I've done a lot of team growing, building if you prefer.

Good relationships

Team people need to be able to do things together for mutual benefit. A good relationship washes over all kinds of small problems that can grow big if the relationship isn't there. The process bonding in a good team lets one person take up something where another left off without a lot of fussing about. It encourages them to do things together, just step in and lend a hand. The team grows ways that are mutually understood, learning-by-doing them, with a whole range of tacit learnings that reinforce the process.

Underlying the team's performance are good patterns. The SCRUM pattern is a basic relationship pattern, first aimed at software development and now used in other fields. It is deliberately based on the team flow in the game of rugby. An agile or entrepreneurial development team adds technical and other layers on top of scrum, adapting to suit, on an 'inspect and adapt' basis.

A key pattern in rugby and agile is passing as you go along. Players pass sideways in rugby. Agile software developers often sit side-by-side doing the same bit of software together, producing more higher quality software in the process. The larger team sits so they gain tacit hand-offs from others. Agile creates tests before the software, then runs the new software against the tests. Thus pulling testing up front into the development process, and creating a much more interactive environment.

Linear forward passing: this guy → then this guy → then another person → and so on in a chain.

Is replaced by:

We do together, and check as we go. Losing somebody is bad but doesn't break the chain. Better yet the chain has now become a web or map with a rich set of choices that are 'inspected and adapted' as deemed fit. The team routes around many problems, and aims for better things and synergies. Putting more hands and eyeballs on matters for better design and implementation.

Do it together.

Okay, now blindly mix together innovators and perfectionists and one-at-a-time rules people (monochronic) and some-at-a-time relationships people (polychronic) in a cultural mix. You most likely get poor results and problems. If you grow mutual awareness of cultures and propensities, you can grow teams.

I don't have a team-building program at the ready, and I am ready to do some gathering and put together a program with you people. My preference is to do part, review the gains, and have the team decide which of some options they should do next. So the team learns to choose, to make decisions, and to do, as a learning team. It should also learn to 'inspect and adapt'. Or use OODA or PDCA or some other learning cycle. Way to many teams fossilize and die, into a group of individuals.

Interested? Try   604-657-9595    or   Vic@windwaterwine.com

Team Life Cycles

Team Building into Growing Teams, is also

a downloadable pdf file.

Most natural teams only have two or three members. One sees a need and starts work on something. A second person-ant-goose-monkey sees what's going on and joins into handle the matter. They do it and separate – dissolving the impromptu team. They follow natural needs, fitting into the environment, their cultural knowledge, and expectation of mutual gains. True community shows whole webs of such informal interdependent interactions. People and critters, and cities, grow together, learning needs and likes and dislikes, and handling them as a kind of whole.

Modern factory teams can do much the same, but most lack the good web of pre-existing interconnections that empowers natural teams to just step in and 'do the right things' at the right time. Modern teams often start out fragmented, likely with fairly authoritarian leadership, then may develop understandings and relationships into a kind of community. Quite a few modern teams become rule bound and or fossilize around some rigidity-cleavages. We now tend to watch others, instead of joining the process.

Better teams develop pattern awareness like the following diagram and gain substantial performance and interdependence benefits. Many such teams share/rotate leadership and other roles to suit the situation.

Lame duck teams remain fragmented, or develop cliques or other rigidities. A fair number of people burnout (tired, sick, go postal) in the resulting situations.

“Social progress, as we know, consists mainly in a successive differentiation of functions, or, in simpler language, a division of labour. The work which in primitive society is done by all alike and by all equally ill, or nearly so, is gradually distributed among different classes of workers and executed more and more perfectly; and so far as the products, material or immaterial, of this specialised labour are shared by all, the whole community benefits by the increasing specialisation. Now magicians or medicine-men appear to constitute the oldest artificial or professional class in the evolution of society.” -- J.G. Frazer in The Golden Bough (Shamans => 'magicians'/medicine. v.)

• Notice that his assumed norm is to separate by class, labour, function, in search of perfection.

• Ponder an implicit machine-parts, or great clock, model in his thinking.

We take our experience, social rules/ways, and generate expectations, then act on them. Often mostly subconsciously. The inferential cycle materials, shown later, show how people and groups spiral into blackholes, or spiral out into improvements. We fulfill our expectations.

Instead, as the simple look at team roles diagram shows, we need to develop awareness of diversity in our ways and interests. Some of us are innovators, others are perfectionists. A lot, the middle most of us, mixes innovation and perfection, and mainly just gets things done. Relationship oriented people like to engage with people or things or ideas. Power or controlling people like to lead or manage those relationships. “Getting things done” is a kind of “things” relationship.

