Tuckman, Silos, Kaleidoscopes and Travelling to Dublin

 Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing...…..Adjournment and Grieving

There's a line from where I'm from-it goes this way;

Q: "What's the best way to get to Dublin?"

A: "Well, I wouldn't start from here!"

But the essence of the one (alright, two!), liner is that we almost never have a choice regarding our starting point on our travel journeys, and the same is true for organisational change: this is something I feel we have lost sight of. 

So, what happens is, that instead of uniformly starting with "Forming", team members (existing and re-assigned), are likely to originate from different place on the "Tuckman Wheel", ones within which they might have felt comfortable, and were performing. However, organisational requirements (The Business Case) have changed and people are required to change with them.

Realignment, redirection, re-evaluation, repositioning, rethinking, reskilling: it goes on. But, there's a lot of "re" going on there and it can be painful. For example

A highly skilled and popular Team Leader is required to join a newly formed Team. Although their salary has been guaranteed, their authority (both structural and acquiescent) has been damaged. This is a good person who has been "bounced" from a place where they were performing, to one where they have neither adjourned or effectively "said goodbye" to their previous role. In their new role, they are expected to make a swift transition, one that may avoid Forming and Storming and move straight into Norming with high expectations that Performing will soon follow. 

So, with a twist of the organisational kaleidoscope, someone's working landscape has changed and their patterns have been (sometimes dramatically), adjusted. It feels necessary to ask about the approaches taken that allow our person an opportunity to reflect on and retell their strengths, reaching a place where they can see their past as an asset that has brought them growth and experience and therefore better equips them for the future. I'm suggesting that this would and should be an essential feature of the Adjourning Stage of the Tuckman Model when applied to organisational changes and restructuring,

Ignore at Your Peril!

Context is everything, and often the context within which the metaphorical kaleidoscope turns is a challenging one that requires high paced change. Daniel Goleman makes some interesting observations regarding the relationship between changes, leadership styles and emotional intelligence. (Primal Leadership. Goleman, Boyatzis & McKee)-this table sets out the relationships between styles and contexts. Interestingly, Goleman comments that the best leaders operate within a situationally appropriate blend of four of the styles shown below.

Leadership Styles	E.I. Competences	Impact on Climate	Objective	When Appropriate
Visionary	Self Confidence, Empathy, Change, Catalyst, Visionary, Leadership	Most strongly positive	Mobilise others to follow vision	When change requires a new vision or clear direction is needed
Affiliative	Empathy, Building Bonds, Conflict Management	Highly positive	Create harmony	To heal rifts in a team or to motivate during stressful times
Democratic	Teamwork and Collaboration, Communication	Highly positive	Build commitment through participation	To build buy-in or consensus or to get valuable input from employees
Coaching	Developing Others, Empathy, Emotional, Self-Awareness	Highly positive	Build strengths for the future	To help employees improve performance or develop long-term strengths
Coercive	Achievement Drive, Initiative, Emotional Self Control	Strongly negative	Immediate compliance	In a crisis. To kick-start a turnaround or with problem employees
Pacesetting	Conscientious, Achievement, Drive, Initiative	Highly negative	Perform tasks to a high standard	To get quick results from a highly motivated and competent team.

The last two: I hold the view that whereas they may be necessary, they also contribute to uncertainty, doubt and devaluation at individual, group and organisational levels, perhaps driving people into unhelpful, self affirming, informal silos as they attempt to reaffirm their perceptions of self-worth and value. There will be occasions when formerly good people, might take one or more of the following choices:

1. They underperform
2. They sabotage progress
3. They become a focus of discontent
4. They leave

…and whereas in some cases, choice 4 will be nest for everyone, this isn't always the case.

Leaders within organisations have a responsibility to look after people, especially one whose skills, knowledge and experience might well contribute to future growth and success. 

The Kaleidoscope Metaphor

Twist it and it changes: patterns and structures shift and we no longer see what we thought we saw, although we're holding on to and looking into the same structure. Organisations twist and change within their structures and their people, their partners, stakeholders and supply chains are required to do the same, and pretty quickly.  Sometimes there is no choice regarding whether or not we change. We have to. But, it's not the "why and what" of change that concerns me: it is the how.

We need maps, and with them we need to know "which way is North," otherwise we're holding an expensive piece of tech or an elaborately designed piece of paper with little chance of it helping us and the potential to reaffirm what we thought we knew, "We're lost, and it was better when we weren't!"

