How to Guide Your Soccer Team Through Every Stage of Development Using Tuckman's Stages of Group Development

Tuckman's Stages of Group Development

A new season begins and the coach looks out at a group of players who may have trained together before, or may be meeting for the first time. Either way, they are not yet a team. They are individuals who happen to be wearing the same kit. What happens between that first session and the point where the group functions as a genuine unit, where players trust each other, cover for each other, and hold each other to a shared standard without being asked, is not accidental. It follows a pattern that Bruce Tuckman identified and described in 1965, and that coaches at every level of the game can use to understand where their group is and what it needs from them at each stage.

Tuckman's Stages of Group Development is one of the most enduring models in organizational psychology. It describes the predictable phases that groups move through as they evolve from a collection of individuals into a high-performing team, and it gives leaders a map for navigating those phases rather than being surprised by them. For a soccer coach, that map is as useful in the first week of pre-season as it is in the middle of a difficult run of results when the group starts to fragment.

History and Origins

Bruce Tuckman was an American educational psychologist whose research focused on group dynamics and the behavior of small groups under different conditions. In 1965, while working at the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, he published a paper in the journal Psychological Bulletin titled Developmental Sequence in Small Groups, which reviewed studies of over fifty small groups across therapeutic, training, and natural settings.

What Tuckman found across those diverse contexts was a consistent pattern. Groups did not simply form and then perform. They moved through a recognizable sequence of stages, each with distinct behavioral characteristics and each presenting different challenges for the group and its leader. He named the first four stages Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing, a sequence that captured both the developmental arc of the group and the alliterative neatness that made the model memorable and easy to teach.

The paper was initially published in an academic context and was not immediately embraced as a practical leadership tool. Over the following decade, however, its accessibility and accuracy made it increasingly attractive to practitioners in management, education, and organizational development. The model spread rapidly through corporate training programs and leadership curricula through the 1970s and 1980s, and it remains one of the most widely taught frameworks in management education today.

In 1977, Tuckman collaborated with Mary Ann Jensen to review a further body of research and added a fifth stage to the model: Adjourning. This stage recognized that groups do not simply perform indefinitely. They reach a point of closure, either because the task has been completed or because the group's composition changes significantly, and that moment of transition deserves deliberate attention from the leader. The addition of Adjourning made the model more complete and more applicable to real-world contexts where teams cycle through endings and beginnings.

The model has been debated and refined over the decades. Researchers have noted that the progression through the stages is not always linear, that groups can regress to earlier stages under pressure or when their composition changes, and that the pace of movement through each stage varies significantly depending on the group's context and leadership. Tuckman acknowledged these nuances himself, and they do not diminish the model's practical value. For any leader trying to understand why a group is behaving the way it is, the stages provide a useful and consistently accurate diagnostic framework.

Use in Business and the Corporate World

In organizational settings, Tuckman's model became a standard tool for project managers, HR professionals, and team leaders because it gave them a way to anticipate and respond to the predictable challenges of group development rather than being caught off guard by them.

Managing the Storming Stage in High-Stakes Teams

The most significant practical contribution of Tuckman's model to corporate leadership is the normalization of the Storming stage. In most organizational cultures, conflict within a team is treated as a failure of leadership or a sign that something has gone wrong. Tuckman's model reframes it as an inevitable and necessary stage of development. A team that does not Storm has usually not yet developed enough trust or investment to surface genuine disagreement, which means the unresolved tensions are present but hidden rather than absent.

Organizations that trained their leaders in Tuckman's model found that managers who understood the Storming stage could respond to conflict constructively rather than reactively. Instead of suppressing disagreement or becoming defensive when it emerged, they could name it as a developmental stage, facilitate the conversations that needed to happen, and guide the group toward the Norming stage with the conflict genuinely resolved rather than temporarily contained. Project teams at organizations including McKinsey and large technology companies adopted Tuckman's framework in their team kickoff processes specifically to prepare leaders for the Storming stage before it arrived rather than responding to it after it had already done damage.

Accelerating the Path to Performance

The second major application of Tuckman's model in business is in deliberately designing the early stages of a team's development to accelerate the path to Performing. Organizations that understood the model could invest in the Forming stage in ways that shortened the Storming stage and moved teams toward Norming and Performing faster than groups left to develop without deliberate intervention.

