To understand the development of a team and how you can encourage the development of an effective team, we're going to use a model that was developed by Bruce Tuckman back in the 1960s and further developed with the collaboration of Maryann Jensen in the 1970s. The Tuchman model team development or group formation, as it's sometimes called, is still for me the best balance of simple and easy to understand, but highly reflective of what goes on in the real world. And in the Tuchman model, there are four, arguably, now five, or even six phases. first phase is the formation phase, where team comes together for the first time. Now when the team comes together for the first time, they're keen, they're eager to get on but they don't really know what their roles are and what's expected of them. So you As a team leader, very much need to be directive and to give clear instructions to your team members.

And as you do that, people will start working together. And as they start working together, they'll start getting to know each other. And so the social dimension of the team will start to dominate in the second stage. And when social dimension sum dominates, what we start to see is that the more dominant individuals will make a grab for power. Everyone will try to figure out who are likely to be their friends who are likely to be their competitors. And the less dominant individuals will simply be seeking a niche in which to fit.

Arguably, there will be some individuals within the team who are naturally more dominant than you are. You're the team leader, and you have a right and a responsibility to lead. But if you find someone pushing hard at your own leadership, then you need to assert yourself. You need to work hard to support the team members who are less assertive and less confidence. Tuchman called this stage the storming phase. And the storming phase is one of intense social interaction.

So you need to combine a continued focus on giving clear, task oriented directions to keep the team productive during these early stages, but you also now need to support the team development and assert yourself. But the storming phase is emotionally, quite exhausting. And eventually people will start to figure out what their place is in the team. They'll know what their role is, they'll know who their allies and perhaps who their competitors are. And what they'll really want to do is to knuckle down and get on with some work. And the next phase the third phase is therefore highly productive.

And what the team is trying to do is to find what sociologists call norms of behavior. Hence Tuchman called this the norming stage. And in the norming stage, everyone's getting on with their own work individually. You are no longer required to put as much effort into constructing and directing your team because people are starting to figure out what their roles are. But what you do need to do is to channel your attention to building up the relationships that will make the team productive, introducing someone who is very busy and doesn't have enough time to someone who has some time to help them out, influencing someone who has real depth of experience and skills, so someone who is struggling to deal with the task they have at hand. By doing that, you build up a social relationships and your attention is moved more from task to relationships.

If you do this successfully, then what you'll find That the team will start to perform very well. And many of us have had the experience of being a part of a team, which performs to an extraordinary level. We feel proud to be a team member. We enjoy the company of our colleagues, and we feel highly productive. And this is a team that Tuchman were described as having reached the performing stage. And in the performing stage, people don't need very much guidance, they know their roles, and they know the roles of their colleagues too.

And they will happily step in and help out. And the team doesn't need much support on the relationship side or the emotional side, because they can support one another. So your role in a performing team becomes very simple and yet quite subtle. It's a role Firstly, of providing resources and information and ideas to the team so they can do their job well. You're the person who's going to feed in the knowledge they need the guidance they need. But your other role is to protect them from all the rubbish that organizations throw at us.

You're their lightning rod, their umbrella protecting the team. This subtle role recognizes the fact that the true data daily leadership often will come from within the team as one individual steps forward now, and another individual steps forward at another time. It's a light hand on the tiller for you. And it's a style of leadership which is sometimes referred to as servant leadership, because your job is to serve the team to allow them to perform at their best. Now working with Marianne Jenson Tuchman added another stage to this recognizing that teams at some point finish that task and go their separate ways. They describe this as the adjourning stage, or as it's sometimes known these days as the morning stage where There's a sense of loss, because the team has worked so well together.

But the reality of modern day teams is often quite different. The team doesn't just disband. Some members may leave, other people may join the team. And when that happens, the team transforms. And in a transforming stage, you may find that the level of transformation is subtle. Everyone gets their head down and needs to find new norms of behavior.

And so you as a team leader need to facilitate that. But if it's a bigger transformation, key members of the team leave or new key appointments are made. There may be something of the storming stage. People are jostling for position, challenging or authority trying to find a new, better post within the team. And at this point, you as leader need to assert yourself more. You need to make sure that the team is clear what their roles and resources proaches are that clear that you remain in charge, and they're clear that you're there to support them.

And of course, a fundamental transformation of the team, new drug for the new role for the team new drugs for individuals, new people within the team may mean that it feels like they're starting afresh and in this new transformed forming stage, you need to be very clearly directed. So there are a number of stages of team formation. But my four principal pieces of advice are these. Firstly, you need to get the right balance of assertiveness to make sure that team is clear that you are in charge and that you know what you want them to do. Second, you need to balance that with the right measure of support for the relationship side of the team dynamic. Thirdly, once the team starts to mature and perform well, you need to provide them With the information and the resources they need to do their job well and forth.

Also when the team is mature, you need to protect them from distractions that will get in the way of the team performing at its very best. You have become the team servant, as well as their leader. servant leadership and the stages of team formation are critical thing for new manager to understand.