Closing Comments

Accepting and delivering change is a tough business and overdependence on pace-setting and coercive leadership styles and activities come at a cost. Perhaps the Tuckman Model helps us to better understand the lived experience of our colleagues, especially when they might feel de-skilled, diminished and devalued. If leaders, managers and change agents could bear in mind the importance of collaborative approaches that consider the wealth  of knowledge, experience and understanding individuals have accrued over their careers, they may find themselves better placed to meet the challenges of change and to attract, recruit and retain a "Performing Workforce"

Do We Understand Our Relationships With Partners & Stakeholders from Their Perspectives?

 

 

I had been involved in a piece of Team Development that related to forming partnerships new stakeholders. It still feels relevant because 
whereas the context changes, the themes remain reasonably consistent:

“How do we influence new and existing stakeholders to help them to grow and develop into the changes we are advocating?”

 

J.K. Rowling seemed to have come across the perfect solution in her “Harry Potter” series: Hogwarts had at its disposal a sorting hat. It put the right people in the right “house:” put the hat on, it spoke, and you were allocated, then on to the next person and so on….

Unfortunately, no such thing exists in our world of getting things done and we are often left to ourselves to try to establish who the supporters of change both internal and external might be. 

It was this way for the team I’d been engaged to work with. I introduced them to  the following quadrant with a view to helping them to understand how we might engage with and develop people as we work with them. It’s a journey and, like all journeys, it works better if know where you’ve started from. Admittedly, knowing where you’re going helps too, but that’s for another time!

 

I’ve applied this in several contests since then and the feedback has been positive:

·         It has helped clarify role and purpose.

·         It has given a deeper and more productive meaning to networks.

·         It has helped to establish clarity.

·         It has informed our actions.

·         It has helped us to achieve “good outputs.”

Of course, the model is pretty sterile without conversations, ones that perhaps ask the following related to each quadrant:

Bottom Right

• What is expected of them by:
• Change agents?
• Their existing team/organisation?
• What are the boundaries and limitations of their inputs/decision making?

Bottom Left

• What do we expect of them, what can we contribute?
• Change agents?
• Their existing team/organisation?
• What are the boundaries and limitations of their inputs/decision making?
• What actions can we take to develop them, increasing their contribution to:
• Their team(s)/organisation.
• The project/intervention.
• Their professional development.
• Their personal development.
• Their capacity to inform other decision makers.

Top Left

Clarity rules here!

• How can we support and develop them within and throughout the process?
• What values, attitudes, behaviours and beliefs do they bring to the process?
• What values, attitudes, behaviours and beliefs might we develop and grow to enable them within the process?
• Where are the areas of potential growth through reciprocity?

Top Right

How might we develop their interest, engagement and commitment/support?:

• What are the strong messages?
• What benefits might grow for the organisation?
• Reputational
• Developmental
• Cultural
• Environmental
• Financial

The shifting and flexible role of the Coach, Mentor, Facilitator has much to offer here in underpinning the meaning we attach to the specific development, the people involved and our engagement on processes that create high value outputs for those involved.

Ethical Bureaucracies Enable Democracies!

 “Things will be very different when this is under control,” seems to be a stock phrase of late and it might be worth thinking about what might happen to make things work differently. Can we begin to describe a set of principles that might inform how and why we relate to each other across a range of political, economic and social contexts? What can we learn from existing ideas on how people operate, why change is necessary and the direction it should take?

We should consider the space occupied by bureaucracies in enabling the fair delivery of resources whilst supporting organisations. This is open to scrutiny driven by the necessity not to measure the efficiency of bureaucracies against a series of metrics but to consider their effectiveness in ensuring that the Ethical Purpose of the organisation is maintained and grown throughout a range of agreed contexts, values and behaviours

Context “I Wouldn’t Have Started From Here”

Given that “here” might be defined as being held in the teeth of a global pandemic that has placed huge and possibly devastating demands on economies, has re-awakened medieval uncertainties and has exposed the limitations of our collective capacity to respond to the challenges; it seems fair to ask “Who would?”

Significant social and economic shifts have led us from collectivism and co-operation towards isolation and individualism: yet it is at this very point that we are witnessing the architects of rapacious national and international individualism bereft of any answers that seem to make sense to those most afflicted by the pandemic. What we may be seeing is the emergence of a different kind of Leadership, one that places the relationship between Leadership and Service at the heart of it Values, Ethics and Behaviours: Servant Leadership.

