The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Let's Climb Tuckman's Ladder Together and Improve 2020 America | PPP #27

Episode Date: June 17, 2020

I am comparing stages from Tuckman's Ladder of Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing to the state of 2020 America.

Please silence your cell phones, hold all sidebar conversations to a minimum, and we will get started with People Process Progress in 3, 2, 1. Hey everybody, welcome to People Process Progress podcast, episode 27, Applying the Tuckman Ladder to America. What's the Tuckman Ladder? We're going to go over that in this episode. We're going to go through the five stages that Tuckman describes as stages that teams go through, particularly project teams. And I'm referencing from the project management body of knowledge, page 338, should you happen

to have the sixth edition. It's what I used to study for the project management professional I took a few years ago and was successful in, check out the previous episode where I talk about some tips for you all to practice that as well. And hopefully it helps. It actually doesn't involve reading through this whole thing. But I looked up the Tuckman model, I looked up diversity, I looked up a bunch of different things just to get, you know, the pin box take, project management's take. But I think the Tuckman ladder, as I implied with the title of this episode, really applies to not just our project teams that we're on, that we're still facilitating, that we're still part of these days, whether it's a disease, whether it's protests, whether it's injustice, whether it's riots, but to America, because it

applies. And so how I think it can apply and how I think we can benefit from following this model or how we're just following it anyway, for our societies. So thanks so much again for coming here. If you're joining me from subscribing already, thanks so much for coming back. Thanks for reaching out to me via LinkedIn or Facebook or email. Let me know if you'd like to be on the show. Go to peopleprocessprogress.com. Let me know what story you'd like to share. There's a tell us your story link there.

Follow the Facebook page, People Process Progress as well. And connect on LinkedIn, Kevin Pinnell, or follow me on Instagram, PinnellKG. And let's talk about this. So again, the Tuckman Ladder, if you're a project manager or you've learned about leadership or taken leadership courses, you've probably heard of it. And again, it's the five stages teams go through or usually go through, not necessarily in the exact order

that we'll talk about them. And you can do much more research on this, but they are the stages that I've definitely seen that I've gone through, bounced back and forth through. And so the first one is forming, right? So this is where we all come together. This is where we meet. This is where we figure out who's who, who has what roles, you know, and we're not really a team at all yet, right? We're coming together as individuals. So America formed a long time ago, but we hadn't fully come together as individuals. We're still doing that. Some people struggle with it. Some people are really good with it.

Right now, we are certainly not completely formed as a society. It kind of feels like someone shook the dice, shook the Yahtzee, and they threw them on the table, and now we're back to these silos, these individuals. And if you've listened to the show or you've just heard this before, egos and silos and good process and good teamwork don't have a place. They certainly don't have a place in a functioning and successful and safe society for everyone. And so I think we're in a forming phase and certainly we're still a country. Certainly we still have a government, but a lot of the discussions that are going to be had between police and their communities among communities themselves with local state and federal government and their stakeholders with, you know, and again,

we as citizens or stakeholders, you as a project manager or stakeholder in your projects, we're in that forming stage, not brand new, but of going, okay, we've got all these different factions that believe what they believe, that are different political parties. And so we're in this forming stage, and it's an opportunity. Some of it's not great, but it's an opportunity here. The next stage Tuckman mentions is storming. I would say we definitely got some storming going on, right? So during this phase, the team begins to address project work, technical decisions, project management approach, but we're still not collaborating, right?

We're still, you know, are we open to differing ideas? Are we still butting heads? It can be kind of counterproductive, right? That is what it feels like America is in right now. I feel like we are totally in the storming stage. We are being affected by the media, right? That is telling parts of stories or I mean, how many times do we see breaking news, breaking COVID news, breaking statues down news, breaking police or mean news. It's just click-baity, and I've fallen for it. We've all fallen for it.

But we are storming, and they in particular are not helping. But when we're storming, we're shaking that stuff out. We're getting to know each other's cultural backgrounds, religious backgrounds, personal backgrounds, professional backgrounds. You know, the police officer who's on his 14th hour because they had to work overtime because there's a march, a planned one, a peaceful one. Great. But public safety is out there to provide public safety for everyone. The protester who just wants their voice to be heard because they're tired. The business owner who's been cooped up and out of business for months, right? All these folks are storming. We have a huge storm going on in America.

