Tuckman’s Team Development Wheel, Revisited — Part 2: The Storming Stage
If Forming is the polite honeymoon stage of teamwork, Storming is where the real work - and the real discomfort - begins.
In Part 2 of our four-part series on Tuckman’s Team Development Model, we explore why teams enter this turbulent phase, what healthy Storming looks like, and how leaders and coaches can guide teams toward genuine collaboration.
Understanding the Storming Stage: Where Tension Meets Opportunity
Once team members move past the politeness of Forming and begin engaging with real tasks, real pressure, and real differences, the team enters the Storming stage.
Storming includes:
Letting go of the “honeymoon”
Increased absenteeism, tardiness, and incomplete tasks
Confusion around new roles and expectations
Confrontation or withdrawal
Emerging subgroups or cliques
Stress around usefulness, identity, and control
Sarcasm, triangling, and indirect communication
Difficulty using emerging team processes and tools
The core issue of Storming is control:
Who holds it?
How is it exercised?
What happens when someone resists?
Why should we use these new team protocols anyway?
This is also the stage when personality differences feel amplified and when many teams question the value of teaming altogether.
Storming is not dysfunction - it’s developmental friction.
Studies in group dynamics show that productive conflict is necessary for shared norms, psychological safety, and high performance to emerge.
Storming only becomes harmful when:
Conflict goes underground
Leaders avoid hard conversations
Structure and norms are missing
Team members personalize conflict rather than depersonalizing differences
Why Storming Happens: The Psychology Behind the Turbulence
Identity Threat and Loss of Autonomy: Research in social psychology shows that when people feel their autonomy is reduced - through new roles, protocols, or expectations (“wait, what is all this teaming mumbo jumbo?!”) they push back. Storming is partly a negotiation of new identity and influence inside the team.
Cognitive Dissonance: Storming intensifies when team members’ past experiences clash with new team expectations. “How we used to do things” becomes a default defense against change.
Psychological Safety Is Still Forming: Without the foundation of trust and respect, conflict becomes personal rather than productive. Amy Edmondson reminds us: teams need psychological safety to speak honestly, give feedback, and ask for help without fear. Storming is the stage where safety is tested and built.
Task Complexity Meets Skill Gaps: As work becomes real, teams encounter friction around competence, coordination, and expectations. Storming is often a sign the work has finally begun.
Strategies for Advancing Beyond the Storming Stage
Here are essential strategies to help teams progress.
Put the Conflict Resolution Protocol in Place Early: Storming is too late to design a conflict protocol - have it ready during the Forming stage. The protocol helps the team address conflicts directly, rather than through triangling, avoidance, or cliques.
Reframe Storming as Progress, Not Failure: A team that is Storming has left the artificial niceness of Forming. This is good! It means members are engaging, disagreeing, thinking, and showing up authentically.
Don’t Take Testing Behaviors Personally: Storming is when team members push boundaries to understand the environment. They are testing, not attacking.
The Coach Must Hold the Vision and Believe in the Team: When the team is discouraged, the coach’s confidence becomes the anchor. Coaches must talk consistently about potential, progress, and purpose - even when the team cannot yet see it.
Storming requires high direction and high support from the coach:
Address behavior issues directly
Reinforce charter and protocols
Keep the team focused on goals
Model constructive communication
Set Clear Behavioral Boundaries and Intervene Quickly: Coaches must not allow: bullying, aggression, hostility in meetings, exclusionary behaviors, “punishment tasks” for disliked members, throwing out tools or procedures, or firing the coach (yes, it happens). A simple phrase:“That’s not how we operate as a team” can reset behavior immediately.
Use Metrics and Process Observer Data: This stage requires measurement, even when the numbers look bad.
Trends:
Task completion
Attendance and punctuality
Quality measures
Process Observer scores
Resolve Conflicts as They Emerge: Unresolved conflict becomes “undiscussible” when new members join. Teams avoid airing past issues, which slowly erodes trust and cooperation. Addressing conflict early prevents silent fractures later.
Stay Curious About Claims of “Confusion”: Sometimes confusion is real. Sometimes confusion is resistance. The coach must diagnose the difference between: a true competency gap or tactic to delay uncomfortable change
Why Some Teams Stay in Storming (Sometimes for Years)
Teams get stuck when:
The coach is inconsistent, absent, or conflict-avoidant
Behavioral boundaries are unclear or unenforced
The team clings to individual independence instead of embracing collective responsibility
Group norms never solidify
Psychological safety doesn’t take root
Storming can last months - or indefinitely (think of some of your town boards or committees) - if left unmanaged.
What Coaches Must Do in the Storming Stage
During Storming, coaches must shift into a Coaching Style - firm but supportive. Think of the Storming-stage coaching style like that of a great high school football coach - firm on discipline, clear on structure, relentless in feedback, and unwavering in high expectations - offering the perfect blend of high support and high standards that helps a struggling team grow into a confident, cohesive one:
Blow the whistle on poor behavior
Allow the team to struggle without rescuing
Reinforce accomplishments
Require adherence to charter and protocols
Attend meetings regularly
Keep the bar high
This mix of strength and encouragement helps the team push through the discomfort of Storming and into the clarity of Norming.
Team Norms for Surviving and Thriving in Storming
Team members must commit to:
Speaking directly, not triangling
Showing up reliably
Following agreed-upon protocols
Addressing conflict instead of avoiding it
Asking for help when needed
Depersonalizing disagreements
Respecting differences in style and personality
Keeping the mission in view
This is the stage where accountability and maturity begin to form.
Storming is uncomfortable because it asks team members to grow - individually and collectively. It reveals assumptions, habits, preferences, blind spots, and fears. It also lays the foundation for trust, shared ownership, and high performance.
Handled well, Storming becomes the turning point. Mishandled, it becomes the trap.
How does a team get out of Storming? It makes a choice to.
In our next post, we move to Stage 3: Norming, where commitment deepens, norms solidify, and genuine teamwork begins to take shape.
