Talk:Tuckman's stages of group development

5/02/2007 - The order was corrected to Forming Storming Norming. Storming happens as team members figure out how to work together. Norming only happens after this stage. FWIW, every team I have worked with has gone through these stages. This is valuable insight to people working in team environments and self managing groups. RND

from Vfd
On 23 Feb 2005, this article was nominated for deletion. The result was keep. See Votes for deletion/Forming-storming-norming-performing for a record of the discussion.

How to search for this page
I am fairly new to Wikipedia but am finding it a very valuable tool.

However I tried to search for the following words 'Forming' 'Storming' and 'Norming' - all come up as no such entry. I was not directed to this useful Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing page - which was just what I was looking for.62.30.197.94 11:45, 11 January 2006 (UTC) Marcus Grant
 * Welcome to Wikipedia. You've just discovered one of the limitations of our search engine.  I'm not sure who, if anyone, is working on it but we've found several times before that the search engine doesn't come up with the relevant pages in some searches.  If you're interested in following up, I'd recommend contacting someone at the WikiMedia Foundation since they provide all our hardware and infrastructure.  Happy editing.  Rossami (talk) 13:01, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I sometimes find that Google can actually help in finding Wikipedia pages. That's actually how I found this page.  I had a vague memory of the four words, and did a quick Google search on just the terms "forming" and "performing", which gave me several search results showing all four words.  Then I did another Google search on all four, and this article was the first result (for basic searches, relevant Wikipedia articles are quite often in the top 5 Google search results). - Ugliness Man 08:22, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I came to this page already knowing this model and looking for other team stage models. I was hoping for a pointer, but didn't find one.

Critical views, alternative and related theories
I have heard that Tuckman initially presented this sequence in a different order - with norming and storming the other way round. I hope to find the source for this, but can anyone help?

I find it difficult to believe that this is the only theory about how groups develop - so could there be links to related, competing or alternative theories?

I find it difficult to believe that critiques of this theory do not exist. Maybe Tuckman has revised his theory (again)?

Admission of bias: I am personally critical of this theory because I encounter so many exceptions to it. I'd love to discover critiques of this theory that are in a peer reviewed journal. Any leads?

Rev 12:02, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Sandor Schuman (as editor) included articles suggesting the limitations of stage models in 'Group Facilitation: A Research and Applications Journal - Number 3, Spring 2001. Perhaps a summary of these critiques should be included - or at least a reference to journals where such critiques exist? --RGreenaway 11:45, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

It's interesting to compare this to Scott Peck's "PseudoCommunity, Chaos, Emptiness, Community" teachings. All too similar.


 * I just finished a page on group development theories. Check it out. Jsarmi (talk) 21:00, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Social Work
I've tagged this page with some social work tags. The Forming-storming-norming-performing process is not unique, however there are very few theories&practices that social work has exclusive claim to. It does get a lot of use in social welfare circles, and is covered fairly extensively in social work education. I dont mean for the tags to "lay claim" to the theory, but just to encompass it within the social work umbrella.--rakkar (talk) 06:26, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
 * The problem is that those nav-boxes at the bottom of the page do "lay claim" to a page. They inherently send a message to the reader that this is a concept closely and exclusively linked with others in the nav-box.  This theory of group dynamics is most extensively used in management consulting (and its related fields) for the purposes of developing and improving teams in the workplace.  If it's used in any of the professions associated with social work, it's certainly no more directly linked than it is to other fields. If we add the social work nav-box just because there's a connection then we also have to add a nav-box for every other field using the model.  The resultant page would be distinctly unhelpful to our readers.  Nav-boxes need to be used only where a hierarchical relationship to the concept really exists.  Rossami (talk) 11:29, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Fair point!--rakkar (talk) 12:05, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

FNP ?
Subsection 5.3 has the title "FNP variant for Technical teams". Here, I guess, FNP stands for forming norming and performing, i.e. storming has been left out. If this is the case, perhaps the abbreviation should be spelled out so that the heading reads "Forming-norming-storming Variant for Technical Teams". If this is not the case, it would improve the article if the meaning of the abbreviation were explained. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.225.84.202 (talk) 09:37, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Deleted reference
I'm deleting a partial reference added in this edit on 07 Mar 09. I'm assuming good faith &mdash; it looks like it was intended to be a valid reference &mdash; but it's not clear where it's supposed to point, and the URL is mangled. &mdash;Ryan McDaniel (talk) 02:01, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Additional section to the article
This article might be more comprehensive if it included a 'Research' section that gave some background about Tuckman's findings. For students learning about this theory, it would be helpful to understand how it developed. The 'Further Developments' section includes more about Tuckman himself and his research and additions after this theory, so it makes sense to include some explanation of his beginning research. In addition, an example for each stage might be more illustrative than a generic explanation.LauraC1360 (talk) 02:21, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Biggs - Re-norming
It's tagged here as not having a citation, but I've been across half a dozen journals, dozens of sites, and while there are inumerable references of the exact paragraph here (indeed, it may have come from one of them first) and a slight paraphrasing of it in a book, I have not seen anything close to a reference on the man.

I'm inclined to remove it unless someone can find him existing somewhere (please do!), as it seems to be a ghost in the machine otherwise

Nosebagbear (talk) 22:08, 6 December 2015 (UTC)