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Challenges And Benefits Within The Team Lifecycle

Thesis: The team life cycle is full of challenges and benefits. The key to having a functional team be successful in accomplishing their task is dependent on the results after taking on its main challenge, conflict.

In 1965 Bruce Tuckman published a model for team development which later became better understood as the team life cycle. "Tuckman's model explains that as the team develops maturity and ability, relationships establish, and the leader changes leadership style. Beginning with a directing style, moving through coaching, then participating, finishing delegating and almost detached. At this point the team may produce a successor leader and the previous leader can move on to develop a new team. This progression of team behavior and leadership style can be seen clearly in the Tannenbaum and Schmidt Continuum - the authority and freedom extended by the leader to the team increases while the control of the leader reduces." (Alan Chapman, 2001-2006, 2.)

In the original published model, Bruce hypothesized that team development consisted of four stages: forming, storming, norming, and performing. In 1977, Bruce Tuckman and a graduate student named Mary Ann Jensen added a fifth and final stage in the group life cycle after reviewing 22 studies other studies of the team life cycle model. They named this stage adjourning.

Although the first four stages of the life cycle are proven to exist, not all of the stages are necessary and teams may also go through some stages faster than others. Deciding factors in omitting stages or moving through them swiftly include whether or not teammates already know each other and the length of time it takes for the group to get to know each other and become cohesive.

The first stage in the process is one in which very little progress is made on the task, the forming stage. During the forming stage, team members get together and most of the time the assignment at hand is already known. In this stage of the...