The Synergistic We

There is a distinct difference between a group of individuals coordinating their efforts and working as a team and a team where individuality has given way to a ‘synergistic we’. It isn’t that individuals give up their identities, their strengths, knowledge, or perspectives but that they hold these elements ‘lightly’. This may be the most vital factor in the synergistic ‘we’.

In an HBR blog, Nilofer Merchant talks about holding our ideas lightly. She suggests that when we hold ideas lightly, they can evolve. Holding one’s identify lightly is very similar.  If we hold too tightly to our identify, attach strongly to it, we become so inflexible that it is difficult to grow or evolve.  When we are only lightly attached, it leaves room for us to shift and morph in response to the group, to what emerges in the context of collective action and conversation.

Perhaps the ‘I’ in the synergistic ‘we’ is like a drop of water that loses its distinct boundaries when it comes together with other drops of water to form a flowing stream. A drop can be removed from the stream, but it is never the same drop that it was before; it has evolved from its emergence with the whole.

Questions:

• When have you held yourself lightly and allowed yourself to evolve and grow in response to others?
•  What was it about you and the group that made this possible?