Our starting point might well be the need to raise “questions of purpose,” in a manner that challenges the status quo, the design and purpose of organisations, outputs, and processes. In short, “If what we are doing fails to serve a greater good, one that is beyond bringing wealth to the share-holder, why are we doing it?” It is the failure to pose this question that results in our being spectators as bureaucracies are configured to bring disproportionate wealth and power to investors, rather than to ensure that services and outputs are delivered in a manner that is sustaining, encourages growth, cooperation and learning.

To Consider

Conversations about our current challenges have exposed the structural weaknesses that have unwittingly acted as an incubator for the pandemic. The weaknesses seem related to the unwillingness of power to recognise and listen to advice and suggestions that contradict its current narrative. There is a need for power to be redefined as a process that takes place within and between people. This requires a “Because I said so!” culture to begin a journey towards one where decisions are taken and enacted “Because we agree and I commit.”

If this were to happen, bureaucracies will be required to adjust so that their purpose shifts towards processes and behaviours aligned to the ethical purpose of the organisation and the relationships into which it enters. They will need to become more agile. To clarify, agility is not seen here as “speed”; it is instead viewed as “robust flexibility”-the capacity to accommodate by stretching boundaries and in doing so create new opportunities for learning, growth and discovering different types of ethical influence outside of the existing structures.

Readiness

No one would have chosen to be where we now are.  The gaps in yesterday’s certainties and assumptions have been brutally exposed there will be changes and it may well be that the powerful groups whose behaviour has helped deliver us here will seek to tighten their grip on power in the post Covid world. There is however a sense that the structures that got us into this situation are, unless they change, unlikely to get us out of it. I state with a note of caution, that I cannot recount one example of powerful groups giving away their power because everyone thought it a good idea. It was taken from them.  I’m not for a second proposing a forceful overthrow: I am suggesting a build-up of ethical pressure on politicians, the financial sector and ultimately legislators to enable us to turn a corner and do things differently.

What Can Aid Our Thought to Action Journey?

 How well placed are we to listen to what is said and not said? 

I believe that we can find some guidance in helping us to formulate questions and challenges that serve the purpose of developing Servant Leadership and in so doing, consider the change journey required to develop Ethical Bureaucracies that give active support to development, engagement and delivery. Our questions:

1. How do we acknowledge and demonstrate that we have listened and heard?
2. How do we reach and communicate our decisions
3. What do we enact or defer?
4. How do we assume the good intentions of others and not reject them as people when at the same time rejecting their performance or behaviour?
5. How do we communicate to others that our purpose is enabled by a search for ethical wholeness?
6. How do we remain aware to the power of the possible?
7. How do we use ethical persuasion rather than rules-based authority?
8. How do all members of our organisations (formal and informal) contribute to “Dreaming Great Dreams”
9. How do we do this and maintain our day to day focus on our present purpose?
10. What lessons do we learn from the past?
11. How do we assimilate and describe the current reality?
12. What are the consequences of today’s decision for future generations?
13. How do we evidence and learn from our commitment to the growth of people?
14. To what degree do we accept that we are stewards of our organisation and that they have a purpose beyond the day to day?
15. How do we ensure that our organisations, our ethics, values and behaviours contribute to the greater good of society?

John Dooner-Original April 2020
Recycled with minor edits January 2021

All Art work by Beth Dooner. https://www.instagram.com/bethdooner/

Can The Tuckman Model Help Us Understand What is Happening?

Tuckman: there's something so perfectly simple about this model that means it's sometimes overlooked in favour of more complex stuff.....

....and I think that's a mistake!

First introduced in the mid 1960's, the Tuckman Model has been around a while and there's a good reason for that: it works! Developed to help us understand Team Development and Dynamics, this model and conversations it primes has been my "Go to" place in conversations with Teams, their Leaders and Managers in a number of contexts. Why? Well, it helps us to talk about what might be going on and to anticipate what might be on its way: there are 4 stages that help us form up and discuss our ideas, they are:

• Forming
• Norming
• Storming 
• Performing

More recently a 5th Stage "Adjourning" has been added-for the purposes of this piece I'm staying with the original 4.