Later, you can play with the simple intuitive team roles test further in the materials. It's good to get a handle on your team roles propensities. For now it's more useful to be aware that we need widened awareness – sensitivity and adaptability. And that awareness needs to be in mind and body.

Imagine two people starting to do something together. They likely have different approaches. One may see a problem and the other is enjoying an opportunity. It's new to one and 'old hat' to the other. Sometimes people can rub differing views and ways against each other and end up with a richer understanding and a better overall solution. But much of the time we withdraw, reducing contact with the other person. Follow the individual's journey via the 'Sensitivity to Environment' Diagram.

1. First both people are oblivious of the differences.

2. Then they get a first glimmering of their differences.

3. They bump, becoming aware.

4. Consciously and subconsciously in different ways/levels, they recognize some differences, and accept, ponder, or deny the differences.

5. They adapt. Either spiraling into conflict/problems, or spiraling out to explore the matter.

If they continue in contact they may go around the cycle again, trading information and viewpoints and emotions. Whole teams follow this process. When they first form, when they meet new problems, or get new members, or have to adjust to new things. Better teams glimmer into larger awareness, accept, adjust/adapt, and keep growing.

It's interesting that we show the same basic pattern in developing awareness of our own body, our group or team, other cultures, and even how we adapt when moving to a different climate. The patterning links to our primary process.

Our primary process is where our attention is, including our deliberate messages to others. Our visual, listening, feeling, sniffing, tasting five-senses attention. If you're deliberately gesturing to someone, showing them how skin a cat, then your attention includes your gestures. But most of us add other subconscious messages and miss/ignore/deny other subconscious messages coming from others.

Our secondary process(es) occurs out of our awareness. It's often gestures, how other people react to things, other ways of thinking, involuntary body movements, sounds, smells, and so on. Differing secondary processes are one reason why witnesses to traffic accidents often diverge so widely in their descriptions. Secondary happenings or signals occur “under the radar” of our attention. They are signals or messages from parts of our mindbody personality to the whole. Or signals from parts of the team or community to the whole. It takes time and effort to really become aware of such processes.

In groups, skilled observers can find many examples of secondary processes to be interpreted. The problem is that telling someone, or a group, or nation, about their secondary processes isn't very helpful. People need to become aware, more sensitive, then let the discovery show its meaning to them, then act or not-act on the message. Group-think is a common form of secondary process that groups often have a hard time detecting. Very often the signal needs to be enlarged, practised, amplified to be felt by the person or team. Other times denying it can raise a rebellion that teaches awareness.

The Ape – Hunter - Family Diagram is another way to look at our propensities, based on our past. Some of us use our brains one way and others tend to do things other ways, both are subject to secondary tendencies. Both ways of thinking are often somewhat subconscious. When we mix people with the differing ways, or all the same way, of thinking, it takes time and effort to work out tolerable interactions. Also, I might have a 'hunter' way of thinking, and automatically switch to 'ape' to protect family or family needs.

Good coaching, and larger awareness of the overall process, reduces things like one-dominant-thinking and group-think. It's fairly common for team members to coach or mentor others into their relative roles and relationships. The overall team pulls together by coaching itself, by being coached, by becoming interdependent.

Good coaching, and self-coaching, on changes is really a cyclic process, matching the Sensitivity Diagram. The process can be see as a self-evaluation process, where one learns by doing with coaching. Other people can evaluate (see the Inferential Cycle materials), and the real key is to develop self-awareness of secondary processes.

Compare the general pattern shown by the Coaching – Mentoring and the Sensitivity to Environment Diagrams to Bruce Tuckman's popular team-specific Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing model of team development next.

The Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing model of team development

(from:wikipedia )

Forming

In the first phase, the forming of the team takes place. The team meets and learns about the opportunity, agrees on goals and on the resources necessary to tackle the task. Team members tend to still behave quite independently. They may be motivated, but are relatively uninformed of the issues and objectives of the team.

Supervisors of the team during this phase tend to be directive.

Storming

Every group will then enter the storming stage in which different ideas compete for consideration. During this phase, the team addresses issues such as what problems they are supposed to solve, how they will function and what leadership model they will accept. Team members open out to each other and confront each other’s perspectives. They are still relatively unacquainted with the project.

In some cases, the storming stage can be resolved quickly. In others, the team never leaves this stage.

