Rob Whitfield: The Power Of Communities At Work

It’s an all too common scene, headphones in, you make your way to the office or home-based office, sit in your space, and stare at your unsorted inbox. Yes, there are a few hi’s and byes here and there, maybe a little bit of small talk. However, for the vast majority of the working day, many team members report finding themselves in solitude when it comes to completing their tasks.

This is a troubling norm, considering that in teams, only 15 percent of members feel a responsibility to lift each others’ energy. It’s no coincidence that this number is so low, given it is difficult to elevate others’ energy when your work demands all of your energy. How do we shift team cultures to accept mutual responsibility for outcomes and energy in the workplace within and across teams?

Contrary to popular belief (e.g., “I’m too busy to partner with anyone else, let me just get this done myself,”) collaboration in tasks and projects enables them to be completed faster, with less energy, and with greater innovation and quality. Successful leaders understand this phenomenon and the importance of fostering community in the workplace.

In my view, being an individual contributor in a team constitutes a failure as a team member and means the leader isn’t enabling their team to reach their full potential either. It’s easy to assume that as a team member you’re doing your job if you’re delivering on time. However, individual contributions benefit the team only in the sense that work is getting done. A lack of understanding beyond individual work can have severe ramifications on overall team performance.

A lack of team community is likely the root of the issue that limits performance and means potential remains latent. In fact, high performing teams often have rhythms that can only be understood if everyone in the team understands each other. Said understanding can only be established with perseverance and a genuine yearning to escape the silos that often define the modern corporate cubicle, organization structure, and job description.

Good leaders practice team building above all else, and ensure that team members contribute to more than their individual share of the work. And that team building doesn’t need to be the ubiquitous trust fall (full disclosure; we don’t do these and I’ve never facilitated one in my career). Instead, we’re building team communities that won’t let each other fail and that is a powerful mindset shift – accompanied by highly practical ways of working – that exponentially lifts results.

When we break the solitude mindset and put community at the heart of our work, we humanize work and being both a contributor to the goals as well as how to lead people to that goal. By viewing teams as people instead of boxes on an organization chart, barriers are broken that allow for team members to ask for help with greater ease and to become more willing to take innovative risks. Our research shows that workers often feel as though their relationship to their company is too robotic with no connection to the work they do and the people they work with.

This sentiment is often an inducer of anxiety among team members. If we can build a community within a team, we can relieve some anxiety and free some more capacity for those who may be feeling overworked. It’s easy to misallocate workload when it’s so compartmentalized. A more tight knit team can identify these discrepancies and make the workload more manageable, and just, for everyone involved.

While having a tight knit team is the goal, it’s important to ensure that your team stays approachable to new members and maintains internal accountability. If a team is too tight knit, new members will feel isolated and alone. Developing a community that is flexible enough to welcome change and growth makes all the difference. With healthy boundaries established, individuals and teams can progress together and evolve outside of the cubicle, and outside their comfort zones.