Group Development Stages And Tuckman's Model: A Reflective Essay

Discuss About The Global Journal Of Management And Business Research.

The main reason behind preparing this reflective essay is to determine group development stages within a multi-professional culture, utilising reflective cycle and appropriate models. As a business-professional in an organisation, it becomes significant to comprehend the position while working alone and in a multi-professional group. The aptitude to respect other group member’s values and knowledge, as a group member is expressed within organisation’s code of practices ( Carpenter, Bauer, & Erdogan, 2012). Reflection is an integral part of professional practice that act as a self-examination along with developing skills through which practice can be enhanced. Definition of effective team is a chosen group member with complimentary capabilities who are assigned to work together to achieve a planned purpose (Prabhakar, 2008). I explored series of theoretical models surrounding group development including decisions in group making and Tuckman stages of group development. Each model gave variation that based on stages of formation, controlling, working and ending. In my reflective essay, I have decided to explore more on Tuckman’s stages of group development along with reflecting few of my experiences while evaluating group development stages in practical life.  

Group development efforts have constructive consequence on groups as well as group members as individuals. Team building is a motivational factor for group members that increases their self-control while exploiting their personal strength. According to Heel and Ektuna (2017), grouping and teaming creates an environment that leads to opportunities, learning, networking and acquiring of new traits for the group members. Khan, et al. (2011), says that in comparison of groups that do not share common goal, groups that are responsive to external alterations are able to generate an enhanced platform for learning as well as providing financial advantages with their combined ability to transfer themselves rapidly in an effective way. Klug & Bagrow (2016) also supports the above saying and adds that group value and team building is noticeable through their adaption to change, team feeling, enhanced problem resolution and improved efficiency in production. Prabhakar (2008) further elaborates by saying that group development efforts boost creativity, assist in problem solving skills, entail positive cooperation and interaction, develops self-esteem within members along with accomplishing objectives in rapid way through shared communications.

To evaluate further about group development stages, we must first need to understand what constitutes groups and teams. A common definition that can be referenced was presented by Ravi & Sumanthi (2016): “two or more individuals who are connected to one another by social relationships” (p. 60). One specific form of group is called team where individuals are supposed to form a common unit to work together for accomplishing a common goal. The group that I was allocated while we were working on a course related work comprised of students that belonged to diversified backgrounds. First day experience while we were trying to form a group, each of us spend time in collaborating variety of activities along with introducing our personal capabilities. To tackle the task, we needed guidance and thus we divided our groups into smaller fragments who carried responsibility according to their capability. The work progressed, however we found difficulties in making effective communication due to diversified timetables we had to follow in our day to day life. Also, in initial days we lacked structured model notion until we came to know about group development stages and team building in week nine of our course study.

Tuckman's Stages of Group Development

Bruce Tuckman published an article related to stages of group development in the year 1965 where he analysed 50 articles that dealt with group development forming three types of groups: training groups, therapy groups and laboratory groups (Ravi & Sumanthi, 2016). Tuckman further hypothesized four usual stages of group development that could be identified in the published articles of that time. These stages are what we now know as Tuckman’s model which is used to determine how groups are developed from initial formation until the task is completed. Four initial stages include: forming, storming, norming, and performing. The first stage of the group development model is forming in which each member of a group is provided with a task. All the group members come together and formulate what is required to be accomplished thereby introducing themselves respectively along with establishing initial performance behaviour.  The second stage is known as storming and Tuckman labels this stage as “intragroup conflict” stage (Hingst, 2006). According to Tuckman, once a group is formed, they may develop tendency to become hostile towards each other’s due to group and personality are forced among each other’s. Third stage is norming that is also characterized by group development cohesion. In this stage, group members start accepting the situation in which they are along with giving an initiation to develop shared attitudes and beliefs (Hurt & Trombley, 2007).

According to Dexel (2009), these shared attitude and belief becomes group norms and enable entry to the fourth stage i.e. performing. In the performing stage, group members work towards accomplishment of work as they have resolved group conflicts and infighting while defining their individual role. This stage is also called as role relatedness by Tuckman in which individual group member perceive themselves related to the group thereby accomplishing group work combinedly. Fourth stage is also called as emergence of solutions by Tuckman as this stage becomes problem-solving stage and hence puts forth necessary exertion to complete the work till the solution is found. Later in 1977, with assistance of Mary Ann Jensen, the group development stages of Tuckman were revisited and updated. As a result, a new stage was added to the above four stages called as adjourning stage. This became the final stage when it is determined that the group task is completed or group goals seems accomplished. The groups can then be terminated with their responsibilities (Ravi & Sumanthi, 2016).