The storming stage is necessary to the growth of the team. It can seem contentious, unpleasant and even painful to members of the team who are very averse to conflict. If improperly managed, this phase can become destructive to the team and will lower motivation.

Supervisors of the team during this phase may be more accessible but tend to still be directive in their guidance of the decision-making process.

Norming

At some point, the team will enter the norming stage. During this phase, team members adjust their behaviors to each other as they developing working habits that make the teamwork seem more natural and fluid. Team members often work through this stage by agreeing on rules, values, shared methods, working tools and even taboos. During this phase, team members begin to trust each other. Motivation increases as the team gets more acquainted with the project.

Teams in this phase may lose their creative edge if the norming behaviors become too strong and begin to stifle healthy dissent and the team begins to exhibit group-think. (too Yin)

Supervisors of the team during this phase tend to be more participative than in the earlier stages. The team members themselves can be expected to take more responsibility for making decisions.

“The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.” -- Albert Einstein

Performing

Some teams will reach the performing stage. These high-performing teams are able to function as a unit as they find ways to get the job done smoothly and effectively without the need for external supervision. Team members have become interdependent. By this time they are motivated and knowledgeable. The team members are now competent, autonomous and able to handle the decision-making process without supervision. Dissent is expected and allowed as long as it is channelled through means acceptable to the team.

Supervisors of the team during this phase are almost always participative. The team itself will make most of the necessary decisions.

Even the most high-performing teams will revert to earlier stages in certain circumstances. Many long-standing teams will go through these cycles many times as they react to changing circumstances. For example, a change in leadership may cause the team to revert to storming as the new people challenge the existing norms and dynamics of the team.

Adjourning and Transforming

Tuckman later added a fifth phase, adjourning, that involves completing the task and breaking up the team. Others call it the phase for mourning.

A team that manages to remain together may transcend to a transforming phase of achievement. Transformational management can produce major changes in performance through team synergy and is considered to be more far-reaching than transactional management.

Ref: Tuckman, Bruce. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological bulletin

Notice that the Tuckman model is linear, but mentions cycles. This matches Western linear factory thinking. One basically forms a team as a kind of task, and the task is done. Following an analytical checklist. The cycles it mentions show up in the refinements and any waves caused by changes.

The five phase models match our five senses, the five levels of awareness (coming later), and the seasons. The five phases intuitively match cyclic growth patterns, where waves are normal. It's interesting that Asians also add that three of the five phases are yang, thrusting, and only two are yin, or accepting. Indicating that we need to be a bit creative, accepting change, exploratory.

One model is linear - analytical and the other set is cyclic – intuitive - holistic. Combine the models in your thinking and dealings. Compare monochronic and polychronic ways as you do so.

Team Building is an effort in which a team studies its own process of working together and acts to create a climate that encourages and values the contributions of team members. Their energies are directed toward problem solving, task effectiveness, and maximizing the use of all members' resources to achieve the team's purpose. Sound team building recognizes that it is not possible to fully separate one's performance from those of others. (This last line, and the list itself show Western take-things-apart thinking. An intuitive way does and understands, instead of lists, into team growing.)

Team building works best when the following conditions are met (Francis and Young. 1979).

1. There is a high level of interdependence among team members. The team is working on important tasks in which each team member has a commitment and teamwork is critical for achieving the desired results.

2. The team leader has good people skills, is committed to developing a team approach, and allocates time to team-building activities. Team management is seen as a shared function, and team members are given the opportunity to exercise leadership when their experiences and skills are appropriate to the needs of the team.

3. Each team member is capable and willing to contribute information, skills, and experiences that provide an appropriate mix for achieving the team's purpose.

4. The team develops a climate in which people feel relaxed and are able to be direct and open in their communications.

5. Team members develop a mutual trust for each other and believe that other team members have skills and capabilities to contribute to the team.

6. Both the team and individual members are prepared to take risks and are allowed to develop their abilities and skills.

7. The team is clear about its important goals and establishes performance targets that cause stretching but are achievable.

8. Team member roles are defined, and effective ways to solve problems and communicate are developed and supported by all team members.

9. Team members know how to examine team and individual errors and weaknesses without making personal attacks, which enables the group to learn from its experiences.

10. Team efforts are devoted to the achievement of results, and team performance is frequently evaluated to see where improvements can be made.

11. The team has the capacity to create new ideas through group interaction and the influence of outside people. Good ideas are followed up, and people are rewarded for innovative risk taking.

