Get Teammates to Move "Towards" Rather than "Away"

A section in an excellent book, Your Brain At Work, by David Rock, addresses team interaction and how the brain chemistry can work to be helpful or harmful.  Our brain classes encounters as either a reward or threat, based on whether it is dealing with a friend or a foe, and that generates a chemical reaction that drives the behaviors 

On encountering a friend, the brain releases Oxytocin, which is a pleasurable chemical, also associated with pair-bonding, maternal care, sexual behavior, and normal social attachments.  This increases the level of trust and facilitates "approach behavior".  This makes it easier for the team members to think, plan, and regulate their emotions.  Many of us have seen this when a team "clicks" and builds on each other's ideas, and can easily get past any slights that might have stopped another team cold.

In contrast, our bodies move to a default "foe" assumption that causes the flight reaction.  Team members that see the other members as threats tend to hold back on ideas or try to one-up the other members.  Many of us have participated on teams like this and have seen limited progress and personality clashes; some teams spend more time on healing "wounds" than they do on working toward their objectives.

This discussion in the book is helpful because it provides a brain chemical and evolutionary explanation for the differences between the "toward" versus "away" behaviors.  So all those team-building exercises and time spent building relationships among the team members have a real grounding in science.

I urge you to think about your team interactions and whether they reflect "toward" or "away" behaviors.  What can you do to promote more of the positive behaviors.  I further recommend you read this book to discover more about these insights as well as learn about other work behaviors that are driven by brain chemicals and the way our minds evolved.

Update on 25 December 2010 by Lokesh Datta

See Related Posts:

• Collaboration: Building and Sustaining Trust
• The ALL ONE (TAO) of Collaboration
• The Four Ps of Effective Collaboration
• The 4Ps of Effective Collaboration - Redux
• Collaboration Is More than Team Building and Management
• What We Can Do to Improve Collaboration

Comments

[Dana]

Great post Lokesh! This speaks a great deal to the need for better relationships and maintaining a positive attitude in a business setting. Businesses need to work on bringing their teams together instead of pitting them against each other to find out who is the strongest and the weakest links. Fantastic.

[Bob Sos]

Very interesting to think through. So do those team building exercises actually change people's perceptions of the other team members? How do we make them more effective? Instead of pitting individuals against each other in competition for corporate prizes such as bonuses and promotions, do we create relevant team awards, such as what we have in professional sports where it is significant if the team wins the division or the world series?