Storming – the most challenging stage

Part One

Remember these 5 stages that psychology professor Bruce Tuckman identified?  The ones that groups and teams go through as they develop – or not!  I don’t limit the original research findings to groups and teams. I’m saying that every person travels along the exact same route when in relationship with one or more others. Hard to believe? Well, with many people, especially in personal or family relationships, we can get stuck in the second stage.

The second stage? Storming. It’s a graphic word isn’t it? What does it suggest to you? Not a type of weather that most of us like to be out in, is it? Thunder, lightning, howling wind, pouring rain, exposed & vulnerable, maybe far from shelter. Hmmn, no wonder it’s a stage we tend to avoid or rush through as quickly as possible. Yet without having the courage and skill to navigate our way safely through this stage, we cannot get the connection we long for with others. acrylic nail polish wall rack

It’s common to be trapped in what can feel like a whirlpool, going round the same situation time and again.  Issues of trust & belief in ourselves and others surface, questions & doubts, confusion & disagreement about purpose and direction.

Three possible outcomes

1) Staying in stage one, the forming stage, which ensures that being ‘nice & friendly’ is all important. This means knowledge and understanding of another person will be superficial.

2) Avoiding direct conversation about differences, pretending to agree with decisions that have been ‘agreed’, whilst actually doing something different; talking to other people you believe are allies & avoiding people you have decided are ‘the enemy’, creating warring factions. nail drying machine

3) ‘Grasping the nettle’:  knowing that any discomfort will be short lived and will lead to greater understanding and trust of each other. Yes, you may never appreciate his/her taste in music that you find excruciating, but you do value his/her ability to draw wonderful pictures with the children and keep calm when there’s chaos all around.

Is any of this sounding familiar? And is it always the others who are at fault, to blame? Always doing or saying the things that get under your skin? Or is your halo slipping at the thought that you too may have a part to play in the dramas that regularly unfold? If any of this rings the least bit true or you disagree with anything I’ve written, leave a comment below.

More about this in part two to follow soon