The Psychology of Swarm Teams
The hidden challenge of temporary collaboration.
Posted May 29, 2026 | Reviewed by Tyler Woods
Increasingly, organizations across domains are using temporary, ad-hoc problem-solving teams called swarm teams to work on rapidly emerging issues. In hospitals, it’s the group of doctors and nurses who drop what they’re doing and respond to a crashing patient. Elsewhere, it’s the cross-functional group of people that assemble to work a rapidly emerging problem like a cyberattack, an unexpected airport shutdown, or a critical supply shortage.
Traditionally, we think of joining a team as a long-term psychological investment: being the new person in a group and dealing with the uncertainty of a new community all take energy and attention , but generally, we feel the energy and even joy of being part of a successful team is well worth it. For swarm teams, though, there is no long-term payout; in fact, there’s not a long-term anything. Individuals assemble on an active problem, form a temporary team, work the problem, then the team dissolves when the problem is over. That’s efficient and flexible from an organizational standpoint, but what about the human aspect of working on swarm team? In this article, we’ll explore the unique psychology of joining and operating as part of a swarm team and we’ll look at three key challenges that organizations need to consider to succeed at the swarm.
Identity: When you swarm, who are you?
High-performing teams have unique cultures and tend to pride themselves on the core identity of their group. If you’re lucky enough to join one of these elite units, membership becomes part of your own identity. You’re part of the blue team, you’re a “Googler,” you’re one of them. Because swarm teams are transient, however, they generally don’t have established group identities. So, if you join a swarm team, who are you? In large part, the answer is you are who you were before you joined, for better and for worse.
Consider a scene that plays out in large emergency departments throughout the US: paramedics arrive with a young man struck by a car – he’s in bad shape, and doctors and nurses from both the emergency department and the trauma department show up in the trauma bay to take care of him. What he needs is for members of two teams to swarm together to deliver the best possible care, but what he frequently gets is a divided group. Even trained medical providers struggle to temporarily suppress their “normal” identity and see themselves as part of a swarm group.
One creative way around this is proactively designating people as part of a swarm response team at the start of their shift. This works because identity doesn't switch on instantly -- it needs a little runway. Giving people time to mentally step into the "I'm a swarmer today" role before the crisis starts means they arrive at the swarm already partway there
Hierarchy: What is your role on a swarm team?
Because traditional teams keep going between crises, they have a before, during, and after with which to plan operations and set up best practices. Swarm teams only have a during, so there’s generally no ability to coordinate actions before a critical event. As a result, individual roles within a swarm team are often extremely unclear and may dynamically flex during an event. For individuals who may struggle with ambiguity and complex social dynamics, this setup can bring substantial friction and difficulty.
As an example, consider a swarm team coming online to respond to a fire at an electrical plant in the middle of the night. Responders include front-line workers on the night shift with hyperlocal knowledge and personal experience in the plant, designated safety experts who know how plants are supposed to work in theory, and regional senior management who have formal authority and come in from other locations. How should this team begin to work together? If standard operating procedures say that management is always in charge, but the front-line night staff has the best understanding of the situation, who should the team listen to?
Without the time to solve these sticky social issues before a crisis starts, swarm teams have to be skilled at defining hierarchy on the fly. Two practical strategies: publicly declare a flat structure at the start of the event, or begin by deferring to whoever holds the most accurate local knowledge, then transition to formal command.
Meaning: How do you make sense of what just happened?
Imagine you’re a nurse working on a general inpatient floor. Your shift is going smoothly when you’re called to the bedside of a patient in cardiac arrest as part of a swarm team. Fortunately, your group is able to save the patient, but as everyone leaves and returns to their “normal” roles, you find that you’re mentally and emotionally shaken up. So, who can you talk with to process and make meaning from what happened during the arrest? Not the team you just worked with, they’ve already disbanded. Not your normal team on the floor, they were not part of what happened. Who then?
Traditional teams recognize that growth and learning are critical and often uncomfortable parts of operation. Frequently, they have formal (and often also informal) networks of mentorship and eldership. Typically, these are wise team members that have been there before whom people can go to with questions or attached supporters like chaplains or HR teams.
Since swarm teams are temporary, they don’t have elders, and there’s no formal mentor structure. So when the team dissolves, it can leave people feeling adrift, struggling in isolation to process what happened. To combat this, systems that swarm need to proactively make space for returning “swarmers.” This can be as simple as a guided debrief with a skilled facilitator, or as complex as a post-swarm support group. Done correctly, this can both decrease isolation and share critical learning with the group the swarmers return to.
Before the Next Swarm
It’s easy for organizations to forget that swarming is a double-edged sword. It’s flexible and dynamic, but just because the team dissolves does not mean all the problems it can cause disappear, too. Systems that use swarm teams need to be attuned to the unique psychological challenges of working on them, which means changing operations before crisis, not just expecting things to work during it. Swarming as a distinct skill, one that deserves (and requires) practice, repetition, and specific infrastructure: pre-shift identity priming , explicit hierarchy protocols, and structured post-swarm debriefs.
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Dan Dworkis, M.D., Ph.D. , is the founder of The Emergency Mind Project, which helps individuals, teams, and systems excel during emergencies. Dan is a board-certified emergency physician and an assistant professor of emergency medicine at USC's Keck School of Medicine.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.