Congratulations! You’ve been promoted and tasked with building a new team. You hire a couple of smart, wide-eyed early-career scientists to join the three or four veterans you’ve recruited internally—some of whom you’ve previously worked with closely. You’re energized, enthusiastic, and have ambitious plans to accomplish great things over the next year.
You impart your vision with passion, set clear goals with monthly benchmarks and critical KPIs, and meet individually with team members to assign roles and share your heartfelt encouragement. You’re proud of how it’s all coming together—and early feedback from the team is glowing. You’re now confident your team will be the talk of the organization, and your future as a lab manager looks bigger and brighter than ever.
Lab Quality Management Certificate
The Lab Quality Management certificate is more than training—it’s a professional advantage.
Gain critical skills and IACET-approved CEUs that make a measurable difference.
But after several weeks in, things shift. You start to sense tension. There are whispers of friction between team members, and the once-buoyant mood feels… off. You call a team meeting to get ahead of it—and what you uncover isn’t the high-performance harmony you imagined. Instead, you discover a simmering kettle of mistrust, grievances, and dysfunction.
Suddenly, you question your management skills—and maybe even your fit and future as a lab leader. You retreat to your office to contemplate: What went wrong?
____________________
Unfortunately, this scenario is all too common. Many managers assume that a high-competency team will naturally click and start performing at full throttle—especially when the team is composed of capable professionals whom you personally selected and who seemed so poised and enthusiastic from the outset. But what’s often overlooked is that all teams, no matter how talented or experienced, go through predictable, sometimes painful, stages of development.
In 1965, organizational psychologist Bruce Tuckman proposed a now-classic model describing five distinct stages of team development: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning. Each stage is crucial to the team's evolution—and each requires different leadership approaches.
Forming
Most teams begin in the Forming stage, where team members are polite, positive, and enthusiastic—but unsure of their roles, responsibilities, and team norms. Everyone is a bit reserved and tentative, just trying to figure each other out. As a lab manager, your role here is to provide structure, set a clear vision, and encourage open dialogue. You are laying the foundation for long-lasting trust.
In scientific teams, Forming may include uncertainty around lab protocols, data management practices, authorship expectations, or safety procedures. Effective managers use this time to clearly communicate rules and norms, assign onboarding buddies, and establish a culture of psychological safety.
Storming
The second stage is Storming. This is where most managers get blindsided, and it's where you find yourself after sailing through stage one. This is the most turbulent stage, when people begin to assert themselves, and disagreements often arise. Tension and competition can surface as team members challenge one another and question leadership. Conflicts often arise over process, roles, and responsibilities. Your job as a leader here is to coach the team through conflict, clarify responsibilities, and encourage respectful, productive debate. It’s uncomfortable, but essential.
Labs are fertile ground for intellectual disagreement, especially around hypotheses, methods, or ownership of data. During the storming phase, these tensions can manifest as disputes over lab equipment and resources, or struggles over autonomy and differing communication styles. Successful lab managers navigate this phase by demonstrating that conflict is a normal part of effective teamwork and collaboration, and help guide healthy resolution of conflicts with an eye toward shared goals and mutual respect.
Norming
As the leader steps in to help resolve the Storming phase, things start to click. Trust builds, relationships normalize, and collaboration improves. This is the Norming stage—when your team really starts to gel.
In labs, Norming shows up as deeper mentor relationships, shared routines, and a stronger lab culture. Communication is easier. Mistakes are discussed openly. The manager’s role shifts from hands-on direction to supporting autonomy, celebrating wins, and nurturing shared leadership. As the team is now beginning to run more like a tuned ensemble, finding its rhythms and natural harmony, it's ready to transition into its most productive phase—Performing.
Performing
This is the sweet spot: the Performing stage. Here, your team is highly effective, focused, and self-sufficient. Trust is high, roles are clear, and collaboration is seamless.
In a high-functioning lab, this is when everything hums: experiments are coordinated, meetings are efficient, manuscripts and grants flow smoothly, and decisions are made without micromanagement. Without prompting, your senior members naturally mentor newer ones. As the manager, your focus becomes delegation, strategic vision, supporting autonomy, and removing roadblocks so the team can thrive.
This is where all leaders hope their teams will arrive—but it takes time, trust, and effort to get here.
Adjourning
Every team eventually transitions. Projects end. Students graduate. Grants expire. Key members move on. In the Adjourning phase, your leadership focus shifts to closure, celebration, and transition.
Help the team reflect on its accomplishments, facilitate knowledge transfer, and support members as they move on. Done well, this stage leaves a lasting sense of pride and cohesion—even after the team disbands.
Leadership styles across the stages
Tuckman’s model highlights not just team dynamics but the evolving leadership styles required at each stage:
1. Forming → Directive Leadership
Role: Set direction, clarify expectations, and establish structure.
Why it’s needed: Team members are uncertain and need clear guidance, vision, and rules to feel safe and grounded.
What to do: Communicate goals, define roles, outline procedures, and model desired behaviors.
2. Storming → Coaching Leadership
Role: Guide conflict resolution, foster communication, and build trust.
Why it’s needed: Friction and power struggles arise as individuals assert themselves and challenge boundaries.
What to do: Listen actively, mediate disputes, reinforce team values, and help individuals navigate differences constructively.
3. Norming → Participative Leadership
Role: Encourage collaboration, shared ownership, and group decision-making.
Why it’s needed: The team is developing cohesion and is ready to take more initiative and responsibility.
What to do: Facilitate group input, empower team members to contribute, and promote shared norms and routines.
4. Performing → Delegative Leadership
Role: Support autonomy, remove barriers, and focus on strategy and growth.
Why it’s needed: The team is high-functioning and self-sufficient, requiring minimal supervision.
What to do: Trust the team, delegate responsibilities, coach from the sidelines, and focus on continuous improvement and innovation.
5. Adjourning → Transitional Leadership
Role: Provide closure, recognize contributions, and support future transitions.
Why it’s needed: The team is disbanding or evolving, and members need reflection and support to move forward.
What to do: Celebrate achievements, document lessons learned, and facilitate smooth handoffs or reassignments.
The more skillfully you adapt your style to the respective stage, the more effectively you guide your team. Keep in mind: this process isn’t always linear. Teams can loop back due to staffing changes, new projects, or leadership transitions.
Lab managers who understand and thoughtfully navigate these five stages will build stronger, more resilient teams. They’ll publish more, collaborate better, and manage stress and setbacks more gracefully. Whether your team is forming, storming, norming, performing, or adjourning—recognizing the stage along with its features, behaviors, and dynamics, while adjusting your leadership style accordingly, is key to long-term success.