Consulting firms and professional services organizations in particular developed structured team launch processes built around Tuckman's model. A new project team would begin with a facilitated kickoff that addressed the Forming stage explicitly: clarifying roles, establishing norms, surfacing assumptions, and creating enough shared understanding that the inevitable Storming stage would be shorter and less disruptive. The investment in the Forming stage consistently produced faster-performing teams than those assembled and immediately set to work without that deliberate foundation-building.

Recognising Where Your Squad Is

Before exploring how Tuckman's stages play out on a soccer pitch, it is worth stepping back and asking an honest question about your current group.

Most coaches can identify intuitively where their squad sits within the model if they know the stages. A group that is polite, slightly cautious, and looking to the coach for direction at every turn is in Forming. A group where two or three players are quietly competing for influence, where small conflicts keep surfacing around playing time or roles, where the atmosphere in training has an undercurrent of tension that does not quite break into the open, is in Storming. A group that has settled into clear patterns of behavior, that knows how it operates and holds itself to shared standards, is in Norming. And a group that functions with genuine collective intelligence, that solves problems on the pitch without waiting for the coach to intervene, is Performing.

The reason this matters is that the coaching behavior that serves a Forming group actively harms a Performing group, and the hands-off approach that works in Performing produces anxiety and drift in Forming. Knowing where the group is determines what it needs from the coach, which is the central practical insight of Tuckman's model.

Understanding which stage your team is at tells you what they need right now. Transformational leadership gives you the bigger picture, the kind of coach and the kind of environment you are working to build across the whole journey.

Practical Application: Tuckman's Stages in Soccer Coaching

Forming: The Group That Is Not Yet a Team

The Forming stage begins at the first session of pre-season and can last for several weeks depending on how many new players have joined the group and how deliberately the coach manages the transition. Players in this stage are forming impressions, reading the environment, and deciding how much of themselves it is safe to show. The social anxiety of the Forming stage is real even for experienced players joining a new group, and it is particularly pronounced for younger players or those who do not know their teammates well.

The most important thing a coach can do in the Forming stage is create the conditions for genuine connection rather than assuming it will happen on its own. Players will not naturally introduce themselves with the openness that builds real trust. The coach has to design those interactions deliberately. Activities that require players to share something about themselves, that create shared experiences, and that mix players who would not naturally gravitate toward each other are not optional extras in pre-season. They are the foundations of the group's ability to move through the subsequent stages.

The coach is also the primary source of direction in the Forming stage. Players do not yet know the standards, the expectations, or the values of the group. Clear, consistent communication from the coach about what this team stands for, how training will be conducted, and what is expected of every player regardless of age or ability, sets the tone that everything else will be built on. Ambiguity in the Forming stage creates anxiety that persists into the Storming stage and makes the subsequent conflict harder to resolve.

In the forming stage especially, players are working out whether this environment is safe and whether they belong. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs gives you a useful lens for understanding what they are looking for and what you need to provide.

Storming: The Stage That Cannot Be Skipped

The Storming stage is the most uncomfortable phase of group development for most coaches, and the most important to understand. As players become more comfortable within the group, the initial politeness of the Forming stage gives way to something more honest and more difficult. Opinions emerge. Roles are contested. The coach's decisions are questioned, sometimes openly and sometimes in the conversations that happen between players away from training. Playing time, positions, and perceived favoritism are the most common flashpoints in a soccer squad.

The temptation for a coach in the Storming stage is to suppress the conflict rather than work through it. A coach who reacts to tension by asserting authority without addressing the underlying concerns, or who ignores the tension hoping it will resolve itself, usually finds that the group never fully reaches the Norming stage. The unresolved Storming persists underneath the surface, limiting the group's capacity for genuine trust and collective performance.

What the Storming stage requires from a coach is the willingness to let difficult conversations happen in a structured and productive way. That means creating deliberate space for players to raise concerns, facilitating those conversations without taking sides, and keeping the group focused on what they share rather than what divides them. The conflict is not the problem. Avoiding it is.

It is also worth noting that the Storming stage can resurface later in the season if the group's composition changes significantly, if a run of poor results erodes confidence and trust, or if an unresolved tension is triggered by a new situation. A coach who recognises the signs of a return to Storming can respond with the tools of that stage rather than being caught off guard.

How quickly a team moves through the storming stage often comes down to who is in the squad and how well their natural contributions complement each other. Belbin's Team Roles gives you a framework for thinking about that balance.

Norming: When the Group Starts to Feel Like a Team

The Norming stage is the reward for navigating Storming well. The group settles. Roles are accepted. Players begin to hold each other to shared standards without the coach having to enforce them. The atmosphere in training changes in a way that is palpable: less friction, more genuine collaboration, and a growing sense of collective identity.

