TEAMWORK: It's more than the Team in Work

Our current work practices and ways of training for teamwork have failed to acknowledge our understanding that we are social beings who generate meaning and value from team events, from rituals. Training is routinely too superficial and transitory to make a difference. Instead, we need deliberate activities that provide meaning.

I rarely link with academic papers and such, rather preferring to use photos and metaphors to make my case for thinking and ideas, yet a paper I have read recently made a real impact on my view of what teamwork is and how common, modern approaches are set-up to fail because they do not connect with ourselves as social beings. It was written in 2014 and comes from Social Anthropology, with a lean towards Evolutionary Psychology… Yep, don’t worry, you don’t have to read the paper itself (it took me a few takes) – but here it is if you wish: XXXXX

At the end, I will provide a set of actions and questions you should consider to take responsibility for team cohesion and the development of teamwork.

If we accept Teamwork is an adjective (a doing word as I remember from secondary school), as opposed to a noun (a naming word) then it relies on the team being something or having something, based on which it can develop ‘cohesion’. This thing is Team Cohesion (which is a sub-category of Social Cohesion).

Social Cohesion can be defined as the extent of connectedness and solidarity among groups in society. It implies proximity, coordination, and stability of relationships between members of a group, which serve some benefit to the whole group.

Team Cohesion is a dynamic process, reflected in the tendency of a team to stick together and remain united in pursuit of its goals/objectives. This will be in spite of problems and setbacks.

In order to achieve Cohesion, Harvey Whitehouse and Jonathan Lanman proposed rituals are required within team:

• High-frequency, low-arousal rituals (e.g., daily/weekly team and task events) help define a group’s identity, particularly its prototypical attributes.
• Low-frequency, high-arousal rituals (e.g., high intensity selection processes, team building activities, significant challenges and accomplishments) help generate a sense of oneness with the group.

The critical aspect of these rituals is not the physical component of any ritual, but the psychological categorisation and adaptation that is derived from the rituals.

Have you guessed the limitations of common teamwork ‘training programmes?

Commonly, teamwork training programmes are undertaken in a classroom or office, or even online. Routinely they will present on and talk about what ‘great teamwork’ means and includes yet miss out of practical activities. If they do use practical activities, they will be short in duration and look superficially at behaviours and values.

They miss the point.

The UK military have been doing this shit for years, so let’s learn from them, i.e., steal their ideas!

Whilst it hasn’t been called ‘cohesion’, and the activities haven’t been called ‘rituals,’ the UK military have done this stuff in spades for centuries.

• Low Arousal / High Frequency activities include weekly/daily ‘Prayers’ or Briefings, Happy Hours at the bar, Tea & Toast in the Mess, Lunchtime clubs, sports afternoons.
• High Arousal / Low Frequency activities include Adventurous Training (AT), Expeditions, Dining-In Nights, Graduation Ceremonies, Medal Ceremonies, Remembrance Parades, Career Courses.

Many more will be remembered by others reading this.

Through these the UK Military have been able to develop team cohesion and a sense of common purpose and togetherness. Yet, without both types of ritual the others would fail.

Low Arousal / High Frequency rituals alone won’t achieve the high psychological arousal necessary to bring a team, together. High Arousal / Low Frequency rituals alone would be too far apart to maintain the benefits achieved during them.

We all have rituals in our workplaces, so accept it and be deliberate about them.

A ritual isn’t any old event – there does need to be meaning attached to it, so if you attend things or participate in events and they don’t have meaning then they are very unlikely to help develop and maintain team cohesion.

Low Arousal / High Frequency Rituals

Tony Reeves recently posted about establishing a Virtual Coffee session every week, and this is a great example of a High Frequency / Low Arousal ritual. So, let’s look around our workplaces and see what is there.

These are, by their nature, more common and scattered about the place. They could include:

• Virtual or in-person Coffee Mornings (other drinks are available.)
• Weekly Stand-Ups
• Weekly Briefings
• Weekly Team Meetings
• Committee meetings
• Thursday drinks
• Dress down Friday (is this still a thing..?)
• Cake sales

High Arousal / Low Frequency Rituals

These will be more challenging, more costly and more time consuming – yet how many teams and organisations steer away from them because they are ‘too busy’? How many will fail to invest, yet consider they have ‘High Performing Teams’? Too many see this ‘away from the office’ time as something other than work, something other than core business.

Going back to an earlier point, the High Arousal is not physical, but psychological.

?A Team ‘Off Site’ or ‘Away Days’ can achieve this High Arousal state as long as the content of the programme is psychologically arousing. That means it will challenge those attending in a way that seeks to bring together the team and create meaning.

These rituals will need significant amounts of psychological safety and trust to be developed or the arousal will not meet the needs.

Of course, the physical surroundings can help elicit the psychological arousal, which is why the UK military have used Adventure Training and similar to help develop team cohesion. But it isn’t necessary.

An Action Plan

First and foremost, accept that you won’t get a cohesive team without both types of ritual. How you achieve this needs to be linked to the needs of your team and your workplace.

Low Arousal / High Frequency Rituals:

1. Seek them out in your workplace, both organised ones and those which just seem to have happened (these are even more powerful because they have grown out of an organic need)
2. List all rituals and consider their meaning.
3. Give each ritual meaning either by saying what its meaning is or by listening to your team as to what their meaning of it is.
4. Prune the ritual as necessary and make sure all you keep mean something.

This is a freebie activity that you can do without external support or guidance, so why not do it now?

High Arousal / Low Frequency Rituals

This is the more challenging one to achieve because it will incur costs and time away from the day job (whatever that is being defined as). Someone will likely want a business case and a statement of ROI…

1. Ask your team what they want to achieve and why.
2. Plan ahead and create time in the calendar. Ringfence it and make it ‘ESSENTIAL.’
3. ROI can be more easily achieved if the Away Day(s) focus on ‘work’, e.g., strategy, action planning, or a specific project. And it is likely that a focus on a work project or previous activity will create high arousal because the team will have invested time and effort into its conception, so anything that reviews and seeks to identify how it could have been better will likely raise tensions.

Questions to consider.

These can be asked to ensure the programme of rituals achieves its aims and fits with the needs of your team and organisation.

• What are the rituals and what gives them meaning?
• How does my team best achieve high arousal in a psychologically safe environment?
• How can I best integrate both types of ritual?
• How can I build a case of the High Arousal / Low Frequency rituals?
• How often do we need to undertake the High Arousal / Low Frequency rituals?

The worse thing to do is ignore that we are social beings who develop a sense of belonging and meaning through team rituals. We have done this for millennia, so why expect a short training programme to achieve the same?

Thanks for reading and please give me a kick if you want to discuss any of the ideas or thoughts in the newsletter.

Tim Artus

[email protected]