2 | Three Tiers of Leadership Development Offered by CEG
300 Brickstone Square • Suite 201 • Andover, MA 01810 USA • 1.800.288.7246 • +1.978.649.8200 • info@corpedgroup.com
style at each stage. One of the most popular
models of team development is the Tuckman
model with its stages of forming, storming,
norming, and performing.
• In the forming stage a team needs direction
in order to minimize uncertainty and a
structure to help clarify goals, roles and
responsibilities.
• As team members gain clarity and begin to
work together, they may start to experience
storming. This is when struggles emerge
over tasks, personalities, or competing
expectations. At this point the team needs
strong and impartial guidance to help
it address and resolve conflict. This is a
critical stage to get the team to build trust
by creating a safe place to speak up and a
willingness to accept diverse viewpoints and
recognize what's best for the larger purpose.
• As trust builds, the team can focus in earnest
on the tasks at hand, and as it defines what
progress looks like, its leader needs to focus
more on removing roadblocks that impact
the team's performance as a whole. This is
the norming stage, when the focus shifts to
delivering on the larger purpose.
• A performing team is one that has shifted
into high gear by adopting a clarity of
purpose, a high regard for all contributions,
a willingness to enable, and a way to deal
with conflict that ends up producing better
results. At this point, team motivation is
achieved by being as self-sufficient as
possible. Team leads are most effective by
helping to maintain visibility of the team's
success.
Teams can certainly energize the overall
workforce, but so can individual contributors,
and highly motivated individual contributors are
great teammates. Teaching your top management
talent how to bring out the best in people they
hire is largely dependent on knowing how to
develop individual talent through coaching
and performance goals. And one of the things
coaches do is motivate people to stretch beyond
their comfort zones. In his book Courage Goes
to Work, Bill Treasurer talks about developing
your staff by helping to fill their three buckets of
courage:
• The try bucket — the courage of first
attempts (having initiative)
• The trust bucket — the courage of relying on
the actions of others (being receptive and
open)
• The tell bucket — the courage of conviction
(truth-telling with confidence)
Managers/coaches know how to jump first and be
an example, create safety nets for first attempts,
make room for stretch goals, and adjust the
degree of comfort or discomfort to nudge people
in the right directions.
High-performing teams plus motivated individuals
makes a great recipe for an energized workforce!
