The team leader's role is to manage this process and ensure smooth transitions from one stage to the next. Team-building workshops and interventions are often aimed at working through this process.However, it has also been observed that teams don't go through these stages in a simple and linear process as Tuckman and Jensen propose. Gersick (1988) found that teams move more in 'fits and starts'. They have periods of high activity, followed by periods of inertia, followed by activity and so on. Gersick (1988) argues that teams become more effective through a restructure at about the midpoint of the team task. At this midpoint teams abruptly realise their looming deadline and as a result they are forced to reflect about how close to goal accomplishment they are and refocus their activity or redefine their goal. This refocus is the start of another period of high activity. Other stimuli that can encourage such reflection (besides deadlines) are new team members joining, new information or directives from the team leader.

So rather than smoothly moving through a four-stage process in order to reach a state of high performance, Gersick (1988) argues that teams 'jump' from high performance to low performance and to high performance again as circumstances change. She terms this model 'punctuated equilibrium'.