Every group – whether it’s a farm cooperative, a field crew, or a management team at an agribusiness firm – goes through a predictable journey before it can truly perform. Members don’t just come together and immediately function as a unit. There’s a process, and understanding it gives leaders a significant advantage. Bruce W. Tuckman’s model of group development, first published in 1965, is one of the most widely used frameworks for understanding exactly how that process unfolds. It outlines five stages – forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning – each with its own dynamics, challenges, and leadership demands.
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The origin of Tuckman’s model
Bruce Tuckman was a psychologist, researcher, and professor of educational psychology at Ohio State University. To develop his model, he reviewed a collection of fifty published articles on group development, analyzing groups working across therapeutic, professional, and task-oriented settings. From this review, he identified four consistent stages that teams move through. In a 1977 update co-authored with Mary Ann Jensen, a fifth stage – adjourning – was added to acknowledge the importance of closure when a group’s work concludes. Today, the full five-stage model remains the most widely recognized framework in organizational literature on group development and is used extensively by managers, consultants, and team-builders worldwide.
The model helps managers navigate teams through all stages effectively – not by eliminating friction, but by understanding it. Crucially, these phases are all considered necessary and inevitable in order for a team to grow, tackle problems, find solutions, plan work, and deliver results.
Stage 1: Forming – getting acquainted
The forming stage involves a period of orientation and getting acquainted. Uncertainty is high during this stage, and people are looking for leadership and authority. Group members are focused on understanding the task at hand, figuring out where they fit in, and gauging how others will behave. Team members tend to behave quite independently. They may be motivated but are usually relatively uninformed of the issues and objectives of the team.
In an agribusiness context, this could look like a newly assembled harvest crew meeting for the first time, or a group of cooperative members coming together at the start of a new season. At the forming stage, leaders need to establish clear objectives for the group, help members set personal goals, and ensure buy-in to the broader vision. Without this guidance, the group can struggle to gain traction moving into the next stage.
Stage 2: Storming – navigating conflict
The storming stage is where many groups hit their first real test. Members tend to get into competitiveness, defensiveness, and conflict over roles and personalities; members may become critical of the leader and of each other. This can feel alarming, but it’s actually a sign that the group is beginning to open up and engage seriously with the work.
Team tasks during the storming stage call for refocusing on goals, perhaps breaking larger goals down into smaller, achievable steps. The team may need to develop both task-related skills and conflict management skills. Storming can make or break a team, so leaders must establish processes to track progress and ensure the group feels safe putting forward ideas.
An important nuance: too many “diplomats” or “peacemakers” in a leadership role may prevent the team from reaching their full potential – the storming stage must be actively engaged, not suppressed. Disagreements about resource allocation, work methods, or decision-making authority are normal in any agribusiness team and need to be worked through, not avoided.
Stage 3: Norming – building cohesion
Once a group navigates storming successfully, it enters the norming stage. Team members have moved through conflicts, clarified roles and responsibilities, and now feel accepted and recognized in the group. Because the group now feels like a cohesive team in which members have a clear understanding of their tasks, individuals are more likely to share their feelings and ideas and ask for help from others.
During the norming stage, members shift their energy to the team’s goals and show an increase in productivity, in both individual and collective work. Norms that develop during this stage set a standard for behavior, attitude, and performance that all team members are expected to follow – and leaders play an important part in establishing productive norms by acting as role models and rewarding desired behaviors.
One thing to watch: the major drawback of the norming stage is that members may begin to fear the inevitable future breakup of the team and may resist change of any sort. Leaders should balance this by keeping the group focused on its goals while maintaining an openness to new ideas.
Stage 4: Performing – working at full capacity
The performing stage is where the group truly functions as a high-performing unit. In the performing stage, consensus and cooperation have been well-established and the team is mature, organized, and well-functioning. Problems and conflicts still emerge, but they are dealt with constructively.
Members feel satisfaction in the team’s progress. They share insights into personal and group process and are aware of their own and each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Members feel confident in their individual abilities and those of their teammates. As MIT HR’s Judith Stein notes, at this stage roles on the team may have become more fluid, with members taking on various roles and responsibilities as needed, and differences among members are appreciated and used to enhance performance.
