I recently read the fantastic “21 Lessons for the 21st Century,” by Yuval Noah Harari (You may know of his first big book, Sapiens.) As with any great book, there are many moments of inspiration, so expect a few cards enlightened by this wonderful piece of literature.
The sentence that prompted this card said simply: “Human groups are defined more by the changes they undergo than by any continuity.” I stopped reading, did a quadruple-take of that paragraph, re-read the whole page and spent a few minutes just staring on the ceiling, processing.
Harari is talking about the society as a whole. He talks amongst other examples about today’s Germany and Germans defined by the experience of WW2, post WW2 split, 1990’s re-integration – all together. Not by what they are or were, but what they as a nation went through.
Scaling down, I truly believe the same applies to a group of any size, down to two. Maybe even an individual, but let’s stay on the group level. While applying that thought to a couple is a very intriguing thought, this is a leadership article, so let’s think at the level of a team. Particularly, let’s focus on the leadership team.
Our job as coaches is to leave the CEO’s, the teams and the company in a better place than we found them in. That means changes. Sometimes drastic changes. The journey is as important as the destination, sometimes even more so – I personally coached companies that failed. Occasionally, even if you do everything right, you lose (that’s not saying we DID everything right, of course…), but I believe even in those cases, we all gained and grew from the experience.
Struggling together creates a bond unlike any other. If you watched any military documentary looking at an army unit, or even a T.V. show that gets the topic (Band of Brothers or Rogue Heroes come to mind), the moment of new members joining a unit is always a tricky one. “Us” (the ones with shared scars) and “Them” (the new ones). It always takes a few battles for the cohesion to get back to where it was before the new arrivals.
When welcoming new team members we have to be mindful of the “reinforcement” effect. They may not understand the references to members who are not there anymore. They don’t know the “before” and how far the team in place has come.
Cohesive, all A-player leadership team is the absolutely essential ingredient for any company’s success. Or, better said, lacking such team is the #1 barrier to growth. As the team is going through the inevitable changes, we need to proactively work on cohesiveness and use whatever is at our disposal to build trust as the foundation of it all.
How do you onboard new members and ensure their rapid integration into the team’s culture?
