The 9 team development tools

Here is a summary of the 9 team development frameworks and theories that are addressed in this course.

We hope that some of these will help you to understand and enhance your team’s dynamics, effectiveness, and overall performance.

Many of you will find it encouraging to discover that the frameworks we introduce in this segment validate your current team practices. You may have relied on your intuition, but now you can reinforce them with research-backed evidence.

Each learning activity aims to provide a concise overview of a specific framework or theory, explaining its core principles and practical applications. We hope to provide you with helpful tools and language for your journey of team development.

Enjoy learning.

Click on each heading to see a summary of the tool.

Bruce Tuckman’s Group Stages is a widely recognised theory that describes the developmental stages that teams typically go through.

Jon Katzenbach’s Team Performance Curve is a model that illustrates the stages of team development and the corresponding levels of performance.

Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team is a model that highlights the common pitfalls and challenges that teams face, hindering their performance and effectiveness.

Robin Dunbar’s numbers are a series of cognitive limits that suggest the approximate maximum number of social relationships individuals can maintain.

Meredith Belbin identifies nine different roles individuals assume within a team, each team role represents a unique set of strengths, weaknesses, and behavioural tendencies that contribute to the overall team dynamics and effectiveness.

The term “trust bank” is often used to illustrate the idea that trust is built and maintained through a series of deposits (trust-building actions) and withdrawals (trust-eroding actions).