the, the majority or that, you know, in a way that everyone can get on board with. Um, and I guess norming is a bit, it's like the makeup sex part of the tuckman models, isn't it? Uh, we've all, we've had a big fallout and let's now

Mark: 38:19

Is this something you coach your teams with? Slate. Okay, now you're in stage three. That's the makeup sex.

Andrew: 38:28

an a non, this is not, this is not pg. Uh.

Mark: 38:32

It's fine. I can tick that box on

Andrew: 38:33

Teamwork advice. Um, of right. We've, we've all, we've all said our piece and let's all just try and get along now and, uh, good vibes. So in that, I mean the, the makeup's sex version for a team is that a sense of team spirit somehow emerges from the, you know, a, a phoenix of team spirit rises from the ashes of the, of the conflict. Um, and I think that's the point, is that you've got that storming, emotional, I am a person. I want to assert my emotions and my feelings on, on this group that I'm now, uh, uh, um, member of. And you transition into collective we feeling. So it goes from I to we, um, and would say if you accept that as a, as a stage that a group. Moves on to, say my experience is that you see a lot of teams that don't ever get there. That that's a, that's, there's a real achievement to getting to a point where, um, the safety and security of holding onto your individual and, ambitions and motivations and objectives, the, the relinquishing of that is actually is quite a big thing to do a group. So you're relinquishing your individual ambitions for the sake of the ambition that belongs to the group as a collective. Um, that's a big thing

Mark: 40:08

That stage, the stage that comes before the storming phase that some teams never get out of is an extremely high energy phase. All of that jostling is a, there's a very big emotional toil to it in, in psychological terms, it's high arousal, which is not sexual arousal, but it's, you know, it's, there, there is a lot of mental energy that, that is represented in all of those microscopic, uh, activities that are jostling for PO position, trying to establish leadership, trying to test leadership. And so the norming phase is a phase of acceptance. It's alright, I can't push back about, maybe it's acceptance. I am the leader or acceptance. I'm not the leader. I am now comfortable with my position in this, this group. But, and as you say, many teams would be lucky to get out of the constant arou, high arousal stage of, of storming and into the the phase, which is. We've accepted our positions, but it's still not performing. So how, you know, how is that differentiated? We we're still not saying, we're saying everything's settled down, Tina's okay. They're not arguing anymore. They're not jostling for position. They're but their own, you know, that they are settling things and they're in this, there's norming phase and it's not normal. It's norming. Just to, to be very clear, they are establishing the norms of, of the group, but they haven't made it all the way to the end. So before we get to performing, how do we differentiate that this is somehow absent of some high performance cap cap capabilities?

Andrew: 41:38

this is wher actually

Mark: 41:40

the fact

Andrew: 41:40

Tuckman reviewed literature The sort of groups that he did help understanding. And that's because the groups that, uh, were represented in the literature that he studied had to keep and working together, which you might say, well, that's just the same as any work team. But the structure of the engagement that groups such as group therapy groups go through is such that you're almost forced by hooker, by crook to get through those difficult stages. in work environments, actually, I'm sure, I'm sure you've got examples where it descends into disbanding the team, people being fired, or the project being scrapped because the team just couldn't operate effectively together. There are a whole lot of external, uh, in influences that can kind of come into interfere with the, the group's potential to operate as a performing team before it gets the opportunity to do so. Perhaps because of some of those beliefs I mentioned before, which is, oh, well obviously this isn't, this is just a team that doesn't gel. But I think in, when you're talking about teamwork, this is where, uh. In tuckman's literature, he had the benefit of, well, the grip to go through it regardless. it's been it's kind of been forced through that pain barrier of, into the, into the performing. Um, if we're trying to transpose it back into the teamwork world, I think the difference here is definitely a degree of metacognition the team's point of view. Um, there, there's a, there's a got to be a degree of understanding of team dynamics and what it means to be in a team in order to get into this sort of performing stage where,

Mark: 43:40

just, just, explain that metacognition part again.

Andrew: 43:44

I is, you know, the ability to reflect on one's own thinking. Um, team recognition, which is an area of literature is, um, the, uh, the a, a team exhibiting a willingness and an ability to reflect on its own performance on its own. Uh. Sets of behaviors, communication styles and patterns, roles, flaws, faults, lines of conflict. Its ability to think of itself as a team and to, um, be reflective and adjust on the basis of those reflections. So, team recognition as a team's ability to think of, of itself and its practices. you need to have some degree of awareness and understanding of what goes into effective teamwork in order to then move into a stage where you'd be described as performing because you've, um, you've analyzed it is you do considered. What is the appropriate way to do that, um, which might involve adjustments in order to do it and in a manner that's inclusive to everybody, and in a manner that moves, uh, that, that operates in service of your goals, not, not in, uh, uh, against them. So, I think that's probably one of the things that characterizes between norming and performing, is you've started to really think of yourself and, you know, made those tweaks and adjustments, self coaching almost. And in, in an organizational context, it might not just be that you've done it to yourself, you might have had the, the good fortune of, of maybe doing some kind of facilitative work or consultancy or, uh, some education uh, allows you, you and your members to, to, to think about its practices. but yeah, I think that's one of the things that probably differentiates it.

