Group Work? Yay!
[Bonding & Bridging: Part 1]
I love working in groups and with groups. Seriously. I find people fascinating. I love how each member brings a different perspective to the work or problem at hand. When I work with teams as a facilitator, one thing I look for is their capacity for bonding and bridging. Huh? Let me explain.
Sure, “Bonding and Bridging” sounds like the Wednesday night card game down at the nursing home, but in this case, it refers to the two components required for creative collaboration. The most productive and creative teams enjoy both internal cohesion and external connection. Let’s examine Bonding in this post and we’ll tackle Bridging tomorrow.
Bonding is about the shared identity of the group. Some definitions reduce bonding to likeness or sameness within a group. But with creative teams, bonding is really more about shared purpose, clear alignment, and commitment. In plain language: well-bonded teams know each other, recognize each other’s skills, and know why they’re working together. But wait! Bonding does not mean homogeneity, forced harmony, or groupthink. Those things actually work against strong bonds.
If groups don’t understand why they’re together, they struggle to gain traction (want to revise the Terms of Reference or Team Charter again?). But sometimes teams focus too much on bonding. In established organizations – especially ones with low turnover – teams can stagnate because they’re too familiar with each other. In those cases, you need to disrupt accepted patterns: add a new member or break up the team altogether.
As a facilitator, people often ask me to “run some team-building activities.” While I love a good social energizer to warm up a group, I know that team-building activities won’t improve the team’s bonding quotient.
In my experience, most teams can do the bonding. Even if there is a little tension among the personalities, members will grudgingly accept that they’re in the room to solve the same problem.
If you want to deepen team bonding, find a meaningful problem, solve it, and repeat.
Team bridging is up next.
Inspiration
Harford, T. (2016). Messy: How to be creative and resilient in a tidy-minded world. London, UK: Little, Brown. (Chapter 2: “Collaboration”)