All of my work and sense of purpose is about relationship. I am forever curious, therefore, about what enables healthy connection to flourish and what causes it to flounder. In the world of corporate culture it is sometimes difficult to spot examples of purposeful, deeply connected, high performing teams which perhaps made my experience of a particular leadership cohort with which I worked recently, particularly special. My reflection is that there were three things that contributed to the impact they had.
A culture of humanity
I would describe the culture this team created together as one of compassion and humanity, for each other and for the charitable organisation with which they were partnering through the week. It is hard to describe the power this unleashed in the team but, having witnessed it, I am sure it went way beyond any KPI or standard measure of performance. The level at which people connected with each other and opened themselves up to each other, bred a level of trust and a strength of identity as a group that was pretty unstoppable.
The binding power of adversity
On Day 2 of the programme, 3 of the 16 delegates learned that in the light of an internal restructure, they were likely to lose their jobs and be made redundant before Christmas. By Day 3 the news had become common knowledge across the whole group and the emotional fall out was huge. As facilitators we spent much of the day giving space to the group to experience and express their feelings of anger, grief, shame and anxiety. By the end of that day something had shifted. They had passed through the bottom of the curve and were beginning to regroup. But in a far more powerful form than they had been before. By Day 4 they were accelerating up the ladder of co-creation and performance and by Day 5, the creativity, passion, depth of partnership and sheer brilliance they achieved genuinely moved me to tears. There was no doubt in my mind that the power of their partnership was due in part, to the experience of adversity they had shared and the way they had supported, trusted and respected each other through it.
A deep sense of purpose
Much of my work is about helping individuals, teams and even organisations find and articulate their sense of purpose in a way that goes beyond profit and being the best.
This group reinforced my conviction about the power of purpose to motivate, unite, energise and inspire. For them, it was the anchor around which they coalesced, and the rocket fuel in their engine. It was beautiful to behold a team find meaning and motivation to hold and carry them through dark and distressing times.
So what?
Let’s be clear: this is not an invitation to throw adversity at teams in an attempt to see them improve their performance! It is, however, a call to lead for purpose, humanity and connection in your organisation, and to draw strength from the fact that these ingredients will not only steady your ship in difficult times, but enable you to reach new shores of a kind you had not visited before.