12. Each member of the team knows that he or she can influence the team agenda. There is a feeling of trust and equal influence among team members that facilitates open and honest communication.

(This Team Building bit above can be found some places on the web. This copy was downloaded from: http://ianrpubs.unl.edu/misc/cc352.htm )

Some of these conditions can be extremely difficult to accomplish when the team is multicultural. A Western (analytical rules) team might assume and claim openness while being very outspoken. A Chinese (intuitive relationships) team might be much more reticent, yet deft in actually dealing with things because it addresses secondary issues. Mixing often produces forms of cultural blindness that need to be grown through in ways that show up in the Sensitivity Diagram. Try to grow, to yin yang both thinking-doing and intuitive – analytical ways.

"If we are all in agreement on the decision. . . then I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about." - Alfred P. Sloan

Kinds of Teams – especially for teambuilding

Family You might google on “geese as leaders” and “geese teamwork”, or just look at http://www.strategicprocess.com/geese.html. Geese are good leaders and have good teamwork. Their culture is akin to an extended family. They have adult leaders teaching and watching over others. They rotate leaders, and sections of a vee flight of migrating geese might break off to seek a feeding opportunity missed by the rotational leader at the head of the vee.

Other critters can be good role models, often have been for people in the past, and might surprise you with their sophistication. Elephants have amazing extended families. If you can find information on the Asian dragon its loaded with a family of associations.

Traditional and extended families are ongoing relationship processes. They tend to fragment when change becomes too widespread and ongoing, and they can be quite resilient. Confucian ways in the East are family based. Yet, as an example, Chinese ways historically tolerantly weave in Buddhist, Confucian, and Daoist thought.

Try to explore one or more real live family models. Find someone or a family and engage with them to grow teaming ideas. As you do so, play with the idea that rules/laws divide and conquer teams and communities. Real living community lies in a growing patina of understandings and tolerances.

Cathedral (top down) Bazaar (or Agora – marketplace) As in the article “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” by Eric Raymond ( www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/ ) explores top-down software design compared to community or bazaar type development. The two forms of team are very different. On one side a small group decides on the design of the cathedral, and everybody else efficiently follows along. On the other side the bazaar grows to meet local ongoing needs. Agile software teams meet conventional 'top down' needs along with more user community involvement.

Sports teams reflect the individual sport and the dominant culture. Selecting a sport is often just a way to show our dominant way of thinking. For example, not all cultures have teams that play to win. Try to find and compare ad hoc formed teams to centrally organized teams.

"I would do something even more radical. I would hold the business meeting while everybody's exercising. I'm serious. There is a brain rule that 'exercise aids learning,' and it aids in all kinds of ways. The ten million year experiment to get this thing working in the jungle was done mostly on the move." -- Dr John J Media in "What Every Business Person Should Know About the Brain" in the Sept/Oct 2004 Ethix (ethix.org) (Einstein walked about. Bill Gates rocks with a rocking chair.)

Military teams Like the U.S. Marines. Train all the time to win. Military obstacle courses are also used by various company team building programs.

A marine squad/team in-training will come up to the obstacle. Someone will volunteer (or be picked) to be leader by the coach, who also gives them the rules for the obstacle. S/he will gather inputs from the team on how best to accomplish the task, ponder, then lead the team through the obstacle. They may adapt and improvise as they go. And they review how they did once they're finished. The coach often gives them inspirational stories and role models, then sends them to the next obstacle. The squad rotates leaders-in-training at each obstacle. The Marines are top-down and also want everybody to be able to step into place when needed (ad hoc community). They provide general training and specialist training. The military are said to “train for the last war.” In recent war games with stocktraders playing against Marines, the stocktraders more intuitive, patterning, approach gave them generally winning results.

"Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success." -- Ernest Shackleton

Adventure River rafting is probably the most common adventure team building exercise. Some people use mountain climbing or climbing walls. Adventure obstacles can be used in similar ways as obstacle courses, and can be a lot more fun. Some groups use hiking and camping, and both of these are also used for other forms of socialization and community building. Modern Boy Scouts may be a bit wimpy, but the original design was definitely open to learning-by-doing unusual things.

“Singing and acting are excellent for training in self-expression. Also they mean good team work, everybody learning his part and doing it well, not for applause for himself but for the success of the whole show.” -- Baden-Powell (We use interpersonal skills workshops with role plays. Drum circles are very participatory. Consider IMPROV.)

