The Global Pandemic: A Great Opportunity for Team Transcendence

I think it is safe to assume that if you are reading this blog you are familiar with what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called “flow”. When experienced by an individual, “flow” can be a highly focused mental state conducive to productivity. When groups of individuals in the flow state apply its benefits to solving specific tasks or problems something magical occurs, Team Transcendence.  

As we will explore in future blogs, Team Transcendence requires that groups of people have access to a liminal state which has been described in the research literature as “group flow” or “group genius”. 

A quick review of the research in “group genius” or “group flow” identifies no fewer than twenty triggers that can help to bring teams into the liminal flow state. Triggers, in and of themselves, do not create Team Transcendence. However, these triggers can bring into alignment the variables and elements necessary for Team Transcendence. The Team Transcendence Working Model™ is a graphical representation of the alignment necessary for Team Transcendence to occur. What I have experienced is an unexpected increase in these triggers that has been brought about by the response to the global pandemic.

Bounded Creativity

Most of us have had the paradoxical observation that restrictions yield more creative and novel results than unbounded design constraints – that fewer choices make us more creative than an infinite number of choices. I became aware of the concept of “bounded creativity” in the writings of Finke, Ward, and Smith (1992) who found that precisely bounded or constrained problems generated more variations in solutions. Chip and Dan Heath (Heath and Heath 2013), also refer to this phenomenon as the Vanishing Options Test. Conversely, unbounded problems resulted in fewer and less creative solutions. The caveat being that extreme time constraints have a negative effect on the creative process.  

Our pandemic restrictions have imposed several resource limitations which have also created boundaries to our creative processes. Restrictions on travel, in-person meetings, reduced financial resources, renewed time pressures, disconnection from work processes, reprioritization of human resources, and even changes in priorities and outcomes may all be affecting your work dynamics right now. This Bounded Creativity flow trigger seems to be built into our current lifestyle.  

Within the Team Transcendence Working Model™ this may have the most impact on the Clear and Challenging Team Goals sphere. The external pressure created by the limitation of resources helps clarify and provide a new level of challenge to our team goals. With fewer resources to manage, our options become clearer and the outcomes more urgent.

Late Process Creativity

Building upon Fricke’s research, Zhou (2015) found that narrowing constraints introduced late in the process yielded even better results than those introduced early in the design process. When Zhou introduced limitations early (before brainstorming), in the middle (after brainstorming) or late (after prototyping) in the design process, late constraints yielded significantly more novel results than earlier constraint conditions.  

For me, these restrictions mirror the pandemic response from many of our local governments, who initially imposed moderate restrictions on movement and access to resources (early process) which have been replaced by more stringent limitations (late process) and have created an ideal canvas for bounded creativity. I also think the continued constriction of options has led to the expectation of more Open and Constant Communication, a second variable in the Team Transcendence Working Model™.   

Early in the pandemic much of the information about the severity, spread and interdiction efforts were provided as “messaging” to create awareness of the crisis. Mandates and rules made us very creative at finding ways around mandates and rules, not solving the underlying problems. This was a perfect example of what Jansson and Smith (1991) refer to as Design Fixation, where our lack of information creates an adherence to familiar concepts which in turn limits new possibilities. 

Design Fixation is a cognitive, energy-saving technique that allows us to deal with a problem as efficiently as possible, but often, incorrectly. The addition of information or the elimination of previous options helps to break this Design Fixation.  

Recently, pandemic information has been presented in a new way. We now have access to more evidence so that people can understand it, have confidence in it, and make their own decisions. This change toward more open communication has become the expectation within society and allowed us to reexamine our underlying assumptions and break our collective Design Fixation.

An Excuse to Be Creative

The pandemic has also stripped away many of the social and business norms that have repressed our creativity. In the pre-COVID world, many of the decisions made were based on existing systematic or technical solutions that were already in place, leaving little room for creativity. These had been created for a workplace in which all the variables could be controlled or managed. Now that the workplace is “anywhere” the new norm relies heavily on creative realignment of priorities and resources to meet deadlines and produce outcomes.   

Furthermore, the workers performing these tasks have been separated from the support structures created within a managed office environment and have had to re-learn, adapt and develop a new set of skills to adjust to this new set of challenges. Workers are encouraged to “be creative” when dealing with this new workplace. This new Environment, if properly constructed, is a third variable in our Team Transcendence Working Model™. The optimal environment is one in which the individual can be deeply present in the group task. If met with intentionality, the new “Zoom Reality” can create just such an environment (see Alexandra K Ward’s blog on Group Genius Challenges While Working Remote).

Shared Suffering

I have also noticed a higher level of Mutual Trust among those with whom I work. Research by Bastian, Jetten and Ferris (2014) demonstrated that sharing painful experiences with other people promoted trusting, interpersonal relationships and that shared pain may be an important trigger for group formation. I think it would be safe to say that our shared pandemic experience is exactly that, painful, and may be why I have noticed an increase in the frequency and depth of Mutual Trust that I have experienced of late.

I believe that the key for many of the experiences that I have had entering the Group Genius realm of Psychological Safety and Mutual Trust has been the adaptive mindset of my group members. Robert Kegan, in his book Immunity to Change (Kegan and Laskow Lahey 2016), describes the necessary shift as a movement toward “self-authoring”. Individuals who can effectively practice “self-authorship” have a high level of trust in their own internal voice, a strong internal belief system and can build on that foundation to make commitments. The benefit of having a group of people that trust themselves is that they become a team of problem-solvers who can be highly reliant on one another and share common experiences (for additional information on Psychological Safety, see Paul Smith’s blog on Psychological Safety Creates Superorganisms). 

High Consequence

Finally, I believe the pandemic has added a sense of urgency many of us have never experienced before. Each of us have had the chance to reassess where our work is impacting the wider world and the often significant consequences of our decisions and actions. While this may not have the feedback or immediacy as described by Kotler and Wheal (2017) in Stealing Fire, consideration of the mortal consequence associated of our actions or inactions can become an ever-present, external trigger for Team Transcendence, allowing for more instances of Contextual Leadership and Integration of Complementary Skills.

discussion

So, what about you? Has the pandemic made you more likely to experience Team Transcendence? Are there other Team Transcendence Triggers that have become more prevalent in your life lately? We believe the Team Transcendence Working Model™ provides a tightly coupled framework to explore group genius and we invite you to join the Transcendeam Community to talk about your experiences, successes and failures with Team Transcendence.

Sources

Bastian, Brock, Jolanda Jetten, and Laura J. Ferris. 2014. “Pain as Social Glue: Shared Pain Increases Cooperation.” Psychological Science. 

Finke, Ronald A., Ward, Thomas B., and Steven M. Smith. 1992. Creative Cognition: Theory, research and applications. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Heath, Chip, and Dan Heath. n.d. https://heathbrothers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/HBDWB.pdf. 

Jansson, D.G., and S.M. Smith. 1991. “Design Fixation.” Design Studies 12(1), 3-11.

Kegan, Robert, and Lisa Laskow Lahey. 2016. Immunity to Change. Harvard Business Press.

Kotler, Steven, and Jamie Wheal. 2017. Stealing Fire. 

van den Hout, Jef J. J. and Davis, Orin C. 2019. Team Flow: The psychology of optimal collaboration. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Briefs in Well-Being and Quality of Life Research.Zhou, Elaine. 2015. Bounding Creativity: Explicit and Implicit Constraints in the Design Process Yield More Novel Results. Stanford University, June.