Since development of Tuckman’s model, many theories have stemmed like Tubbs model that consists of three detail elements like applicable contextual features, internal influences and significances. Tubb’s model is also easier to recognize  group development process, but as compared to Tuckman’s model, it doesn’t seem much useful as Tubb’s model is based majorly on extra factors rather than individual personalities (Ritson, 2011). Although Tuckman’s model does not seem sophisticated and without mentioning extra factors affecting group members, it shows simplicity in its installation and labelling of different stages. Nevertheless, Tuckman’s model comes with few criticisms also where Hurt & Trombley (2007) proposed that in Tuckman’s group development stage, the group progress is linear through all the five stages.  The authors suggest that Tuckman models can prove deficient in its capability while describing those group members who do not follow linear progression. For example, what will happen if a group fails in norming stage? According to Tuckman’s model, a group cannot move forth in next stage without completing the former stages and hence the Tuckman’s model may fail during certain times.

Criticism of Tuckman's Model

According to me, the models often fail to distinguish the concepts between team and group work which I think is necessary to be taken care of. One can easily recognise these concepts at different developmental stages however, writing about developing team performance can further cultivate group development stages. By describing different stages according to the growing team, like working group, high-performance team and potential team, this process can bring difference in both dynamic as well as linear development models as mentioned above. Teams work differently from groups that are based on specific job performance where collective number of individuals perform to complete specific job roles (Heel & Ektuna, 2017). Team members commit shared goal and takes responsibility to fulfil the task whereas groups pose pseudo team that calls itself a team but do jot take commitment risks. Therefore, to develop a group into a team, working from starting stage becomes important where sharing of common objective as well as results must be necessitated. Information is shared in most of the cases via formal and informal communication methods that emphasises on task performance of each member while taking their own responsibility. A potential group will always strive to enhance their performance as they share common approach, but to develop equal distribution of responsibilities, complimentary commitment and critical guidance via group leader provides group with developed processes (Prabhakar, 2008).

Nevertheless, many others argue about usefulness provided by Tuckman’s group development stages as when it was created until now many people have utilised this model to predict developmental stages of groups tasks. Other than group development stages, organisational structure and communication seemed very critical for me as I can utilise them in my future career where I aspire to become a team leader or a manager in a multinational company. To understand the reason behind group development, understanding organisational objective and structure is very important. According to Kanten, et al. (2015), organisational structure is a system that defines hierarchy in any organisation. It is used to define job role and its function along with providing guidelines for individual responsibility. Organisational structure studied by me during the course will assist me to determine how organisation I work for operates and hence can assist their leaders in developing and obtaining organisational goals for gaining competitive advantage. Similarly, organisational communication will benefit me to build a strong relationship among group members and in between different levels in organisation to enhance job performance and job satisfaction. According to Yildirim (2014), organisational communication can be defined as a form of channel that enables communication between members of organisation like corporates and multinational companies. Organisational communication is further divided into formal and informal communications that will be utilised by me depending upon the situation and by making use of various communicational medias.

Distinguishing Between Teams and Groups

The above essay presented my learning during the ten weeks course where I have critically explored Tuckman’s development stages. I found these stages very useful in giving clarity for group structure that allowed me to work effectively on common objective. The group development experience, as mentioned above in the essay proved most significant for me during the forming stage as we had issues earlier in this stage.  Although in this stage each group member desires to be accepted by others, critical issues arise due to which this stage is often neglected by us. However, now I have understood its importance and found that this stage is most critical in group development stages. Now I am certain that without successful completion of forming stage, we cannot progress further in storming stage where we usually come up with diversified ideas and in norming stage, we make mutual decisions and become motivated to work combinedly. After completing my course weeks, I now find myself as a grown individual and understood that teams remain depended upon each other while working for a common goal.

References

Carpenter, M., Bauer, T., & Erdogan, B. (2012). Management Principles. Creative Commons.

Dexel, L. (2009). Qualitative Examination of the Group Development Process Within an Adventure Programming Context . Retrieved from https://etd.ohiolink.edu/rws_etd/document/get/ohiou1244478793/inline

Heel, A. V., & Ektuna, T. (2017). Developing Teams in Startups. Retrieved from https://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=8913995&fileOId=8914007

Hingst, R. (2006). Tuckman’s theory of group development in a call centre context: does it still work? . 5th Global Conference on Business & Economics. Cambridge.

Hurt, A. C., & Trombley, S. M. (2007). The Punctuated-Tuckman: Towards a New Group Development Model. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED504567.pdf

Kanten, P., Kanten, S., & Gurlek, M. (2015). The Effects of Organizational Structures and Learning Organization on Job Embeddedness and Individual Adaptive Performance. Procedia Economics and Finance, 23, 1358-1366.

Khan, R. A., Khan, F. A., & Khan, M. A. (2011). Impact of Training and Development on Organizational Performance. Global Journal of Management and Business Research, 11(07), 63-68.

Klug, M., & Bagrow, J. P. (2016). Understanding the group dynamics and success of teams. Royal Society Open Science, 03(04).

Prabhakar, G. P. (2008). Teams and Projects: A Literature Review . International Journal of Business and Management, 03(10), 3-7.

Ravi, B. S., & Sumanthi, G. (2016). Study on Theory of Group Development; Groups and Teams. IOSR Journal of Business and Management, 18(02), 58-61.

Ritson, N. (2011). Strategic Management. Ventus Publishing.

Yildirim, O. (2014). The Impact of Organizational Communication on Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Research Findings. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 150, 1095-1100.