Some community project Community projects can be a very useful way to develop leadership and teamwork skills. The Fast Growth Leader and Team Leader Toolkits provide project assistance.

Try getting a community Toastmasters club going, right up to over twenty members.

A gadget marathon Design, build, and run some gadget over an obstacle course. It could be a software gadget roaming the web, but full mindbody involvement is better.

Cooking Teaming up to create, cook, and eat a meal can be a real deal. An option is to travel on some kind of a learning tour that includes team cooking. Another option is to design and “do” a multicultural cooking TV show as a team effort. Try to get it shown somewhere.

Traditional Health Enjoy the cooking idea and go beyond. Review how qi gong/tai chi, traditional chinese medicine, and cooking/eating flow into each other. Flow into that integrated process. The living integration/relationships in Chinese foods and herbs will likely be an eye-body-taste opener. Discover how such relationships break down into states (eg Western instant ways and the three demons) for most people today.

“Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand.” -- Chinese Proverb

Scenarios and role plays Especially tactical and strategic ones. Tactics? Like accomplishing some project/task. Perhaps look at de Bono's book “Tactics” and role play some of the success examples. Or do something like a SWOT or PMI on your group/organization then make-up scenarios for ways to address opportunities. Look for ways to find and exploit personal, team, and larger group opportunities. Role play assertiveness, or buoyancy-optimism (eg for anxiety/cold calls/stress), or different kinds of diversity. Consider the idea of reducing individual and group stress with a team-community approach instead of a medicated – disorder - expert (3^rd demon) approach. Maybe google on “Agora Baskets” as a kind of scenario.

We suggest aiming more for holistic mind and body work than table top stuff, grab more for intuition and emotional intelligence than sliding into paralysis by analysis. Widen sensitivity and awareness instead of deepening data diving.

"In the spider-web of facts, many a truth is strangled." -- Paul Eldridge

Games and exercises Google cranks out scads of examples, and lots of people sell them. Try to use ones that enlarge awareness, use more senses, and include physical movements.

The Inferential Cycle (excerpted from the Metacommunicator Toolkit)

This project can be done anytime. Do it repeatedly over some meetings. Do it as a game, with honest give and take. Do it with comparison with a speech evaluator. Do it in multicultural settings. Do it to explore all kinds of human ways.

In a group setting, such as any meeting, take a piece of paper and draw a line down the center. This separates the halves like:

Record the various comments and happenings made in your group's setting, and put down your matching feelings, beliefs, (and metaskills if you can). After a few minutes share them around the group, have everybody verbally explore their notes, so you discover how differently people react to the same statements or happenings. Gently coach each other with a sandwich evaluation. Tell people something good, then supportive give a challenge, then something good. (A variant is Retain – Reduce – Increase) If you do this process well it can evolve into dialogue, especially if you repeat it a few times.

Now let's evolve the process a bit starting with Chris Argyris's well known ladder of inference. His ladder has five steps or rungs. First, the bottom rung is observable happenings. Second rung is a story or interpretation that we make from the observation. Third comes attributions and more interpretations. Enough to shape things into a problem. The fourth rung collects our conclusions and decisions. On the fifth run we act, without conscious awareness that we haven't verified most of the 'information' in most of the steps.

Now imagine eight people in a meeting where somebody in information technology has said something, a term that has a technical and an alternate meaning, to a general manager, and two other people who also miss-heard her say it. We quickly end up with eight people up on their ladders. Each ladder wavering back and forth in its own shaky pattern, while the ladder's rider wobbles about trying to cope with new waves of miss-understanding as people add comments. Everyone in the group is making errors both in what they say and what they understand, most likely unknowingly compounding them. All while working hard to maintain group norms. “We must remain calm cool and collected, and my head aches.” Everybody is, to use a Chris Argyis term, building skilled incompetence.

You might decide that a cycle is more useful. As an example, the U.S. Army has the OODA cycle. OODA means Observe, Orient to the situation, Decide, then Act. So the Army group involved in an exercise/battle quickly acts as one, all in a combined large-scale mindbody. The US Army trains to go through such cycles ever faster and more accurately in order to increase the tempo of its operations beyond what it's opponents can handle. And the lowest private potentially has full input to improving those cycles, by contributing to the evaluation process. You might think of that private as being deep inside the body of the army, in deep memory where access is difficult for the main 'working-memory' decision makers, and where local knowledge is sometimes extremely valuable for the decision makers. If you can see and feel that pattern then you have felt a pattern that applies to every individual and group.

