Sticky Teams

Any time you have two or more people who have to cooperate or work in some form or fashion, you are going to have natural drift that will arise in the relationship(s).

Picture for a moment a layer of sheet ice - a thin layer of ice that floats on water. Now, If you take a hammer to the sheet ice it will shatter into a number of pieces. The natural tendency of these individual pieces is to drift away from each other, unless concentrated effort is invested to hold them together in a cluster.

The sheet ice is a simple metaphor to illustrate the relations between people. If concentrated effort is not invested to hold the relationships together, people tend to drift from away from each other. This is true for families, sport teams, rock groups, corporate teams or just about any other type of group you can think of.

Think about your own history. There have been people in your life who were once very close, but have since drifted away. Perhaps you moved (or they) to a new company, a new city or a new country. Life moves on for all parties and everyone gets wrapped up in their own existences.

Then you will have other relationships that you have maintained and strengthened despite what has transpired over time. A concentrated effort has been invested to build and maintain strong bridges between the fragmented sheet ice.

It is not only physical distance (i.e. new company, city or country) that can be the cause of relation drift. The distance can also be mental. People may still be part of the same group, see each other everyday, and on paper are formerly regarded as a group. It's just that mentally they have distanced themselves from each other. In family groups the word 'estranged' is used. In corporate groups it is commonly known as 'silos'.

How does a group overcome this natural drift?

From my experience working with groups (mainly teams within organizations) I have found there are three key-elements required to keep groups intact, functioning and healthy.

1. The ability to build and maintain relationships.
2. Specific dialogue skill-sets.
3. Creating a space/venue/arena for safe and healthy interaction.

If you have all three elements in place and a concentrated effort is invested in maintaining and improving these elements, the result is team cohesiveness. What I like to call Sticky Teams.

The above three elements do not reqiuire a PhD in psychology. It just requires a little education and a whole lot of common sense. Most people have a least one strong working/professional relationship, which is a very good indication that they are applying the three elements of sticky teams/groups. The challenge is to repeat the behavior with those relationships that are important, but seem to be in drift.

In my following blog posts I will go into deeper details about each of these elements.

- On the road with my iPhone