How are we relevant?
The Essential Ingredient for Team Cohesion
Julia Gutman is a young Australian artist. So young that last year she was the youngest ever Archibald Prize winner. Gutman creates collages from people's clothes. She says a person's clothes represents them and even the smell and feel can be the closest thing to representing a person. The clothes become her paint as she rips, sows, double-stitches and embroiders the textiles to make a work of art.
Gutman describes how using a person's clothes means she does not start with a blank canvas. She has history and a story of the person in mind meaning there is less anxiety to begin a piece of art.
In Gutman's own words, "There is an intimacy from the beginning".
As a writer I can tell you there is nothing scarier than a blank page. And, I like to think all of us are artists in our own rights in your field of choice. When I worked in salons the hairdressers saw themselves as artists. As a non-hairdresser-business-manager, I would always think to myself, "getting bums on seats is where the true artistry lies".
As artists, especially those practicing the art of leadership, many are working from a blank canvas when it comes to their teams. There are no definitions, outlines, or brief's as to what the team is about.
This means most are rudderless'ly making it up as they go. And, in turn are adding further difficulty to the job of team performance.
Imagine if you had a sense of intimacy of 'who your team are, why they matter, and where they are going.'
If we don't know any of this then how do we know who to hire or who our most productive partners and clients will be?
These are big questions and are often too conceptual and difficult to answer. So, we ignore them and revert to grinding away and hoping everything will be okay. A large risk for any leader to carry.
Instead, I encourage people to have conversations around one key question:
How are we relevant?
It is such a simple question and can be answered through the following lenses. Here are some starters for you:
Geographic
How do we fit into the local community?
How would you describe our office/shop/site/operation?
How would you describe the landscape we play in?
Social
How do we connect people?
How do we benefit multi-generations?
How do we make people feel?
Economics
Where is the value for our clients?
Why do people spend a portion of their budget with us?
Why do they invest in our experience?
These questions force us to hone in our relevance to the marketplace. It helps us to gain intimacy with the key elements that make our team what it is. At the end of the process you may have some key words or a-sentence-or-two that describes the team and helps to answer the question, who are we?
No team is too low or too small (OR BIG!) to run this process. Understand your relevance as a team and watch the unity of your team come together like a Gutman collage.
