The AI Tuckman Team Phases Coach skill for Claude

The problem the skill solves is that team trouble rarely has a name. People grumble in the corridor, meetings produce no decision, two people stop speaking up, and nobody can say exactly what is wrong. What happens next is predictable: everyone looks for someone to blame, because pointing at a person is easier than recognising a pattern. The Tuckman model gives that pattern a name, and that changes the conversation. Clashing over the approach is not proof that the team is no good, but a pattern the model invites you to examine, not a stage every team is known to undergo.

It is written for managers, project leads, scrum masters and for team members who are not leaders themselves but want to understand what is happening. That last group is named explicitly in the file, because question four of the intake asks what your role is: manager, team member or outsider. The answer determines which interventions you get back, because a team member simply has different levers than a manager.

What the skill is mainly meant for: the moment a team effectively starts over. A new team member, a departing team member, a new manager, a merger, a reorganisation, a new project with the same people, or the move from office to hybrid working. The file lists that as a separate trigger list, and that is not a coincidence: that is exactly the moment people think something is wrong, while the model says something normal is happening.

New to this kind of file? Then start by reading what Claude skills are NL and how to install them NL. Want to write one yourself for your own way of working? The structure is explained in writing a SKILL.md NL. This skill belongs to the skill library that we make available for free from the AI and automation service.

A phase is not a judgement of people. The file says so explicitly: storming says something about the age of the collaboration, not about the standard of the team. That looks like a detail, but it sets the whole tone of the output. A team that is told it is in storming hears that this is normal. A team that is told there is too little collaboration hears a reproach.

The order is a pattern, not a law. Teams skip phases when the members already know each other. A group that has already done three projects together does not land back in forming on a fourth. And the reverse is true too: any major change in composition, assignment or leadership can set a team back. That is why the intake asks what has changed in the last three months, and why the relapse gets its own block in the output.

The right style belongs to the phase, not to the person. This is the skill's practical application of the model, not a universal intervention prescription from Tuckman's research. Directive in forming, coaching in storming, facilitating in norming, delegating in performing. Many managers have one fixed style and apply it everywhere. A leader who already delegates in forming leaves a group to flounder, and a leader who still directs in performing removes exactly the autonomy the team had just built up.

Interventions are actions, not attitudes. For every intervention, it forces itself to name a concrete moment. Not be clearer, but set out the decision rules at the next meeting and write down who decides on what. That difference is the difference between advice you nod along to and advice you carry out on Monday.

In diff form, with the rule from the instruction file: how attitude advice turns into an action.

Next comes a chapter on when the skill should switch itself on, and, notably, also when not to. The file states: do not trigger when the question is about an individual rather than the group, because one employee's performance problem is not a team phase. And then the instruction that makes the difference: say so, and do not treat it as if it were one. A model that fits everywhere fits nowhere well.

The theory chapter summarises Tuckman briefly and adds two warnings that must stay explicit: the order is a pattern and not a law, and a phase is not a judgement of the quality of the people. It then lists, per phase, the signals, what the team needs in that phase, and the leadership style that fits. All of that is summarised in FIG.02 above.

The method has three phases. Phase one is the five-question intake, asked all at once and not one by one: describe the team, what is concretely happening in behaviour rather than conclusions, what has changed in the last three months, what your role is, and what you have already tried. If question two or question three is missing, the skill asks again. It may fill in the rest itself, provided it says that it is doing so.

Phase two is the diagnosis, with two hard rules. The first: always name the second most likely phase and why you did not choose it. The second: when in doubt between two phases, choose the earlier of the two, because a team placed too far ahead gets interventions it cannot handle. There is also an explicit relapse check built in: if someone has joined or left in the last three months, or there is a new manager, check whether a team previously in norming or performing now shows signals of forming or storming. A change alone does not establish relapse.

Phase three is the interventions: four for the leader, two for the team, each an action with a moment. After that comes the output format with the seven blocks, the chapter on what the skill does not do, a tone chapter that bans team-coach language and metaphors about journeys and mountains, the two sources, and the worked example you see in FIG.01.

NOTE · fix 2026-08-10: the published zip file contained an incomplete SKILL.md without the method, output format and example, while this page already described those parts. The SKILL.md has been completed based on Tuckman's model and the structure this page already named, and republished under the same path. Everything after this comes straight from that file.

Tuckman, B.W. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin. Tuckman worked as a psychologist at the Naval Medical Research Institute and reviewed 50 articles about small-group development. From that he distilled the four phases forming, storming, norming and performing. The article can be found via PsycNET and is listed with its source in the SKILL.md.

Tuckman, B.W. and Jensen, M.A.C. (1977). Stages of small group development revisited. Twelve years later, Tuckman and Mary Ann Jensen added the fifth phase, adjourning, about the group breaking up. In practice this phase is the one most often skipped, even though it is exactly where the knowledge the team built up gets lost.

What you will not find on this page are percentages of teams that get stuck, average durations per phase, or scores per team type. Those are not in the sources, so they are not in the skill either. The model is a language for ordering behaviour, not a measuring instrument.

Want to approach team dynamics from a different angle? There are two skills that sit close to this one. The SCARF Model Coach NL looks at why people feel threatened by something that, on paper, takes nothing away, which is often the underlying cause in the storming phase. And the Radical Candor Coach NL is about the conversation itself, once the diagnosis tells you it needs to happen.

After that, you simply describe what is going on. The more concrete the behaviour, the sharper the diagnosis: write down what you saw happen in the last meeting, not what you thought of it. A fuller explanation of installing in different environments is in installing Claude skills NL, and the broader background on working with AI is in the knowledge base.

One more practical note about privacy, because this question comes up with this skill more than with most others: you are describing colleagues. Use first names or roles instead of full names, and keep personal circumstances out of it. The diagnosis is none the worse for it, because the skill diagnoses on behaviour in the group, not on individuals.

A third good moment is the start of a new project. Then you should expect forming, not top performance, and that helps you calibrate your expectations and your planning. A team that is still asking for a framework in week two is not slow, it is forming.

There are also situations where you are better off leaving it be. The first is in the file itself: when the question is about an individual rather than the group. Someone who is not performing, someone who is overloaded, someone you need to have a difficult conversation with: that is not a team phase, and a five-stage team model will not help there. The Nonviolent Communication Coach and the GROW Coach fit better there.

The second limit is more serious. At signs of bullying, exhaustion or unsafety, the skill stops diagnosing and refers to a person. That is one of the six rules from FIG.04, and it is not a formality: a model that treats such signals as a phase trait does harm. If you are not sure whether that is what is happening, talk to a confidential adviser or an occupational physician, not an AI assistant.

And then the most honest limit: the skill does not know your team. It works with what you describe, and your description is, by definition, your perspective. Two team members running the same skill on the same team can get back two different phases, and that is not an error but information. If the cause of the trouble does not lie in the group but in a change coming from above, the Kotter Change Coach is the better tool.

Download the zip, put it in your AI environment and describe what you saw happen in the last two meetings. Within ten minutes you have a phase, a rationale and six interventions, at least one of which is doable this week. If your team already works with AI but without agreements on how, the AI training is a more logical first step than a new subscription. And if you want this kind of work prepared and ready, with a person approving it, we are happy to simply talk about that.