Mark: 45:50

Well let, let's move on now to what was originally the final stage. Uh, so we can talk about the secret hidden, uh, bonus level of, of Tuckman's model. But let, let's very quickly go on to the performing stage

Andrew: 46:04

I mean, what I've just described, is the broader characterization of what it means to be in performing. What Tuckman sort of talked about was, um, uh, members getting work done, uh, without interfering with the tasks of others. So an understanding of what everyone else is working on and how your work fits into it. Um, problems for the team, not solving problems for individuals. Um. And future conflicts handled in a far more uh, inclusive and sensitive manner. So, um, you probably call the of future conflicts to exhibit more characteristics of psychological safety. So, um, protecting the integrity of the team in the, in the way it handles things like future conflict. So that would be ex examples of kind of performing behavior.

Mark: 46:58

There's, there's something that we, we touched on this before as well, actually, in the storming phase. In the storming phase, there's the jostling for position, the establishment of skills, of expertise, of um, of whatever, whatever dominant characteristics are present in the team. But for me, there's also, one of the signs of a highly performing team is actually flexibility in the leadership role. So it doesn't happen in the storming phase, in the storming phase. That is very much people are trying to establish what other people are good at, where they should defer and where they should take leadership. In a highly performing team, leadership roles can change without ego. So people will cede authority in certain situations without any fear that they're being replaced. So it could well be that the leader. Takes a step back and either requests or just allows somebody else to take a leadership role in that particular moment for a particular point in that, that team's existence. And I think it's a really interesting thing to witness. It's, it's very indicative of, of a highly performing team where you see people without ego. It talks to psychological safety, of course, but it's deeper than that. It's not just the team has psychological safety in, in and among itself. It's the people in, in those positions are willing to actually relinquish their own authority in that moment.

Andrew: 48:17

think. it and there's a different sort of, uh, framing of it. It's about kind of investment and value in capital.'cause I think what you, you, you could characterize something like storming and early stages of team development as not recognizing and seeing the value in the team. So you're not, you're not kinda recognizing the team as an asset into which you want to invest. So you're, what you're doing is you're protecting what you know an asset, which is your own individual sovereignty and skills and understanding and expertise. as you mature in the team's development, what you're now doing is you're investing in something that you see as having value, which is, you see, there's potential in that team, uh, sovereignty. And the way in which you resolve future conflict, um, is. in, in reference to the fact that there's, there's an asset there that you want to invest in, that that gives you return. So you can see that and you can see that. And that's where, um, even think so often the real beauty and power of effective team discussion and decision making, uh, is so often misrepresented because what you see in really highly effective teams is that point you made, like there's no ego in the way in which people contribute to discussions doesn't mean that, um, everybody. Always agrees with everyone and everyone else, everything everyone else says, but even right at the moment, you've got the Covid inquiry going on in the UK and the, the media this morning is talking about how you've had Sir Patrick Valens giving evidence on his diaries for the Covid inquiry saying this is what I thought. And he mentions in his own personal diaries is reflecting on the fact that his view was different to that of the Chief medical officer, sir Chris Witty. the media is jumping all over that kind of going, look, you know, the two leading scientific, uh, advisors to the government during the time of covid two different views. Well, that in itself doesn't tell you anything because should be a diversity of views in a team. And actually it's about how does the team go about using those inputs, if you want to call it that. And they're arriving at its decision. Now, if you've got a team that has a purely competitive. Approach to decision making, which is either Sir Patrick Valance has the correct answer or so Chris Witty has the correct answer and they're going to battle it out to the death to find out who's right. Well, that's not a team, a team making useful decisions. If you've got two people like those two highly respected individuals who have their own expertise that come from slightly different places. One as a scientist, one as a a medical practitioner, they are gonna offer their views and actually the decision they come to. The ultimate decision might not be either of their views. might be a hybrid of those views because through the process of effective deliberation, they have come to an a point which they agree upon, which is that, yeah, actually the, the things that you said from your perspective have slightly changed the way I view my perspective and vice versa, and the advice we are ultimately giving is and X does not represent the input of either of the individual members of the team. So it, you know that, that, but that process I'm describing that kind of the view of understanding, the sovereignty of the team's decision at the end of the day, which doesn't actually have to represent any one individual's original view. That's an example of a kind of performing process in Tuckman's terms. Yeah.

