The Bicycle Reflection: Teams

Dr Peter Hawkins and Dr Catherine Carr, sought-after leadership developers and creators of Systemic Team Coaching, used an analogy a couple of weeks ago in our Systemic Teams Practicioner Course that has been very useful to me.

When discussing both the purpose and impact of teams, he likened them to bicycles. He started with the common but often incompletely understood phrase, "A team is more than the sum of its parts"—just like a team is more than its individuals.

If you were building a bike, you could order two wheels, a frame, brakes, a derailleur, etc., but they would not function separately as a bike. Similarly, you can take all the team roles and recruit a person for each role with the characteristics and skills to fulfill that role, but it won't automatically be a high-value-creating team. In fact, even if you put them in the same room with an agenda, it's still just a group having a meeting.

A bicycle functions well when the pieces are correctly connected to each other—it's the relationships between the parts that can't be forgotten. And yet, most of the teams we work within are made up of people with roles who come and give their updates and two cents worth and maybe take on an assignment. It's a group of people, often without much time and attention given to the relationships.

However, just like the bicycle, it will function better when there is intentionality in building it with attention given to an organized approach. When the relationships between the individuals, and between the team and other teams, and between the organization's teams and all of its stakeholers (present ones and future ones), working toward the same purpose with accountability to the whole - THEN you create the high-value additional team member Dr Hawkins refers to as Synergy!

The other exciting part of the analogy is that the form follows function and vice-versa. If you are biking in Moab, the relationships between the wheels and the frame require different materials, including quality shocks, for optimal function. And that sturdy bicycle, with its added weight from shocks and heavier tires, would not perform as well on the Tour de France road race. And if you want to bike down the Strand in San Diego on a leisurely nature-soaking and people-watching ride, then you'd want the parts of the bike and their relationships to form an upright, comfy seat to take in the sights easily.

When you look at your team(s) and ask - what can you uniquely do together to bring value into the world - what do you discover is its elevated purpose? When you look at the relationships and the multiple layers, where will being intentional with your time, energy, and attention bolster the impact by creating real Synergy? How can you be intentional and coach toward creating that high-value-creating team? Or who might you know that could be an external team coach? (Reach out - I may know one 😉)