The Emotional Life of Teams
Join us for an insightful event exploring team dynamics and emotional intelligence in the workplace. Leading Below the Surface: Understanding the Emotional Life of Teams
Have you ever been in a team and wondered...
- Why does a perfect project plan get derailed by team dynamics you can’t quite put your finger on?
- Why in a team meeting, you have a plan of what you want to say or know something won’t work, only to find yourself not saying what you wanted to?
- Why does a meeting get stuck on a seemingly trivial issue, and in the last 5 minutes the real issue comes out with no time to resolve them?
- Why a team constantly pin its hopes on a future event, a new strategy, or a specific pair of colleagues to solve all its current problems?
Whilst frustrating, these are common and often frustrating experiences. These are repeated behavioural patterns that are driven by powerful, unconscious group dynamics which are helpful to understand if you want to lead well and be successful in understanding change.
This session moves beyond surface-level analysis to explore the unconscious life of groups and teams. We will explore the concept of "basic assumption mentality," where a group unconsciously works to reduce anxiety rather than focusing on its primary task.
The goal is to shift our perspective: to see the emotional life of a team not as a disturbance to be managed, but as a vital source of intelligence about what is really happening.
In this session, you will learn to:
- Decode team behaviour by recognising the signs of the three underlying "basic assumptions": Dependency (baD), Fight-Flight (baF), and Pairing (baP).
- Understand your own role and see how your feelings can be a source of valuable information about the team's unspoken anxieties and dynamics.
- Lead more effectively by understanding how leaders are often pulled into fulfilling a group's unconscious wishes, and how you can resist this pull to keep the team focused on reality and its real work.
- Thrive as a team member by developing the capacity to cooperate, tolerate frustration, and stay focused on the task, even when the group is in the grip of powerful emotions.
Join us to build your ability to see, understand, and navigate the powerful hidden dynamics that truly drive team performance and success.
This in-person event will take place at 1 Atlantic Square - Government Hub. Don't miss this opportunity to enhance your team's effectiveness and cohesion!
NOTE: this event is only open to current public servants based in Scotland.
