Storming Revisited the Importance of Conflict in Team Health
When I did my graduate work, the program was not a big proponent of Tuckman's Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing model of group development. It was often seen as too linear, too simplistic, and perhaps a little too tidy to be particularly useful. I always liked it, though, not as a roadmap but because it highlighted the importance of storming as a necessary part of a healthy team's development. The model acknowledges both the capacity and, in Tuckman's view, the necessity of moving through conflict in order to reach the promised land of performing.
I agree that the model is overly simplistic and that human dynamics are rarely linear. Yet I find myself returning to it again and again because very few theories speak so clearly about the importance of productive conflict. Conflict isn’t something to be managed or skillfully avoided it’s a necessity to have a high functioning healthy team.
Tuckman suggests that if we don't storm, we remain stuck in a form of artificial forming. We never get to what really matters. Differences remain unspoken, tensions are not addressed in the rooms where they can be worked through, and conflict trickles into hallways and whispered conversations after meetings.
I think one reason many teams struggle in this way is that we are afraid of storming. We don't know how to enter that phase skillfully or with grace. More importantly, there is no guarantee of what comes next. There is no guarantee that repair will happen, that forgiveness will be offered, or that we will find our way back to one another. We fear being stranded in conflict, so we avoid it altogether. We remain polite, accommodating, or silent, but the differences that need to be explored and the boundaries that need to be tested are never fully engaged.
In our work of building teams that can work through conflict rather than around it, understanding that we must enter storming and find our way back out again is crucial. It requires trust, clear boundaries, accountability, repair, and restoration. For leaders, this represents an important shift in mindset. Developing a leader's capacity to engage constructively with conflict may be more important than mastering any particular conflict model or communication technique.
What might you raise with your team if you felt confident that you could move through storming and emerge with a stronger, more honest, and more dynamic understanding of one another?