And Tuckman nails it. We've done some formings in the country. We've kind of broken up individually, so we're kind of reforming. And now we're in the storming phase where we're, in some instances, being counterproductive with some of the decisions that are being made. In some instances, being counterproductive with some of the decisions that are being made. In some instances, we're being very productive because people are finding middle ground. What should come next, typically in team development, is norming. We're going to start to work together. We're going to adjust our work habits and behaviors to support the team. This is a huge obstacle, right? Democrats don't want to adjust for Republicans. Democrats don't want to adjust for Republicans.

Republicans don't want to adjust for Democrats, not all of them, but there are folks on each sides on every angle in the middle and don't want to give up ground. And if they don't work toward norming, they're not going to be a successful project team. America's a project, right? Progress takes process with people involved in it. And that's a big project. And there's going to be hundreds of those, thousands of those across the country at all different levels. And so the team members do start trusting each other a little bit in norming, but I don't think we're there yet, but we can get there. We have to, while we're storming, put the hand out. We have to, while we're storming, find that middle ground. While we're

norming, we have to get the compromise. We have to make sensible decisions. Some will still be emotion-filled, but they should be also chock full of practicality and looking at the bigger picture and not pandering to the needs of one group over the other. But who's going to benefit? Who's in the most need? Who's not in the most need? And part of norming, again, is building that trust and adjusting each of our work habits and behaviors, whether it's the group you're in, whether it's you yourself, but we have to get to a norming stage. When we norm more, when we adjust, when we adapt, when we start to build trust, we'll get to the next stage that Tuckman outlines, which is performing. This is when we become a well-organized unit. Imagine a fully normed, whatever that is, whatever that looks like,

America. On a small scale as a team, as a project team or an incident management team, teams that have normed, have built the trust, start to adjust their hours, start to adjust how they work, giving up more room to let somebody else do parts of their, what they would normally do to help cross train or whatever it is, you see the performance levels skyrocket. Me as a project manager, when I start to have team members that say, oh, no, no, I'll schedule that. I'll set that time instead of relying on, no, no, you're the PM, you make the schedules, which again, is part of the job. But you can tell your team's going to start performing when they are self organizing, when they drive their own

initiatives in line with the objectives of the project and the goals, but you will see huge performance. When we, as a country, as the various organizations, the various factions, the various beliefs, as the various entities build that trust, and we are interdependent of outside influences that aren't helping us be productive, then our nation's work will continue to get smoother and more efficient and have higher levels of trust and equality and all the things that every human being that lives in the United States wants, whether they wear a badge, whether they're black, white, Jewish, Christian. We all want to have kids that can grow up safe, look after our families, and just do some good for this country and for the world. The last phase in Tuchman's ladder

really applies to teams that aren't meant to stay together. And that's a journey. And that means you've finished the work, you have completed the task, you're going to break up the project team, you're going to celebrate and then we're done. And we'll never be done, right? We'll never be done making things better in America for the next group. I have a large Irish background in my family that immigrated over here. Right. So at some point they were the folks that now people are talking about folks from South America or Mexico, right? Immigrants,

legal or illegal. At some point that was my family. And as the years go on, the demographic will change. New people from different countries will have different surges that want to come here. There's a reason people want to come to America. Right.

And it's because it's a reason people want to come to America, right? And it's because it's a fantastic place. But I thought looking at the Tuckman ladder, looking at where we are as a country, looking at how we could, you know, look at kind of a simple model to get out of it, that this applied pretty well. And again, we're still here. We're still formed. We're storming a bit, which is fine. You know,

no relationship is perfect, especially when you have 300 something million people in a country, we will get norm again, right? We'll build that trust. We'll build back up. We'll succeed. We'll help others succeed. And then we'll perform as we have for 243 years, which compared to other countries is not a long time. But in that short period of time, America has done outstanding things. America hasn't been perfect. We've done some bad things. We're at a period where we're working to make up for those things

and make life better for everybody else. So if you're a project manager, consider the Tuckman ladder on your teams. If you're a project manager consider the tuchman ladder on your teams if you're a fellow american listen to this consider this as we look at where we are as a country if you're listening from somewhere else across the world i know that you know america is not the only place that's looking at the racial divide and equality and that's a good thing right it it stinks that a horrible person committed a horrible act and that was the catalyst for it. But sometimes we do have to storm so that we can norm and then perform together.

Thank you so much for listening to this short episode. I hope it was a little bit insightful here in my two cents. I'd look forward to hearing your two cents and give me your feedback. Reach out to me, peopleprocessprogress at gmail.com. Stop by the Facebook page, subscribe, rate, review, all that good stuff. Thank you everybody out there. Stay safe and Godspeed.