Transforming through the natural cycles of Change
Understanding the stages of community development can provide a broader perspective on how to navigate challenges and foster sustainable growth. Communities typically move through four stages: Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing.
- Forming: In this stage, community members come together with enthusiasm but little structure. There is a strong desire to belong and be accepted, but roles and relationships are not yet defined.
- Storming: As the community develops, friction naturally arises. Members assert opinions, challenge ideas, and test the boundaries of what’s possible or allowed. While this stage can feel unsettling, it’s vital for the community’s long-term resiliency.
- Norming: As the group reflects on earlier tensions, shared agreements begin to form. Trust builds, and roles become clearer. Collaboration becomes easier as members begin to orient around common values and shared practices.
- Performing: At this stage, the community is thriving. There is a strong sense of shared purpose, and members work together fluidly, drawing on their diverse strengths to support one another and pursue collective goals.
It’s important to remember that communities rarely move through these stages in a neat or permanent sequence. Instead, they loop back and forth—storming again as new people join, or re-forming when leadership shifts. This fluidity is not a failure; it reflects the living, breathing quality of community life.
Navigating the Storm: Creating Norms Through Shared Values
When the storming phase becomes overwhelming, it’s time to pause and realign—not through control, but through curiosity. This is where shared values come in.
Learning what each person values can transform confusion into clarity. Values act like bells in a tower or lights in lighthouses-gentle but consistent signals guiding us home. When a community chooses to center shared values, it gains an internal compass that helps everyone orient, even when the weather turns.
Rather than bypassing discomfort, communities that thrive choose to lean into it with care, asking:
- What are we really protecting right now?
- What matters most to each of us, even if we name it differently?
- Where do our values overlap, and how can those become our anchors?
How BridgeMakers Values Shape Community Resilience
At BridgeMakers, our values serve as both anchor and sail—grounding us and moving us forward even in turbulent waters. These values are not just aspirational; they are actively practiced, especially when things are uncertain, changing, or messy.
Take, for example, a recent shift in our leadership circle.
One of our core leaders welcomed a new puppy into her life—a joyful, loving, and deaf companion. She hadn’t anticipated how much care and energy this new family member would require. Suddenly, the time she had once poured into community coordination was being spent learning nonverbal cues, cleaning up accidents, and tending to this beautiful, vulnerable being in her home.
Rather than respond with pressure or guilt, we practiced our values out loud:
- Human-First reminded us to center her well-being and changing capacity.
- Kindness allowed us to approach the shift with tenderness instead of assumption.
- Transparency helped us share with the wider community why she’s been more distant—without breaching her privacy.
- Stewardship gave us the frame to ask: How can her role evolve in a way that honors what she’s built here, while also making space for what she needs now?
- Iteration reminded us that leadership doesn’t need to be static to be meaningful.
We’re now exploring playful new titles together—Advisor, Founder, or even Core Llama—a nod to the whimsy of her creature archetype and the care that defines our culture. It’s not just about what she does for BridgeMakers; it’s about how we stay in relationship as we each evolve.
This is what values-in-motion look like: not fixed definitions, but ongoing practices. They shape how we adjust roles, make room for real life, and keep trust intact when someone’s presence shifts. They help us build the kind of community where people don’t have to disappear when their capacity changes—they just find new ways to belong.
An Invitation to Re-Form
Now, she’s slowly returning. And with that, a new cycle begins: forming, storming, norming, performing. Except this time, the structure is different. The assumptions are different. What is BridgeMakers now, with only one remaining core leader who has been holding too much for too long? What does sustainability look like when one person is near burnout and the other is re-orienting with limited capacity?
This moment is not a failure. It’s a new Forming.
And like any forming stage, it offers a vital invitation:
- Who else is ready to step in—not to take over, but to co-steward?
- What new roles, rhythms, and rituals are ready to emerge?
- How can we build a way of being together that doesn’t rely on heroics, but on shared momentum?
BridgeMakers is not a finished shape. It’s a community learning to stay in motion—together. And maybe that’s the most resilient structure of all.
Here is a livestream of our Leadership Summit. In the second half we discuss values and do a playful exercise on embodying them.
Leave a Reply