Team Under Pressure?

Disruption creates shift. Shift taken to a transformative, cellular level is different than a temporary “flavor of the month” change (which we all know doesn’t stick).  Consider the transformation of carbon in the earth into a diamond…. Now we get a picture of what true, permanent change to a stronger, different thing altogether really looks and feels like. You’re building a team to create that kind of change, right?  Chemist Ilya Prigogine won a Nobel Prize for capturing the irreversible process of transformation in nature, and it actually has everything to do with your disruptive team, causing and experiencing it every day. 

Prigogine looked first at the idea of Entropy-what happens when we leave something alone (opposite of your disruption) for long enough. He was looking at chemical reactions, but this applies human beings and teams, too. Entropy happens… left alone, things fall apart or scatter….

Leave a log alone in the woods for long enough, and it decomposes. 

Leave a person alone long enough (like solitary confinement), and they go crazy.

Leave a group alone for long enough, and it either splinters or it becomes Lord of the Flies.  

Prigogine also looked at the opposite; what happens when you add pressure or energy to something to disrupt it- perturbation.  As Perturbations happens to a system (or person or team), it can only hold so much pressure/energy, before something’s got to give, hitting a point of critical mass. This occurs in physics, and it applies to human development and group dynamics as well. 

When pressure continues or increases to its capacity, the heat rises, (temperature in physics and in a room of perturbed people) and things start to vibrate and shift. 

A log under the pressure of a fallen boulder, for long enough… will start to off-gas.  

An individual under increased pressure from a situation… might bail out of the situation. 

A team with increased pressure on it… might lose some people. 

In each of these^, that pressure increases, hits a threshold in it’s current form, and then… 

Everything transforms. Literally. Pushes through the heat of that threshold to transform into a stronger, more stable structure (which can withstand more pressure). 

The wood transforms into coal.. 

We’ve commonly thought that coal under sustained pressure over time transforms into a diamond. (fun fact: diamonds actually form out of similar form of carbon as coal, yet not coal itself)

Championship teams often become so in playoff situations, as they push through to that elite version of themselves.

Individuals pushed with enough pressure of challenge will also transform into new versions of themselves, which is the ultimate learning (can sound like "I'm just different now than before- I can't go back").  

And none of these, just like you, just like your team... will go back to their original form. 

You, your organization and your team will go through this. It is simply how transformative change occurs. You’ll know it’s happening when it gets hot with conflict on the team- metaphorically, yet also the temperature of the individuals and in the room literally goes up when the pressure of those dynamics rises. This can happen when they’ve been wrestling through an idea or process in search of a breakthrough, and have been at it a long time. It can happen when they’re being challenged by an outside force of pressure or time running out, and have to pull out a solution they haven’t discovered yet. It can happen through reorgs or major changes in leadership or the industry. You’ll see it in the organization as people bristle at, go into denial about, or push back against disruption that's brought (by change? maybe even by you?).  In these situations, they’re being perturbed, and that's really uncomfortable. If they can stand in the discomfort of that heat, they can push through the threshold of their own thinking and challenge to transformative, real change. 

Context holds the team.

For teams going through perturbation, this is where you come in as a leader. The way you hold and facilitate those dynamics makes all the difference in your team either being able to push through to transformative change or not. 

Teams either stay together through that perturbation or they don’t, depending on the agreements, trust and commitment they have in place with one another. In looking at any team that thrives through pressure (sports teams, partnerships, organizations), more and more research is showing up to define them from the rest. Key ingredients come down to psychological safety and dependability. Those are huge, so make sure you’ve got the context set…

Agreed-upon values, process, mission and commitment allow people to trust and weather the storm of change. Solid agreements about behavior and what people can count on, hold them all together when things get rough, and become the “true north” on the team’s internal compass, to which they can reset with one another and recalibrate.  These agreements keep everyone’s energy and reflexes in check under pressure, redirecting the players back to one another and the commitment they’ve made.  Examples:

“Never leave a teammate alone,” 

“Work through upset on the team directly, immediately and out of the public eye,”

Agreements like these call the team back to one another, build solidarity, and allow them to stand in the heat all the way through to the other side. If you don’t have those in place, pause your team, pull together and set it up…

• Create a context of unconditional agreements early in the team’s process, before they’re in the heat of the pressure. Help them clarify and articulate what they need to be able to count on without question from others in order to be all in, and create agreements to ensure and protect those things.

• Ask “What gets in the way of you being able to do your absolute best work on a team,” then create agreements to proactively guard against those.

Perspective holds you.

If it's you being perturbed, keep focusing on what's on the other side. There's power in picturing that wood turning into coal, that coal turning into a diamond, knowing that you're in the heat, but what you're going through is leading to a stronger, more structurally stable version of you, on the other side. 

You've got this. You're almost there, diamond!

This piece is adapted from Sarah's chapter on team dynamics in the book Disrupt Together: How Teams Consistently Innovate. Here's a link directly to that chapter, Your Team of Dynamics and the Dynamics of your Team, where you'll get even more perspective on leading a team through change. 

©SarahSinger&Co. 2016