TEAM VULNERABILITY = TEAM RESILIENCE

When working with groups, whether facilitating public engagement, a strategic planning process, or team retreats, I'm all about connection before content. Without connecting first, ideas stay firmly in the box, plans are only negotiated tension, and people commit merely to checking boxes. People generally need to trust each other to manifest a future different from the past.

Since I joined AA and got sober, however, I’ve gone beyond connection to understand the power of becoming radically vulnerable among people with a common purpose: to find only love and support after sharing horror stories of bottoming out allows once seemingly irredeemable lives to be saved and impossible friendships to develop.

I volunteer at an AA coffee bar every Tuesday, where many blue-collar Trump supporters hang out. Despite being a liberal with a law degree, I’ve learned to turn off my self-righteous anger and love these guys because we bare our souls together every day in the pursuit of sobriety. Now, we all have a blast on Edamame Tuesday when everyone samples the high-protein and fiber snacks I bring to share with them.

Because of these ongoing experiences, my facilitation has moved from connection before content to vulnerability above all. There is more storytelling about daily challenges and existential fears. I ask people to share the gift they hold in exile from the team—and why. We examine whether someone’s professional identity is aligned with their role on the team – and what they really want from each other. I even ask people to practice mindfulness so they can get attuned to parts of themselves they don’t like to hear at work.

This shift allows teams to use liminality—the space between two knowns, the nether land of uncertainty and anxiety—to build vulnerability and create a launching pad for reinvention. Think of being dropped into a dark room together after an earthquake. Escape may lie somewhere, but for the group to succeed, you cannot panic and rush off alone to find it; you must become sensitive to others, be with them no matter their trauma, and move slowly through the darkness together.

“What catastrophes seem to do—sometimes in a few minutes—is turn back the clock on ten thousand years of social evolution. Self-interest gets subsumed into group interest because there is no survival outside group survival, creating a social bond many people sorely miss.”
― Sebastian Junger, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

But modern human beings don’t need an earthquake or war to experience catastrophic anxiety. I recently worked with a group of student mental health professionals facing the loss of state funding for their program. All of them were successful and in their prime earning years in a growth industry, yet their personal fears nearly paralyzed them as a team. Their pain went unspoken until I asked them to share a story that embodied the abyss they stared into when thinking of their program’s uncertain future. This question began a day during which they became radically vulnerable and developed a resiliency that allowed them to survive their funding crisis.

Now, my role as a facilitator is more shamanic—taking people on an inner journey that uses their fears and pain to connect them more deeply with a common purpose. And I'm not proselytizing or asking people to get religion or become new age. I'm talking about a way of being with each other that gets to the heart of what matters, whether joyful or painful, excitement or dread, to help people be so still and present with each other that they develop a group conscience that can guide them.

I now offer people a different way of holding each other's experiences, of giving meaning to each other's pain. And in that connection, we find a spirit, a power greater than ourselves. It’s inspiring to feel safe and supported by your team as you move toward a common goal; it's got me fired up enough to tell everybody I'm a recovering alcoholic and figure out ways to help people experience it without having to suffer through addiction.

Collective vulnerability can give meaning to our individual suffering. This surprising gift, available to everyone, can transform your team or communities. Let me know if you’d like to explore how.