This is how hunter-gatherer societies aways functioned in the past, their living dialogue process enriched their lives in many ways. It generates very good group hunting and group actions to attack or defend against attack, and can generate closed inflexible cultures if the dialogue doesn't extend into the greater environment. The stalking (an animal or fish, own body language, sensory channels, environmental clues, ...) part of it is a holistic form of metaskills.

The following cycle, on the next page, does much the same as OODA, only it works deeper with an extra phase. Work it yourself, then have your group try to follow it into a dialogue spiral.

The 'inferential cycle' spirals out to wider understanding, dialogue, and greater good, when people let themselves understand each other. Greater understanding leads to greater situation awareness, and greater group emotional intelligence. When well done it will include effective speaking, effective face and body language, some awareness of group emotional flows, and third eye* type awareness links to the larger world.

The 'infernal cycle' spirals inward to a blackhole when people, or even just one person, breaks up the flow of understanding, and leads to an emotionally stupid group. We all do this when we block the cycle somehow, as in learned helplessness and when bowing to one or more of the 'absolutes gods'. We may need to spiral in if the group is 'too much in the air' developing something that they lack the resources to accomplish.

To some extent, both of the cycles are normally active at the same time as individuals and groups wobble about on top of their ladders trying to understand each other.

(* the first two eyes watch for various purposes. The third eye watches to savor the world as it is, and notices without attaching.)

	“The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” 
	--Marcel Proust

	As the 'Inferential' diagram shows, this cycle adds a bit on the perceptual filter at stage II, 
where, as de Bono points out, we act on our beliefs, and a change in our perceptions can 
change the beliefs that we bring into play as filters. For example someone might be in favor 
of capital punishment for mass murder, but might change that belief if the murderer is a lovely 
young girl in extenuating circumstances.

“By three methods we may learn wisdom:

		First, by reflection, which is noblest; 
		Second, by imitation, which is easiest; 
		and third by experience, which is the bitterest.” --Confucius


	Think of stalking (eg fish or animals etc) and metaskills as you consider this infer* spiral-cycle. 

Explore how widening your individual and group stalking/metaskills spirals your awareness out into larger understandings. Done well you can learn by a wide range of peoples' experiences.

Five Levels of Awareness

Zero, zero represents a holistic cyclic wholeness, as in mandalas, and comes before first. Please play with this idea, think in cycles, and with the idea that the following five levels of awareness actually cycle together in various ways. Include cycles through time and space as in physics and forms of mysticism in your thinking and doing. One can play with such cycles in terms of systems theory, elaborate them into ecological webs, and discover how they amplify or degrade each other. Cycles shapeshift into such things as lines, trees, and spirals, under cultural and religious type pressures. One can plot a sparse hierarchical tree-shape of structural interconnections in many modern cities, reflecting planners' natural logical thinking. And one can find an enriched web of community interconnections, really a living patina of patterns, in older cities. Community lives beyond simple logic. You might explore how ancient appreciation of such cycles meshes into today's reality by exploring how Taoism meshes into quantum physics, as in “The Tao of Physics”. Such holistic thinking is related to holy thinking in how it meshes mysticism with physics. It's the whole tree and soil in which life grows.

First, habits. We have our mostly-subconscious personal and group habits, procedures, stories and myths – our experience. We have our culture, and its history, which includes a whole range of patterns – rhythms, including how we structure our language, body language - including how we walk and act in general, clothes, books, cities, buildings, organizations, and teams. Historically, these intertwine with our religions and our environment/ecology. They generate our dominance – independence – interdependence patterns. And they link to ideas such as great machines or great clocks running an orderly universe. Alternatively, they also link to unruly nature with its wild cycles, and wild - dangerous - helpful dragons. Some cultures live their 'great clock' type assumptions, and others live in more conscious dynamic balance with their environment. Inward looking versus meshed-into cultures.

We also have our individual and group tendency to perfect, or to innovate, or to do some of each. We have our perception of risk, its three worst kinds – gruesome, new, imposed, and the consideration of hazard. This forms the trunk of our living tree.

Second our living senses. we have our personal, group, and artificial sensory capabilities, including our five physical senses, and our intuitive gut feelings. And how they're affected by panic (archetypes), optimism/depression, addictions, our metaskills, and the three demons. We may eat with our fingers, a fork and knife, or chopsticks, and many of us notice the differing rhythms in all three ways of interacting with our food. We learn best by using our senses – accelerated learning involves them in natural rhythms, and most of that learning is subconscious – out of our awareness and control. We learn by doing.