The coach's role in the Norming stage shifts from facilitation and conflict management to reinforcement and consolidation. The norms that are emerging need to be named and celebrated so that players understand they are not accidental but are the product of the work the group has done together. A coach who notices that players are holding a high standard in the end-of-session scrimmage without being prompted should name that observation explicitly: "I noticed that nobody let the standard drop today even when I stepped back. That is what this team is becoming."

Building the team's identity in the Norming stage is also the coach's responsibility. Shared language, shared rituals, shared values that the group has developed together rather than been handed from above, give the Norming stage its depth and make the subsequent move into Performing more stable. A team whose identity has been built collectively is harder to destabilize than one whose culture was imposed.

Performing: The Group That Leads Itself

The Performing stage is where the investment of the previous stages pays out. The team operates with a collective intelligence that does not depend on the coach directing every moment. Players solve problems on the pitch without waiting for instruction. They hold each other to the standard without the coach having to police it. Communication during matches is specific and useful rather than generic and emotional.

The coach's role in the Performing stage is to support rather than direct. That shift can be counterintuitive for coaches who are used to being the primary source of energy and direction. Stepping back when the group is Performing is not passivity. It is the appropriate response to a group that has developed the capacity to manage itself, and intervening unnecessarily undermines the autonomy that makes Performing possible.

One important note: a Performing team still needs to be reminded of where it is going. The shared goals and standards that were established in pre-season and refined through Forming, Storming, and Norming do not sustain themselves automatically. A coach who regularly reconnects the group to those goals, who continues to name the behaviors that reflect the team's identity, keeps the Performing stage alive rather than allowing it to drift into complacency.

Adjourning: Closing the Chapter

In a soccer coaching context, the Adjourning stage most commonly occurs at the end of a season. Unlike a project team that permanently disbands, most youth and amateur soccer squads will reconvene the following year, often with some changes in personnel. The Adjourning stage is therefore less about permanent closure and more about deliberately marking the end of this particular chapter before the next one begins.

That distinction matters because it changes what the Adjourning stage is for. It is not primarily about saying goodbye. It is about processing the shared experience of the season, consolidating the identity and culture the group has built, and sending players into the off-season with a clear sense of what they accomplished and what they are carrying forward.

A coach who handles the Adjourning stage well does three things. They create space for genuine reflection, not just on results but on the experience of being in this group across this season. They name and celebrate the specific things the team built together, the standards they held, the moments they came through difficulty, the way the culture of the group developed across the year. And they frame the ending not as a conclusion but as a foundation, making clear that what was built this season does not disappear when the group disperses for the summer.

Players who leave a well-managed Adjourning stage carry something into the following season that accelerates the Forming stage when the group reconvenes. The trust, the shared language, and the collective identity do not have to be rebuilt from scratch because they were properly marked and honoured at the end of the previous year.

Real-Life Scenarios

A New Coach Inherits an Established Squad

A coach takes over a squad mid-season that has been together for two years. The group appears to be Norming, with established relationships and clear social dynamics. But the arrival of a new coach resets the Forming stage for the coach-player relationship even if not for the player-player relationships. The coach who understands this does not try to immediately assert a new way of working. They invest time in understanding the existing culture before changing anything, earn trust through consistent behavior, and allow the group to move through a compressed Forming stage with the new leadership before introducing significant changes.

A Season That Gets Stuck in Storming

A squad reaches the midpoint of the season still operating in what feels like the Storming stage. Results are inconsistent, two or three players are clearly in competition for influence within the group, and training sessions have an undercurrent of tension that surfaces in small conflicts. The coach recognises that the group has not resolved the Storming stage rather than passed through it, and that the unresolved tensions are limiting performance. They create a deliberate team conversation, not about results or tactics but about how the group wants to operate for the second half of the season. That conversation, facilitated carefully, surfaces the underlying tensions and gives the group a way to move toward Norming with the issues genuinely addressed rather than suppressed.

Benefits for Coaches

A Diagnostic Framework for Group Behavior

The most immediate benefit of Tuckman's model is that it gives a coach a way to explain behavior that would otherwise seem confusing or frustrating. A group that is being difficult is not necessarily a bad group. It may simply be Storming, which is a normal and necessary stage of development. A coach who can diagnose that correctly responds with the right tools rather than the wrong ones, and avoids the mistake of either suppressing the conflict or interpreting it as a fundamental problem with the group.

