More Truth about Teams!

Since my last post there has been a barrage of great responses, not only on this blog site but also on various networks as well as personal email. A big thank you to everyone for your thoughtful responses as they started a real discussion and demanded more thought.

The responses can be roughly divided in two categories:

1. the importance of equal participation and inclusiveness, and
2. a focus on what needs to be done, the purpose, and how to align everyone with that.

Historically, teams are a relatively new phenomenon. There wasn’t much like it back in our parent’s age – perhaps an Olympic team, a string quartet or the Apollo missions were early manifestations, but in the workplace it was command and control and rigid, firm hierarchies. Even when I first started working a straight job in the 90’s in the Amsterdam Harbour (which admittedly was a very traditional environment) there was no such concept as a team.

To begin with, I want to do more justice to the existence of teams. They have emerged as a result of the greater freedom and egalitarian approach that came with the pluralistic worldview, now typical for the Western world. Bottom-up approaches, the inclusive workplace, personal development, mutual understanding and respect are the great achievements of the second half of the 20^th Century.

At the same time I don’t see them as a purpose in themselves. If we make a climate of mutual understanding and bottom-up empowerment the goal, we could end up in those mushy situations in which we’re caught in endless meetings, satisfying a requirement for the job-review, but not being at the top of our creativity, and therefore possibly resentful and in perennial conflict with the most creative drive in ourselves – and with our colleagues. Because what is the team there to do? What is my right to self-expression worth if it inadvertently creates an environment that stifles my ability to act on my own creative drive?

What I’m pushing into is something beyond the phenomenon of teams – something that is being enabled by our capacity to listen, share, understand and make space for each other – but that takes us beyond ourselves into a possibility that none of us can imagine or manifest by ourselves. Here are a few great responses that I think point into this direction:

“What I found key is the individual purpose and/or motivation should be aligned and catalyzed by the collective. Individual should be in the center but grounded in the collective big-picture. (…) The magic seems to be in kick-starting the individual fire, by finding and highlighting to the collective the unique contribution of each individual in the team. (…) And we compete by shaping the diamond in so more perfect angles together.” (Daniela Micodin in Vienna)

“… we are exploring how we demonstrate collective intelligence beyond ego by acting out of our authentic selves as we work together. (…) The key challenge: how to inspire individual genius within collective wisdom to create collective genius!” (Robin Wood in Perpignan)

“However, I firmly believe that it’s worth the effort to try to make [teams] work, by dealing with the many issues you illuminate [...]. When you address head-on the varying levels of capacity, ego, territorial concern in an open, safe and supportive atmosphere [...] you can emerge with something quite amazing and beyond anyone’s furthest imagination of what is possible.” (Nadine Hack in New York)

What I find so strong in these responses is the inherent balance between the personal and the collective, the interior and the exterior, the individual needs and the collective purpose. There is a climate of understanding, respect, trust, bottom-up empowerment – but it is a climate in which empowerment serves a strong collective drive, respect and understanding enable the facing of ego-issues, and trust shifts competition from individual dominance to collective excellence.

I know from my own experience that this balance is the hardest thing to achieve, but the most amazing and satisfying thing we can do in a lifetime. I’ve been in situations that were as close to perfect as humanly possible (Nadine knows this as she beautifully guided me in it and showed me many things about myself!) and was utterly challenged to embrace the possibility of a higher emergence. Despite my enthusiasm for this emergence, I struggled and at some point failed to embrace it when I needed to – but it taught me the real human growth that this takes.

Why is that? The creative force we can unleash by going beyond our mundane, superficial relationships is stronger than we are, we can’t control it, it takes over from us. The more you let go, the more there is to give. It’s a bit like this: the more money you put in the bank, the greater your debt. Now if there’s anything you want to keep for yourself, that’s an unattractive scenario. But if you want to give everything to what stirs your passion, it’s the best thing you could ever do. And if you not only see your peers flourish in doing the same but experience yourself the exhilarating power of collective emergence, you have entered a new way of being.