Importantly, the performing stage is not reached by all groups. Teams that remain stuck in storming, or that never fully establish shared norms, may never achieve this level of cohesion and output. For agribusiness leaders, helping a team reach and sustain this stage is one of the most valuable things they can do.
Stage 5: Adjourning – closing with purpose
In 1977, Tuckman jointly with Mary Ann Jensen added the fifth stage – adjourning – which involves completing the task and breaking up the team, sometimes referred to as “mourning.” This stage matters more than leaders often realize. Team members may feel a variety of concerns about the team’s impending dissolution – anxiety about future responsibilities, sadness about the end of team relationships, or a sense of deep satisfaction at the team’s accomplishments.
There may be regret as the team ends, so a ceremonial acknowledgement of the work and success of the team can be helpful. For seasonal agricultural teams or project-based agribusiness groups, a deliberate closing – recognizing contributions, documenting lessons learned, and maintaining relationships – sets a positive foundation for future collaborations.
The model is not a straight line
One of the most important things to understand about Tuckman’s model is that group development is rarely a clean, linear progression. Teams often move back and forth between stages. For example, a team might regress from norming back to storming if there’s a major disagreement or a change in team composition. Various factors – such as new members joining, current members leaving, new tasks being assigned, or leadership changes – keep teams moving back and forth among the stages.
This is especially relevant in agriculture, where seasonal workforce turnover is common, and external pressures like weather events or market shifts can destabilize even a well-functioning team. According to UF/IFAS Extension’s research on agricultural team leadership, Tuckman and Jensen’s model of group development remains the most widely used framework for guiding team members and leaders to improve their effectiveness.
How leaders use the model in practice
The value of Tuckman’s model for a leader isn’t just descriptive – it’s prescriptive. Knowing which stage a group is in allows a leader to adapt their style accordingly. Tuckman’s model explains that as the team develops maturity and ability, relationships establish, and leadership style changes to more collaborative or shared leadership.
During forming, directive leadership and clear communication are essential. During storming, a leader’s role is to facilitate honest dialogue and conflict resolution – not to smooth over disagreements prematurely. In norming, the leader shifts toward coaching, asking questions rather than giving instructions. And in performing, a good leader steps back, encourages creative problem-solving, and celebrates achievements – empowering the team to sustain its own momentum.
Team development is dynamic and cyclical rather than static or linear. Leaders can affect that process by tending to the conditions surrounding the team. Sharing the model directly with team members – asking them where they think they are in the development cycle – can itself accelerate progress by building self-awareness across the group.
What do you think? Reflecting on a team you’ve been part of – can you identify which stage it was in when it functioned best, and what made that possible? And as a leader or future leader in agribusiness, which stage of group development do you think would be the hardest to manage, and why?
References
- https://www.leadershipiq.com/blogs/leadershipiq/tuckmans-stages-of-group-development
- https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/social-sciences-and-humanities/tuckmans-stages-group-development
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman%27s_stages_of_group_development
- https://www.mindtools.com/abyj5fi/forming-storming-norming-and-performing/
- https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-principlesmanagement/chapter/reading-the-five-stages-of-team-development/
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4215500/
- https://hr.mit.edu/learning-topics/teams/articles/stages-development
- https://www.wcupa.edu/coral/tuckmanStagesGroupDelvelopment.aspx
- https://www.bitesizelearning.co.uk/resources/tuckman-stages-team-development-forming-norming-storming-performing
- https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sarah-Bush-9/publication/373727215_Leading_Teams_2_Stages_of_Group_Development/links/65a4257eaf617b0d8744e085/Leading-Teams-2-Stages-of-Group-Development.pdf
- https://www.thecoachingtoolscompany.com/get-your-team-performing-beautifully-with-this-powerful-group-development-model/
- https://medium.com/reboot-leadership-resiliency/understanding-a-teams-natural-development-process-the-tuckman-team-development-model-89de6164d7ac
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