“If you’ve ever had to work on a project with other people, chances are, you have experienced Tuckman’s stages of group development firsthand.

The forming, storming, norming, and performing stages of group development indicate a path most teams need to take to reach a state of effective collaboration. Additionally, going through the initial 4 stages will help you arrive at the fifth stop on that road — the adjourning stage.

As you’ll soon learn, each of those phases comes with unique challenges and opportunities you can take advantage of.

But, taking advantage of a process would require you to understand the steps contained within it — which is what we’re here to help you with.

In this article, we’ll go through the:

• 5 stages of group development proposed by the American psychological researcher, Bruce Tuckman,
• Main markers of each phase as well as the transitions between these stages, and
• Examples of communication that illustrate each point in the process.

After discussing those points, we’ll also go over 2 critiques of Tuckman’s model.

So, without further ado, let’s start by establishing where this model even comes from.”