The Storming Puzzle: I

If you lead, manage, charter, fund, depend upon, or contribute to the work of a task-oriented work group, you're probably familiar with two of the most widely used models of organizational behavior. One is Tuckman's model of small group development, also known as "Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing." [Tuckman 1965] The other is Satir's Change Model, which describes the stages people go through when they experience change. [Satir, et al. 1991]

Applying Tuckman's model to modern task-oriented work groups can be tricky, especially with respect to considering the stage Tuckman called Storming. The subtleties have led some to propose that Storming isn't a real stage of small group development, while others have proposed that Storming happens throughout the other stages of small group development. [Knight 2006] [Knight 2007] [Cassidy 2007] [Norton 2017]

To explore this puzzle, we can To explore the puzzle of what Tuckman's
model predicts for the development
sequence of a modern task-oriented work
group, we can use Satir's Change Modeluse Satir's Change Model to examine what Tuckman's model predicts for the development sequence of a modern task-oriented work group. That examination reveals insights that can resolve some of the issues raised by Knight, Cassidy, Norton, and others. In this post and the next three I try to resolve this Storming Puzzle. This Part I outlines the plan of attack and includes a brief review of Satir's Change Model. In Part II I suggest the presence of mechanisms in modern work groups that explain the puzzling observations some have reported about Storming in task-oriented work groups. In Part III I offer a framework for understanding transitioning from stage to stage in Tuckman's model. Finally, in Part IV, I offer some examples of applying that framework.

About modern task-oriented work groups

One limitation of Tuckman's model, acknowledged from the outset by Tuckman, by Tuckman and Jensen, and by Bonebright, is the elevated risk of applying the model to some kinds of work groups. [Tuckman & Jensen 1977] [Bonebright 2010] The kind of work group in question is a variant of Tuckman's natural group setting, which many today would call a "task-oriented work group." [Forsyth 2010]

Briefly, these work groups are work groups that form for the purpose of executing a specific mission, such as constructing products, devices, documents, standards, or mechanisms. For more about task-oriented work groups, see "White Water Rafting as a Metaphor for Group Development," Point Lookout for December 4, 2024.

Satir's Change Model as a framework for examining Tuckman's model

To examine Tuckman's Development Sequence for Small Groups (TDSSG) I use Satir's Change Model (SCM) as a framework, because small group development clearly involves Change. In this I follow the guidance of McLendon. [McLendon 1999]

Numerous authors have described versions of SCM as having five, six, seven, or eight stages. Both the number of stages and the names of the stages vary, but since the fit between the model and reality is only approximate, every version of the model has some utility. The version I use here captures much of what you can find elsewhere. In what follows, and following Satir, I use the term system to refer to the entity that Tuckman would call a group.

Here it is:

This version has seven elements, including five stages and two events that facilitate stage transitions. The correspondence between these elements and Tuckman's model is my focus for next time. You can probably guess that Satir's Chaos stage corresponds to Tuckman's Storming, but much of the rest of the correspondence is both subtle and surprising.   Next issue in this series   Top    Next Issue

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Footnotes

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Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

Coming January 22: Storming: Obstacle or Pathway?

The Storming stage of Tuckman's model of small group development is widely misunderstood. Fighting the storms, denying they exist, or bypassing them doesn't work. Letting them blow themselves out in a somewhat-controlled manner is the path to Norming and Performing. Available here and by RSS on January 22.

And on January 29: A Framework for Safe Storming

The Storming stage of Tuckman's development sequence for small groups is when the group explores its frustrations and degrees of disagreement about both structure and task. Only by understanding these misalignments is reaching alignment possible. Here is a framework for this exploration. Available here and by RSS on January 29.

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