One of the challenges presented by using a model is that we need to remind ourselves that our sometimes complex and rapidly shifting work patterns don't often if ever, follow neat diagrams. So I won't include one-you can find plenty of them on Google Images (other sites are available!)
Some years ago I came across a piece of work that had shown how the model can be applied to individual and team behaviour across a range of team processes and activities. I've adapted it and made 13 YouTube Videos that discuss how each of process can be seen within the context of the Tuckman Model and what this might mean for developing a better understanding of our behaviour(s) and expectations.

The table sets out "What's going on" in the right column, the links in the left column will take you to a commentary/overview of the context. They're brief no longer than 10 minutes and most are well below.

 

 

Context	Narrative
“Focus”	What do people focus on as change takes place? How do we behave when we focus on what needs to be done? Whether thinking about the "big stuff" or agreeing on roles and operational area, our behaviours might define our contribution to the process. These are likely to be influenced by our individual and collective journeys within the Tuckman model. Here's an overview of what might be going on.
“Trust”	What is the “state of trust” at each stage? We're going nowhere without it but how often do we consider how trust is affected by where we are at any particular point in our team journey? This clip gives some insights into how the concept of trust is subject to our relationship with change and our own securities/insecurities
“Team Relationships”	How might we expect relationships to change/grow/develop? Divided, embittered and quarrelsome teams do not perform well. Ones with a sense of unity and purpose do. This clip builds on previous ideas of how we need to allow space to allow people to grow and develop through the relevant stages, establishing our values, ethics and behaviours as we so do. It's about trust & clarity, two essential "we're going nowhere fast without them," components of great teams.
“Criticism”	What takes place and where, overt, covert or productive? An ever present in our lives, Criticism has the power to be both destructive and creative. It can drive people apart or become part of the social adhesion that binds group members together. This clip talks about how Criticism might present within the four stages and its potential to contribute to positive group and individual journeys
“Decision Making”	How do we go about taking and making decisions? We all know what this means, that doesn’t however mean that the process is easy to describe. What is our role in setting and maintaining the ethical climate in which decisions are made? Where does confidentiality rest and is it okay to “backtrack” when we need to?

 

“Sharing of Knowledge”	Who benefits? How and when is knowledge shared and why?  Not hearsay or gossip but knowledge. What are the disadvantages to holding on to information that under any reasonable examination would be seen as critical to enabling progress? How does our behaviour here reflect organisational culture and can we articulate the benefits of “synergous sharing”?
“Performance”	What efforts and collaborations are involved in “Performance”? There are important conversations to be had here and they’re not about “target setting.” They are concerned with how we describe our role purpose and outputs in the context of achieving flow and excellence.
“Predictability”	How can we benefit from and go beyond predictability? Arguably, we like a balance where life (work), is predictable enough. Too predictable and boredom takes over, ever changing relentless shifts in predictability? Expect burnout. Reaching a place where we anticipate and adjust quite naturally is a challenge for leaders and their teams.
“Understanding”	How well do we understand purpose and direction? The greater clarity we can achieve here, the more likely it is that we will achieve some great outcomes! Ambiguity is welcome, it helps us decide the degrees of certainty under which we operate and that enables us to be more confident in developing and projecting a confident, flexible approach to how our role is both developed by ourselves and perceived by others.
“Products”	When we consider our outputs, what is going on at each stage? Our outputs aren't limited to "work done", there are outputs related to our behaviours, our connectivity and commitment. Here, we open some discussion with the watch-phrase "keep your eyes on the outputs!"

 

“Interventions” (Overview)	When do interventions occur and how are they delivered?  Interventions: Hands on/Hands off-they’re by no means mutually exclusive and there are times in the development cycle when we shift from one to the other. When we think about our actions in the context of the Tuckman Model, things may become clearer.
“Interventions” (Support)	As confidence and competence grows, support changes A linear process? Not really and we might need to consider the information as part of our responses to change and a blend of leadership skills and approaches.
“Interventions” (Leader Focus”	At what point and for what purpose should leaders intervene? At what point and for what purpose should leaders intervene? Here we take a look at the importance of the leader maintaining focus and awareness of the dynamics that might be at work within teams. We refer again to the importance of clarity and conversations that create clarity.

 

I'm happy to have a conversation with you about the model and how it might be used in your place of work. It's my belief that it has strong messages outside of the workplace too.

You can reach me on 07984409937 or mail me:

jpd@dy3solutions.mygbiz.com 

I'm sometimes asked why I use the Butterfly image-the link takes you to a brief explanation!


John.

John Dooner. DY 3Solutions.