So that’s a very different way to work. There are some inspiring examples of team emergence – I recently read the story of the handful of Open Source volunteers who saved the Internet when something went badly wrong – without official positions, without anyone taking a lead; for two hours they laboured to get it back on track, just because they felt called to do it. And they needed money nor glory in return – there were no job-reviews.

Here’s my hunch: the whole thing about Team Players is only the beginning. It was the act of putting on our skates – now we have to start skating! And whoever has ever had the pleasure of skating on natural ice (as a Dutch girl, I grew up with that), you know that skating alters your perception of the possible, particularly when you do it together and bolster each other’s courage; the ice may crack, you may not know how to stop, but you have that exhilarating sense of freedom and possibility – an expanded understanding of your own destination.

A New Leadership

Several comments over the last week made me think more about the issue of leadership.

Zhaawano wrote: “Bruce Hardwick, an Anishinaabe spiritual teacher once said: “There are no great leaders left in this world, and I have to follow myself.””

Ralf wrote: “Taking into account your experience in the garden, where the single grass on the terrace will be picked by your hand quickly and has no chance at all to grow. How would the grass manage to grow across the terrace?”

These two very different comments seem to me curiously related. Leadership is a big industry these days. It is being taught at all levels – school kids, nurses, CEO’s, politicians – you name it. Our traditional command-and-control structures are not functioning anymore, the last 50 years have been the liberation of the individual and it is not enough anymore to be a sheep in the herd. Now that we have increasingly more freedom to express ourselves fully we must reinvent how to lead each other.

But how much of that leadership work is truly revolutionary? Many programs are admirable, inspiring, successful. But do they give us a new leadership that gives us what we need to confront the complex future we are about to enter?

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with encouraging people to be authentic, express their full potential or remove the limitations from their thinking. That’s important work. But it is the scope of liberation where I feel we’re on the cusp of something new.

Leadership has always been in the context of power structures where individuals rule the collective. This has worked for thousands of years, sometimes in horribly exploitative ways, sometimes in noble, wholesome ways. But the world has changed – and we have changed. Globalisation has lifted us out of our local isolation, individualism has given us the courage and development to stand up and decide for ourselves, the crumbling of the class systems mean that each individual has access to higher education. Thanks to these forces the world has, of course, become infinitely more complex.

A friend who works at one of the biggest software giants told me how one authentic speech of a SVP, in which he urged his subordinates to speak the truth under all circumstances, changed something fundamentally in the collective. Could this have happened through Monday-morning-memo’s in the traditional command-and-control structure? I doubt it.

So what happens in these instances? There’s the depth, integrity and courage of a leader, who is authentic and is not afraid of what others think. But there’s also a mysterious collective force that absorbs this authenticity into hundreds or perhaps thousands of people, in a way that no one would want to avoid it anymore.

I think many people realise this much. But how did we even get to this point? What is the connection between the leader in ourselves, and the collective as the leader? Could it be that the SVP gained his courage from the collective that he knew he shares with his thousands of subordinates, rather than from some amazingly rare personal disposition? To me it sounds as if there is no boundary between the authentic SVP talking about only speaking the truth, and the many individuals who take his words in through a sort of osmosis and change their behaviour in subtle, positive ways.

What is this collective? Could it be that we aren’t the individuals we think we are? Could it be that leaders aren’t the great people they think they are? What if the next step is a matter of all of us tapping into a higher force that supports and inspires us all?

I know this sounds spiritual. But think about it – our old ways don’t work anymore. Under market pressure, senior management is often a revolving door. Political power games spoil many matches. People at all levels of the traditional hierarchy can be seen walking around with knives in their backs. At the same time, what is happening with Web 2.0, with face book, with the new ways of working of GenY seems to be a collective emergence that leaders (usually Boomers or GenX) know they can’t really influence or control. The Force is taking over!

Honestly, I can count my scars from trying to avoid this new reality. It took me many years to wake up to the interplay of the collective and my own ‘inner’ leadership, in spite of the practical, daily necessity to do things very differently. I think we better catch up, discover it, start experimenting… I’m curious about your experience.