Clarity About What the Group Needs From the Coach

Tuckman's model is as much about coaching behavior as it is about group behavior. Each stage requires something different from the person leading the group, and knowing which stage the group is in tells a coach exactly where to direct their energy. That clarity reduces the cognitive load of coaching considerably, particularly in the early stages of a season when the group's needs are changing rapidly.

A Framework for Building Something That Lasts

A coach who understands Tuckman's model and applies it deliberately across a full season builds something more durable than a team that performs well for one year. The culture, the norms, the collective identity, and the trust that are developed through a well-managed progression through the stages, and properly marked at the Adjourning stage, carry into the following season and give the group a head start on the stages that follow. Over multiple seasons, that compound effect produces groups that are significantly more cohesive and self-managing than those assembled and left to develop without deliberate intervention.

Overcoming Challenges

The Stages Are Not Always Linear

Teams do not always move through Tuckman's stages in a neat sequence, and they can regress to earlier stages when their circumstances change. A new player joining a Performing group can temporarily reset the group to Forming as the existing members adjust to the new dynamic. A significant injury to a key player, a run of poor results, or a conflict that resurfaces unexpectedly can pull a Norming group back into Storming. A coach who expects linear progression will be repeatedly surprised. A coach who treats the model as a map of likely territory rather than a guaranteed itinerary will be prepared for the detours.

Varying Maturity Within the Group

In youth soccer, the emotional and social maturity of players within the same squad can vary significantly, particularly in age groups spanning two or three birth years. A player who is developmentally ready to contribute to the Norming stage may be sitting next to one who is still working through the Forming stage's anxiety about belonging. A coach who is aware of this variation can direct individual attention accordingly rather than treating the group as a uniform whole at a single stage.

The Coach Who Waited for the Storm to Pass

Didier Deschamps inherited the French national team in 2012 following one of the most public and damaging episodes of team dysfunction in the history of international soccer. The 2010 World Cup had produced a player strike, a fractured dressing room, and a group that had visibly failed to move beyond Storming under the pressure of a major tournament. The task Deschamps faced was not primarily tactical. It was to take a group of exceptional individuals and guide them through every stage of Tuckman's model, from a Forming stage built on rebuilding trust in the institution, through a Storming stage managed with patience and firm standards, to a Norming stage that produced the collective identity visible in the 2018 World Cup squad, and finally to a Performing stage that delivered the trophy in Moscow.

His approach across those six years reflected a consistent understanding of what the group needed at each stage. In the early years, structure and clarity. In the middle years, patience with conflict and unwillingness to let individual agendas override collective standards. In the final years, the confidence to step back and let a group that had genuinely earned its Performing stage express what it had built.

The 2018 World Cup winning squad was not the most talented French team ever assembled. It was the most cohesive. And cohesion at that level is always the product of a leader who understood the journey and had the patience to walk the group through every stage of it.

Resources

Tuckman, B.W. (1965). Developmental Sequence in Small Groups. Psychological Bulletin, hosted by MIT. The original 1965 paper in which Tuckman identified the four stages of group development, freely available as a PDF through MIT. Reading the source gives a clear sense of the evidence base the model was built on and how broadly it applies across different types of groups.

Tuckman, B.W. & Jensen, M.A. (1977). Stages of Small-Group Development Revisited. Group and Organization Management, Semantic Scholar. The follow-up paper in which Tuckman and Jensen reviewed a further decade of research and added the Adjourning stage to the model, completing the five-stage framework described in this post.

Eys, M., Coleman, T. & Crickard, T. (2022). Group Cohesion: The Glue That Helps Teams Stick Together. Frontiers for Young Minds. An open-access peer-reviewed article examining how cohesion develops within sports teams and why it is central to both team performance and individual athlete experience, with soccer used as a primary example throughout.

Li, X. et al. (2025). The Relationship Between Soccer Participation and Team Cohesion for Adolescents. PubMed Central (NIH). A peer-reviewed study published in the NIH database examining how soccer participation shapes team cohesion in adolescent players, directly relevant to the youth coaching context described in this post.

Davis, L., Jowett, S. & Tafvelin, S. (2019). Communication Strategies: The Fuel for Quality Coach-Athlete Relationships and Athlete Satisfaction. Frontiers in Psychology, PubMed Central (NIH). A peer-reviewed study showing how the communication strategies a coach uses directly shape the quality of relationships within the group, underpinning the Norming and Performing stages described in this post.