Most founders and managers I meet eventually confide the same worry: "I think there might be something wrong with our team dynamics." They describe conflicts over decision-making, tensions between departments, or communication breakdowns. What's fascinating is that these "problems" often signal something positive - your team is evolving exactly as it should.*
Drawing from Bruce Tuckman's pioneering research[1] and my experience working with startups, let's explore why team friction is not just normal - it's necessary for growth.
The Universal Pattern of Team Evolution
Forming: The Honeymoon Phase
Small teams and cofounders start with high energy and optimism. Everyone pitches in everywhere, roles are fluid, and the focus is on figuring things out together. While this phase feels great, it's actually the least productive stage - teams need to push beyond surface-level harmony to achieve real results.
Storming: The Essential Conflict
This is where founders often panic, but shouldn't. When teams start experiencing conflicts over working styles, challenging each other's ideas, and wrestling with hierarchy - they're actually progressing. Think of it as your team's immune system developing antibodies. Without this stage, teams can't build the resilience needed for long-term success.
Norming: Finding Their Rhythm
After working through conflicts, teams develop shared approaches and mutual understanding. Processes become clearer, roles crystallize, and genuine trust emerges. The trick here is maintaining enough healthy tension to avoid complacency.
Performing: Peak Effectiveness
This is where the magic happens. Teams operate with high autonomy, exceed goals, and require minimal supervision. Leadership shifts from directing to participating. However, even here there's a catch - success often leads to growth, which can trigger the cycle again.
Outperforming/Adjourning:
Scaling or Transitioning Teams either scale beyond their initial scope or complete their mission. This often requires breaking up high-performing teams to seed new initiatives - starting the cycle again.
The Modern Twist: Continuous Cycles
Here's what most founders don't realize: As your startup scales, you'll go through these stages repeatedly. Each major change - new leadership, rapid hiring, restructuring - can trigger another cycle. The key isn't avoiding these cycles, but learning to navigate them more efficiently each time.
Strategic Actions for Leaders:
1. Recognize the Signals
· Team conflict often indicates progress, not problems
· Resistance to change is part of the growth process
· Different stages require different leadership approaches
2. Adapt Your Leadership Style
· Forming: Provide clear direction and structure
· Storming: Focus on conflict resolution and coaching
· Norming: Facilitate and enable
· Performing: Delegate and provide strategic guidance
· Outperforming: Focus on scaling successful patterns
3. Prepare for Repetition
· Anticipate new cycles with major changes
· Help teams understand these patterns are normal
· Build institutional knowledge about navigating transitions
* Learning point: discern conflicts over work style, decision process, and healthy power struggles from unhealthy politics, inappropriate behavior, and insubordination which will lead to dysfunction, not progress.
The Next Time You're Worried...
Remember that team dynamics aren't about reaching a perfect end state - they're about mastering the cycle of growth and change. The most successful startups aren't the ones that avoid these challenges; they're the ones that learn to embrace them as opportunities for evolution.
What stage is your team in right now? How are you preparing for the next transition?
[1] Bruce Tuckman's pioneering 1965 research "Developmental Sequence in Small Groups" (Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), 384-399)
Note: The research on team development stages was first published by Bruce Tuckman while at the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. His framework has since become foundational in understanding group dynamics and organizational development, with numerous studies validating its relevance across different organizational contexts, including modern startups.
Further work by White and Fairhurst articulated the White-Fairhurst TPR Life-cycle Model (TPR stands for Transforming, Performing, Reforming), making similar observations.