Groups, Teams and Development

Group or team

A group of people who report to the same manager is not necessarily a team. A team has a shared purpose that none of them can achieve alone, work that is genuinely interdependent, collective accountability for the outcome, and complementary rather than identical capabilities.

This distinction has a practical consequence: much team-building effort is applied to groups whose work is not interdependent, where the individuals would be more effective simply being managed well as individuals. Before investing in teamwork, establish whether the work actually requires it.

Stages of development

Teams develop through recognisable stages, and knowing where a team is tells you what it needs.

• Forming — polite, uncertain, dependent on the leader. People are working out the rules and their place. Needs direction, clarity of purpose and structure.
• Storming — disagreement about approach, roles and influence. Uncomfortable, frequently avoided, and necessary. A team that never storms has suppressed disagreement rather than resolved it, and the disagreement resurfaces later as passive resistance.
• Norming — ways of working settle, trust develops, the team begins to self-manage.
• Performing — focused on the work, handling conflict productively, requiring little intervention.
• Adjourning — disbanding, which deserves acknowledgement rather than simply stopping.

Progression is not automatic and is not one-way. A new member, a change of leader, a shift in purpose or a significant setback can return a performing team to storming, and the leader who assumes the team is past that stage handles it badly.

What the leader provides at each stage

• Forming — clear purpose, defined roles, ways of working, and visible direction.
• Storming — tolerance of disagreement, facilitation rather than suppression, and firmness on behaviour while allowing debate on substance.
• Norming — reinforcement of good practice and gradual release of control.
• Performing — obstacle removal, external representation and development, with minimal interference.

The conditions for a team to work

• A compelling shared purpose that people can state in their own words.
• Clear roles — who does what, and who decides what.
• The right people — capability and the willingness to work with others.
• Enabling structure — a workable size, real interdependence, and the resources to do the job.
• Supportive context — information, rewards that do not pit members against each other, and organisational backing.
• Psychological safety, discussed next, which is the condition on which the others depend.