What is sociometry?

Carl Sagan has said, “There is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”  He goes on to say that we have “a responsibility to deal more kindly with each other.”  Where can we possibly start on this mission of greater kindness and conviviality, when there are overwhelming mentifacts that…

Counter-acting the Stockholm Syndrome

Stockholm Syndrome is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages display empathy and sympathy for their captors, often developing positive feelings towards them and defending them. I’m often fascinated by how people, when they walk through the door of their workplaces, adopt behaviours akin to the symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome.  Despite knowing in our hearts and…

Manage the system, not silos

I’ve heard that if you cut a hologram into pieces, each piece contains all the information of the whole.  I’ve never tried it, but I like the idea that each part is a microcosm of the whole thing. In working with three senior teams in three entirely different sectors over the past month, I’ve heard…

How do we get to WE?

There is something in the air.  Call it my natural human tendency to find patterns in things, but two recent conversations with two different clients in two different cities have reminded me of two other completely different clients in two completely different countries.  The parallels are striking.  It could be my bias towards systems thinking,…

The Power of We

Interesting what can spark an idea and create insight.  Staring at the full moon the other night, I found myself marvelling, yet again, that we’ve been there.    That led me to consider the languaging: “We’ve been to the moon.”  We?  We’ve been there?  In fact, from Armstrong to Cernan, only 12 white American men have…

Cooperation beats competition

I overheard a conversation recently where someone said in all seriousness, “In the new way of doing business, cooperation beats competition.”  I was amused by the irony of the statement.  We are infused with a competitive mindset from our earliest days on this planet, so it makes sense that the language in that statement would…

Is mine a high-performing team?

Some time ago, a client of ours excitedly commented that she thought what we did felt like team-building with intellect.  Even eight years ago, there was something in the comment that betrayed a disdain and fatigue for team-building exercises that are fun and engaging, but lead to nothing of real substance back in the day-to-day…

What is going on in my team?

I have been inspired by Paul Slater’s excellent article this week, Getting Teams Working, to reflect on some work I’ve been doing recently with a team.  A good chunk of my training and experience has been in group dynamics and there is direct relevance of this body of knowledge to organisational life.  In the workplace,…