Tuckman's Four Stages Of Group Development

Group Development Group development often moves through stages (pp.90) as explained by our text. There is or can be a cycle in which the group goes through. This cycle has four components in which members feelings about the task are (1) being invested in the task to feeling detached from it, (2) part of the group to being autonomous, (3) feeling withdrawn to open to it and (4) to feeling Isolated from it to being enmeshed in the group. Our group did follow many aspects of that model. While the group started out with an expected team approach, at some points within the exercise there were notable phases that happened. There were two members, myself included, have not put many puzzles together and struggled throughout finding a purpose

91) most closely. Once we were given the task, members began forming a plan. While some of us had relatively little experience in or desire to participate in that type of task in general, we still began forming it by a brief discussion on how the best way to accomplish completing it. The second part of Tuckman’s model is the middle stages of “Storming, Norming and Performing.” (pp. 92) Little discussion was made about actually storming it, the box was opened and dumped out. The group member who enjoyed the putting puzzles together was consulted several times as to what the best way was to accomplish the task or norming it. One member shared that putting together the outside pieces first was how she did it so we began to sort out the pieces looking for the sides. Secondly, three members built from that that we needed to separate the puzzle by similarities, mainly at this stage it was colors and finally performance by the group members seemed moderately consistent throughout, three of us were more active in the process, three of us took more secondary roles. Finally the end stage was termination and that happened very quickly after the other group had completed the

At this stage of our education, many of us have spent time in other classes together and have formed professional type relationships with one another on a micro level. Others have interacted on a mezzo level having worked on group projects together in this class as well as previous classes, as well as membership to the Social Work Department. Finally the entire group functions on a macro level being students at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and two of the members were also part of a larger group of support through shared experiences and membership to what is considered an ongoing fellowship group which is a group of mutual support to its members with a specific