The Four Stages of Team Growth
How do teams grow and mature together? Read about the Four Stages of Teams below.
Last updated
How do teams grow and mature together? Read about the Four Stages of Teams below.
Last updated
Most people think teams that work well together start immediately working well together. But it's not possible to do so without resolving conflict. After all, it's not about their skill levels.
Teammates have different experiences and different perspectives. Teammates have different ways of working and different lessons learned from the past. When they get together, those past experiences and perspectives may clash. This is the natural progression through the team growth process.
Teams must provide room for respect and growth before being able to produce work efficiently together. They must hear each other, and acknowledge each other. They can't be in competition with each other.
The moment a team gets together, they go through "stages of being".
Academic professionals theorized that there are four stages of every team's development. Every single team in the world goes through four stages of team work.
Forming
Storming
Norming
Performing
It's only when they start performing that they work well, efficiently deliver, produce more work, and are happy in their work.
First we'll learn about the stages of teamwork. In later lessons, we'll learn about how agile teams build their foundations to maintain their Performing stage of work together.
Without Storming, a team wouldn't be able to progress to performing. They need to build agreement with each other, and hear each other. They need to build a consensus about how they will work together and what they decide to work on. Teams should embrace storming as a natural part of team building.
Most importantly, they need to respect diverse perspectives and people. They need to help each other grow. They need to fail forward together. They need to unify.
In order to get over the Storming stage, Agile teams must bring the following fundamentals to their group:
Psychological Safety
Service Leadership
Self-Organization
Continuous Improvement
When they do, they will move past Storming and progress toward Norming and Performing. They will start iteratively delivering value like the best Agile teams out there.
Learn more about these key fundamentals of self-actualized Agile teams in the next lesson.