Tuckman's Group Development Case Study

When first being introduced to a group, it can be quite stressful trying to figure out how you and your team members are going to function together. As with any group, there are a few milestones that need to be reached in order to ensure a functional and successful relationship. Specifically, groups need to go through Tuckman’s Group Development Stages. These stages consist of forming, storming, norming, performing, and in some scenarios, a final stage of adjourning may be reached. After participating in this assignment, we as a group were easily able to identify, and analyze, each stage of our development.
Initially when our group was formed, we politely introduced ourselves, which led to awkward silences and little talking. Everyone

wanted to be polite and stay in out comfort zone. We were all cautious because it was our first time meeting and we were not sure how we could speak to one another since we had not established any group norms yet. Lucky enough for us, our initial meeting didn’t require much progress on the assignment and put an end to the primary tension. The next time we met, we focused our attention on developing a group goal. We believe this was the beginning of the storming stage. There was no competition for status at this time nor did we disagree much. However, we noticed that Daniel chose to take the leadership role upon himself. He was the only one to come up with ideas and perspectives outside of class and he was able to explain how his topics would fulfil the project requirements. By taking this role, he put an end to the secondary group tension and allowed everyone else to find their own role. As we continued to explore issues, we realized that we should research current issues as a group. By this time, everyone in the group seemed to be openly participating and sharing ideas. Likewise, group members were willing to share their disagreements and concerns. Fortunately, nobody had a strong enough opinion toward one issue to cause any serious problems within the group. After a couple minutes of discussion, we decided that legalization of marijuana was our best option since we all had previous knowledge on the topic.
The next step in this assignment was to begin doing preliminary research about the legalization of marijuana.

We believe this was the moment our group began to transition into the Norming Stage. During this part of the assignment it was crucial for us to communicate effectively in order to ensure that everyone had an understanding of what was required from each perspective. Thus, once we began the research, everyone did a great job of keeping the group goal in mind by finding sources that could be used for every perspective. Additionally, each member kept their personal goals in mind and submitted the required research to our shared document at the agreed upon time. This was a perfect example of how we dealt with a group dialectic. Another dialectic arose when it came time to finalizing who would present each perspective. Some of the group members did not want certain perspectives because they did not have as much knowledge in that subject area as other members did. Furthermore, some group members did not want a certain perspective because their personal opinion might have had an effect on the assignment. In the end, we were able to balance the heterogeneous and homogeneous characteristics of our group members by asking questions, having trust and exhibiting strong communication

skills.
The final stage of development that we achieved was the performing stage. During the discussion, there was no primary tension and no secondary tension whatsoever. Once the discussion began, there was very little tension within our group. This is probably because this the dialogue was purely informative and did not cause conflict. Furthermore, all group members followed both implicit group norms and supported each other. We all realized that the facilitator was the leader for the time being and we were all receptive to their presentation. Since we all had respect for one another, it made it very easy for us to answer the facilitator’s questions and carry out a conversation in a civilized manner. Group members felt comfortable and were very willing to express their thoughts. When Shannon and Julia presented their perspectives, we found a lot of homogeneity of opinions. These topics yielded less conversation because we were all on the same page and did not need to further explain our opinions. On the other hand, when John and Dan presented their perspectives, there were themes that other group members had never explored before. This led to more prolonged exchanges. For example, we spent quite some time looking into how to tax marijuana sales if it were to become legal. Since there are so many ways of accomplishing the same goal, it allowed the group to expresses different options while working together to find an optimal solution.
The last of Tuckerman’s stages is the adjourning stage. Although we had achieved our group goal, we have not yet entered this stage. Many groups will disband after the performing stage because they have no reason to continue. However, in our case, we will be continuing to work together for future assignments. In these future projects we will maintain group norms while working to achieve a new common goal. We are confident that our future assignments will be successful because we have already created a functional group relationship.
In the end, we all believe that we have made significant progress in becoming a completely unified team. Although this was only a short project, we each took strides into finding our place within the group. Additionally, we were able to develop group norms and gain respect for one another. Although we reached the performing stage, there will always be room for us to grow as a team. (983)