We train people in public speaking, especially facial and body language, using this way of learning. And when we do such training we take advantage of de Bono's teachings that if we change our perceptions we can change our whole approach to things, even bypassing strong beliefs, to accomplish things.

We really do 'learn by doing' and we're mostly oblivious to such learning. Eighty to ninety percent of our interpersonal communications occur via our body language, so we continue to subconsciously communicate various aspects of our subconscious learnings with others. In group settings subconscious messaging is normally dominant, suppressed from our conscious attention, and somewhat more effective than what we say.

Our remote sensory capabilities offer enticing opportunities, and also threaten us by alienating us from our natural ways. Many of us now vegetate in front of televisions instead of interacting with others, and don't grow interpersonal interests. Our concepts of things as diverse as war, marketing, and play, are marching into instant-fix-for-me push-buttons. They are already much too far away from the natural growth and understandings that come from our seeing and feeling our friends, enemies, and playmates, face to face. We're no longer naturally developing diverse shared understandings. Instead, we're increasingly marching individually along linear machine-like paths. And we can easily enrich all of those connections. Our tree's branches (or fingers).

Third, our situational awareness. We have our 3^rd eye, and branch tips. Our fingertip - fingerspitzengefuhl – feel (Slim, Rommel). And engaging forms of yin yang romance with our living world – our environment. Good military commanders focus with a 'directed telescope', aka metaskills, and some way of paying particular attention to particular areas as needed to perfect or to add new actions. We all tend to play between reality, what we see and feel here and now in our primary and secondary processes (those parts of ourself we normally 'shunt aside'), and what we want in our vision for the future.

Our language has a whole spray of only half understood associations. For example, many people write about our personal defense systems. We suggest that we should mentally erase 'defense' and replace it with play. Our natural human play systems have been badly socially degraded into defense and 'hidden'/not acknowledged attack systems.

Vision, our view of the future, commonly comes in one of three forms:

1. Reduced vision, learned helplessness, under environmental pressure.

2. Going 'anti'. Fighting something as a cause. As in most social causes.

3. Willpower to get something done. This is the most common way to get things done, and lies behind the hero pattern.

Elsewhere, we mention the three demons in Western-based society. The first is Impatience, which matches reduced vision. As in instant food and reduced attention span. The second is medication, which matches fighting things instead of exploring them. All too often we take a pill when we should really take a walk. The third is the fear of death, which matches the thrust of willpower. Many people who rely on willpower burnout and also burnout other people on the way.

Good living strategy, using the play pattern, forms a 4^th whole tree option, meshing into the cycles in zero above. It blurs the map to be more-or-less right, so we don't find ourselves broken on the wrong map staring at a shocking new reality. It's often better to be vaguely right than to be precisely wrong.

We perceive chaos when we go outside our existing patterns - current thought habits, and then we hide back inside those habits, or adapt those patterns, or work on creating new patterns. We become traditional, or modern, or creative in our ways. And we surprise ourselves by finding old ways in new as in the match of daoism to quantum physics and to strategy.

Fourth, today's stories. We have our reasoning capabilities when we perceive a situation, recalling personal and group 'war' stories, and how to adapt our stories – procedures – (often subconscious) myths, and experience, to the situation. We need to engage with our myths and our vision for the future. To envisage ways ahead, while recognizing that good enough is the enemy of perfect. We should aim to do the right thing over doing things right. This requires forms of assertiveness and leadership, even if it's 'just' self-leadership, which matches it up with the growing leader at the tip of the tree.

Its fairly common for people to make interesting discoveries, as scientists and other forms of explorer, and then immediately discard the discovery because subconscious filters, secondary belief filters, prevent incorporating them into awareness. We should process more via our older deeper body based memories, but Western society generally seriously lacks such self-awareness, and most such processing is largely unknown to us.

Northern Americans and Northern Europeans are mostly urban and tend towards monotime / monochronic ways. Do one thing at a time, and do it to completion, like an assembly line. You might consider this to also reflect more of a state orientation. It's like preferentially growing the leading tip, the apical bud, of our tree. Others, and people with rural or small business backgrounds, tend towards polytime / polychronic ways. They habitually do some things at the same time. This is a form of sharing, and is like growing and extending some branches at the same time. You might consider this to also reflect more of a process orientation. You can see the differences between the two on their desks and in their offices. The average urban vegetable garden is monochronic, and a wild forest is polychronic.

