Group items tagged

American psychologist Bruce W. Tuckman developed an influential model of team development, first enunciated in a 1965 article “Developmental sequence in small groups,” published in Psychological Bulletin. Tuckman’s model traced the evolution of a team through four stages: forming, storming, norming and performing. Tuckman argued that these stages were necessary to build an effective team.

Tuckman's theory focuses on the way in which a team tackles a task from the initial formation of the team through to the completion of the project. Tuckman later added a fifth phase; Adjourning and Transforming to cover the finishing of a task.

The Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing model of group development was first proposed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965, who maintained that these phases are all necessary and inevitable in order for the team to grow, to face up to challenges, to tackle problems, to find solutions, to plan work, and to deliver results. This model has become the basis for subsequent models of group development and team dynamics and a management theory frequently used to describe the behavior of existing teams. It has also taken a firm hold in the field of experiential education since in many outdoor education centers team building and leadership development are key goals.