The Disarticulated Centipede: Or how to manage your team’s artificial unit, from Bernadette Petitpas
It is often noted how important a manager and their ability to rally employees is to the cohesion and unity of a team. So that the centipede that is the team, in this case, can see all its members moving in the same direction. However, this requires real unity to have a positive impact on the organization and the achievement of objectives.
Let's imagine, shall we ... You are the leader of a team. Your situation is not easy. Post-confinement, you are trying to invent a new normal that takes into account constraints while considering new ways of doing things, or even a reorientation – some might even say a revolution – regarding your activities. Each one of your employees makes the "right" speech, the one you want to hear. There is no active resistance and you do not detect any passiveness or aggression.
Yet, things are not moving forward, at least not at the expected pace. Or the results are not up to expectations and could seriously compromise the success of your initiatives. It must be said that there is no palpable enthusiasm, but rather, a kind of resignation.
As if everyone was dragging their feet, as it were, and the centipede was not moving swiftly.
Photo by Clay Banks
Perhaps you yourself attend a play, a performance in which one or more of your employees may not even be aware that they are playing, disconnected from themselves by certain elements, including stress. Indeed, many people don't really know how they feel, what they are thinking or what they aspire to. It's as if our centipede saw its limbs wiggling around without direction, and the poor person (one of your team members) was suddenly dislocated.
It is in this kind of situation that apparent unity is in fact artificial.
What characterizes real unity, commitment and esprit de corps is the intellectual and emotional alignment of each person with common goals.
So how do we ensure that each person is involved, wholeheartedly, even if it is only regarding part of the project, so that the whole thing makes sense, so that collaboration and collegiality are supported, and a dose of creativity, novelty and fun is also added to the mix of collective success?
Why don't you start by repeatedly asking yourself certain questions?
Why are the objectives important? What do I care about?
What do they mean to me?
How does each of my employees feel?
How does everyone feel about the goals?
How do the goals resonate, or not, with everyone, and why?
Is it possible to rephrase or break down the objectives so that everyone can see themselves in them, recognize themselves in them, and want to get involved?
How can I make sure that while working towards the objectives, we have fun, individually and collectively?
You have just refined your understanding of the issues, both yours and those of your employees. You also have just identified possible solutions, those elements that will make everyone want to get involved, those related to the project and those related to how to complete it while having fun together.
Then you will not only have to validate your understanding with your team members, but you will also have to work with them to design a game plan that will integrate organizational and individual needs and obligations, as well as the modalities that will make it possible, in addition to achieving the objectives, to make them want to work together and have fun along the way.
And so your centipede can then move swiftly forward with all of the speed that its legs can muster...