I’m an Employer: Get me out of here!

The Four Phases of a Team: Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing – After Lockdown

Having been trapped in our homes for weeks on end with the same group of housemates – you might start thinking that you are in Big Brother (despite it being cancelled due to the Coronavirus Pandemic). It seems we are all in a reality show now.

As we all head back to work and we try and rebuild our teams or build new ones to get our businesses functioning properly again, we have to accept that the road to a well performing team won’t be easy on. In fact, it is totally normal for a team to have a bit of push and shove as they work out how to operate together.

Reality TV shows give a good example of why this happens.

Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing.

Back when I was completing my professional studies to qualify as an accountant, I really enjoyed the ‘Business Strategies’ side of study.

It was a big departure from the ‘number crunching’ stereotype we all expect of accountants, and instead covered theories and management principles, some of which have more to do with psychology than business finance.

One of these principles that I really got interested in was forming, storming, norming and performing.

I have lost count of the number of meetings I have had where a client has been discussing the trials and stresses of managing a team that had undergone a period of change (and this is pre-COVID levels of change).

Once I had explained the theory of how teams operate under forming, storming, norming and performing the exasperated employer experienced the same click I felt. They could understand that some parts of a team’s dynamics are not problems to be solved, but a necessary process to ride out on the route to getting a truly brilliant team together.

Phase two: Storming

And then one day the excitement will turn to the worst phase of a team. Where it might appear that the honeymoon period has ended, and some employers start to fear the team divorcing from each other.

The second stage of team development is the one that can, if not managed well, be the breaking of a team or business.

Once a team has made their initial impressions of how they work together and how they complement each other it is time to test the waters. More often than not, the civil assumptions and polite natured talk is very different to the realities of working together.

Increased workload, time pressure, lack of technical ability or simply getting to know the ropes causes tensions amongst the team. Team members can become annoyed, rebellious and teamwork can breakdown.

Often in reality TV the producers want the contestants to be suspended in the Storming Phase for as long as possible because headlines get juicer and viewership increases when the group are ridden with angst!

Adding a conflicting personality with different attitudes to the group can cause what was once a harmonious group to splinter. Some will use their position to encourage the newcomer into the fold, and others will feel the need to discipline the newcomer so that they know what is expected of them.

The storm is the madness of all these personalities asserting their views to fit the jigsaw of teamwork back together again.

To a team leader or business owner this is the scariest time. Some businesses struggle to get out of this phase because the team changes and resets to the Forming stage so often.

Some buckle under the pressure but many succeed and come out the other side into phase three. As we come out of lockdown it might be a few weeks before you see this happening, and maybe it will be delayed as teams change as people desperately try for some sort of holiday in August, but the storm is coming.

Phase four: Performing

The holy grail of team management! The point at which the team can carry out a task and there is almost no need to communicate to each other what is happening and what they are doing. They just know! The team becomes more of an organic creature than a group of individuals.

On reality TV programmes these moments are rare but powerful. You’ll see this phase when the team are put into a difficult situation and must work together, under stress, to achieve a clear goal.

In “I’m a Celebrity”, for example, I would say that examples of this are the challenges to get letters from home, or the “celebrity cyclone” challenge.

In my team this phase is most obvious in in December and January with the biggest deadlines of the year making our office the busiest it has been all year.

The pressure of the deadlines and the complexity of the work always brings out the performing phase in the team. By the time the 31st January arrives the people I work with have become a well-oiled single unit that can achieve so much more than they themselves would have anticipated just 6 months before.

I should also say that this year the team also pulled some exceptional performing out of the bag in March and April.