Mark: 52:13

Well, let's speaking using the example of, uh, former teammates. Let's, let's just very quickly touch on the, the, the little known or lesser known fifth stage in, in Tuckman's model, which is adjourning. So just, just very quickly, could you run us through that late edition to the four, four stages just.

Andrew: 52:33

very, Tuckman in that he held, it's like, um, you know, apple retaining some extra hidden features that they're gonna release on the next iPhone So, um, a number of years later he, um, teamed up with another psychologist, Mary Ann Jensen, and they did a kinda review on the four stages, they added a fifth stage, which they called adjourning. Um, and I mean, adjourning is exactly what it says in the tin, which is a team will go through a, it, it's not this, but it's a post-mortem. Now, shouldn't call it a post-mortem because you're not talking about the death of something. It's not a negative thing, but it's a reflective process. And I, I suppose without, um, without going into too much detail, I would say the adjourning thing is, that's a stage that all teams should. Should institute into their practice. it's way of developing metacognition is to actually look back on how did we do the thing that we were meant to do together as a team, um, in a, in a supportive, uh, context of just really trying to analyze your performance and think about how it could be done, uh, better. There's also the flip side of that, which is if you come to the conclusion of some work, it's really important to celebrate its conclusion, uh, so that the adjourning process is about closure, uh, as you might expect. Um, so teams should be encouraged to when they come to the end of it might not necessarily be the end of the life of the team, but the end of a project. It's actually very important to do in a journey. But the journey should have both. It should have that critical reflection and it should have the celebration. I think often. some teams are very good at the celebr getting the beers open, but um. Have a think about how you actually did good, bad, and ugly before that.

Mark: 54:25

Which is really interesting because something that is very strongly held in, in lean and agile is so ways that many modern teams work is absolutely both of those things. The, the continuous inspection. So inspect and adapt being an absolutely core principle of agile teams trying to understand. So they would use words like retrospective to talk about that process, but it's really interesting then in some of the language used in the objectives and key results, structure. So OKRs, it's very explicitly get to the end, do the scoring, use the scoring as an opportunity for reflection, celebrate, and then move on. And in, in the OKR methodology, it's supposed to be really quick. Did you do what you said you were going to do? Why didn't it work? What can you learn for next time? Have a quick celebration, move on. But I, I think that probably brings us to the end of that. That is all of the stages of the Tuckman model. May maybe just a very quick reflection from you on its use in, teams research and teams thinking today.

Andrew: 55:28

So it Would be my, short way of putting it is, uh. It. And it's also like, like many research papers of, of that kind, it's giving you a high level aggregate trend view of what groups go through. It's not a set of ambitions that you should hold as a group. just because you're a newly formed team, um, or a team of some new members, mean that you should aspire to have a storming phase

Mark: 56:03

Yeah.

Andrew: 56:03

Um, uh, it's something that's natural. And thing, so there's two principle things to be wary of with, uh, Tuckman, is that. It's a non-dynamic model. So it doesn't actually tell you how you transition from one stage to the other. Uh, or, or what, what would, what would give you indications that there was a threshold being crossed? Um, so that tells you that it's not a entirely resolved model. It's, it's, it's relatively clunky. Um, that's one thing. And the other thing is just as we talked about before, which is not a linear model that you reach, you reach the end of it and then it's done. what you will find in reality is that teams will around through different things. Um, but there's sufficiently broad categories that they kind of capture all behavior, don't they? it's use, it's useful as a a broad Um, but. If you're going to a, you know, if you're going to some kind of team away today and someone puts Tuckman's model in front of you and says, right, we're gonna do some stuff and get through the tuckman, you know, I would, that would, I would say, red flag moment,

Mark: 57:10

Yeah. And let, let's remember, it is nearly a 60 year old theory now, so that that theory was published or the paper was published in 65. There has been an awful lot of really good thinking and it owes a lot to Tuckman. But like many other theories, just like Conway's Law that was published at around the same time. I, I think for, for me the takeaway is exactly what you said. Use it with care, recognize it, treat it, treat it a little bit like the, the heirloom that it is. It has value, it inspired fantastic thinking. People have taken it and worked on it, but it is not the current state of the art in thinking about how teams should work together

Andrew: 57:52

to be.

Mark: 57:53

completely.

Andrew: 57:53

this is stages of small group development. literature there, the, the, there was no ambition for it to be conscripted into sort of teamwork dog man zeitgeist. Uh, so the the researcher was never looking for it to be applied in, in such a way

Mark: 58:10

I think that's a, a great, great place to finish Tuckman's model, handle with care.

Andrew: 58:14

indeed.