How does a stressed team dance?
I've been re-reading Barry Oshry's book 'Seeing Systems' (www.powerandsystems.com) and been reminded of how insightful his work is. Based on many years of live research, Oshry has distilled the key patterns of behaviour that occur in human systems (teams, families, whole organisations). I've been fortunate to experience his work first hand, as he's been to London a couple of times over recent years to deliver workshops that really engage and create visceral learning about organisational dynamics.
This is timely because I've been working with a senior team this week. Trying to deliver for an energetic and perhaps somewhat impatient CEO, the team has experienced high stress over recent months. They also felt frustrated at the apparent lack of engagement from their dispersed delivery teams. And while their key relationships were sound, there were signs of tension. Oshry's model of the dynamics of tops, middles and bottoms has helped them develop a fresh perspective on their situation, because they can now recognise and articulate the impact of the system beyond their individual personalities. This de-personalised the situation and helped people to talk objectively about their roles and responses.
The team's leader could see that he alternated between 'top space' where he felt highly responsible for decisions and delivery, unsupported and exposed; and between 'middle space' where he experienced over-whelm in the face of apparently conflicting priorities. The other team members identified strongly with 'middle', torn between trying to align with the organization’s mission and processes AND empathising with the demands and needs of the delivery teams. Bottom space accurately described elements of the delivery teams; banding together in the face of 'unreasonable' demands coming down from management. So it was no longer just a matter of individual experience or personality (although of course these still contribute), they could see they were part of a larger dance.
Oshry uses the metaphor of 'changing the dance', and I like this a lot. It only takes one dance partner to respond a little differently and the whole dance can change. The challenge now is to help this team build on these insights and find ways of making small changes in their own dances for the benefit of the whole organisation. This will mean supporting the managers in middle space to collaborate even more effectively. It will require the team leader to step back, to coach more and monitor less. It will mean encouraging more responsibility amongst the delivery teams by using smarter performance objectives and increasing their engagement in priority setting.
So we'll see how the dance changes - I'm confident it will look and feel very different by the end of the year.