Polychronic people hold open meetings in, possibly rowdy or noisy, gatherings that amount to networking community, dialogue, and even akin to ecological webs. They recognize necessary relationships/patterns in what appears to be chaos to monochronic people.

Monochronic people tend toward individual offices, lines of communication, and silo type separation. They are more likely to have a single 'Truth' and a clean desktop, and 'have-to' finish things (including absolute victory/surrender in war, road rage, or 'going-postal'). A prime example is the judicial system.

Meshing mono and poly people is like meshing perfectionist-technocrats with error-generating innovators.

Fifth, our resources. We need to actively use our resources, people and our own bodies, to match the task at hand. They need to be ready and available as needed. Military writings often indicate that logistics – supply management – does more to win wars and battles than tactics, which also reflects our propensity to beat things to death instead of eco-interacting, dialoguing, with them as good strategy. Good strategy includes an awareness of both logistics and tactics and their usage patterns. It's allied with the concept of sustainable development, and with forms of sharing. We can be spendthrifts, can accumulate, or can garden our resources in a sustained manner. We generate longer lives when we tolerantly interact with our environment and its resource/information flows.

Our living tree requires good nutrient flow, without nutrients everything fails.

Now a snack. A diagram that peeks ahead. It simply shows Control above, going down, and a New Innovation being processed into a finished project or product.

Holistic Team Roles show relationships

The next diagram shows how human propensities occur across a spectrum from innovative to perfective tendencies. Most of us are craftsman, blends, in the middle. Observations show that Perfectionists looking across the spectrum see innovators who lack power as lunatics (wackos who deliberately make misteaks all the time). Innovators looking across the spectrum at technocratic perfectionists see them as perfection addicted idiots who refuse change (perfect buggy whips don't make jet fighters fly faster). We scapegoat lots of powerless people at the ends of the spectrum, especially if they're physically unlike the controlling dominants.

We also know that people like to play ('interact' if you can't 'handle' play) with things, ideas, or people. We have innate needs for relationships with things, ideas, and/or people.

A good or well-balanced team will have innovators at the beginning of projects, where new ideas come in. It will have 'the main factory' people in the middle. It will have perfectors finishing up. People who like to control things or people or ideas will dominate the group process.

Knowing your innate tendencies will help you and others cooperate well in teams. Learning how-to extend, to take on more team roles, will help the whole team become more flexible.

The vision #1 to #3 in the Dominance diagram reflect the most common ways we envision doing things, with willpower (#3) being most common and most useful. You can see why.

We know that any entity, including dominant society, wants to maintain itself, so we see bureaucrats, police, teachers, and fundamentalists wanting to maintain state with rules. Yet ants and all living structures evolve new forms. Even whole forests go through seral stages. Simple rules don't predict that a caterpillar will become a butterfly. Good teams form entities that go beyond institutional norms with a good flowing yin yang spectrum of roles that can adapt to circumstances.

Play with the team roles test, coming next. Develop a feel for how the roles interact and form relationships. Consider how that relational sense helps teams grow and washes conflicts into improvements.

Intuitive Team Roles Test Are you a perfecter or an innovator? A dominator or organizer or simply a doer? Consider, then circle a cloud shape around the roles you occupy. Have others feedback by doing the same for you. Remember that you color your self-image and they only know about experience with you in certain roles. It's a good idea to do this both before and after doing a project. Learn awareness of then extend your patterns.

The Team Roles in brief:

1. Seeker - Scout Engages well with others to explore – discover new ways.

2. Adopter - Doer Takes basics and makes things work. An opportunity grower.

3. Push - Thruster (blitzkrieg) Burns willpower forcing projects ahead. Drives over.

4. Teacher – Priest Organizes group spirituality, or learning, or politics.

5. People organizer (coach) Good group coordinator. Makes meetings - groups work.

6. Things-tasks organizer (todo) Works the task list to make things go well.

7. Craftsman Builds things, like a carpenter makes a boat from lumber. Practical.

8. Team aware A people-person sensitive to nuances in human interactions.

9. Dreamweaver Heightens awareness of learning, or spirituality, or politics.

10. Consultant A generalist outsider or a specialist, one who loves learning.

11. Perfector – Finisher Polishes the details until painstakingly perfect. Pessimists.

12. Ghosts – Dragons Ghosts are the scapegoats, half-seen, gossip. Dragon kinds.

13. Holistic structure or culture. Aware of the larger organization – the 'big picture'.