I hope you are well.

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Back in the 1990s, I worked as a business analyst helping migrate face-to-face team-building processes onto a new online collaboration platform called Lotus Notes.

 

Before the internet, face-to-face team building focused on developing relationships between team members until those relationships created performance that was greater than the sum of the parts. Because technology-based connection was less dynamic than face-to-face connection, it wasn’t possible to build the same kinds of relationships online. Instead, I broke the team-building process down into its functional parts and transferred them to the platform.

 

As a result, the performance of an online collaboration team could be no more than the sum of its parts, but the team itself could be much larger. Hundreds of people could each perform a defined function in coordination with one another, which suited the demands of the time.

 

Then life redirected my attention towards helping young people develop the relational skills they struggled to understand because they focused primarily on how people function.

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You could say that the first part of my career involved moving from relational connection to functional connection. The second part involved moving from functional connection back to relational connection.

 

I now see that technology-supported functional connection has become so pervasive that entire generations have grown up knowing only this way of relating. Even if we brought back the old face-to-face team-building processes, they might not work as intended because many people no longer have the relational skills needed to build relationships that make performance greater than the sum of the parts.

 

So what can we do?

 

I have created a programme that trains individuals in the relational skills needed to perceive and sustain the whole.

 

Back in the 1990s, a peak-performance team was considered self-managing. Each individual had the relational skills to make personal adjustments that maintained and strengthened the team’s cohesion. This remains a valued model in elite military and sports teams.

 

By sending team members through our relational-skills programme, you give them the potential to return with the skills needed to help your team perform in a similar way.

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Always happy to chat