How can Relations and Group Dynamics Help us Prepare to Return to the Office
In the weeks and months ahead, the physical distancing period we are going through will be over. Through a mix of vaccination, herd immunity and new habits born from protective measures, we will soon flock back into our office buildings, en masse.
Yes, we’ll have to reconnect with a bunch of things we previously took for granted and gradually got separated from due to the pandemic: our commutes, our habits around the coffee machine, our favourite spots at the cafeteria or other lunch places, interacting with colleagues and clients.
This post will address how some lessons from warship crews’ performances could inspire us in preparing for more in-person interactions.
A year ago, some people said that this remote work trend would cripple companies. Employees would take advantage of the situation and pretend to carry on their duties while sleeping all day or sipping cocktails on exotic beaches. Forced digital transformation would be the end of many corporate processes, especially for working teams.
Despite these omens, some much worse, even remotely we’ve been working, in teams, with customers. It may have taken some time but our most fabulous human strength: adaptation, allowed us to figure out alternative working habits and we reaffirmed our commitment to stay connected while being apart. Moreover, many of us saw something quite unexpected: companies openly displayed trust in their workforce and we now know that it was warranted.
Remote work has been a productivity booster for most of the companies who could afford it. The majority of organisations registered 20+ percent productivity increase across countries and continents: [here] or [ici]. All this to say that despite the challenges and the roadblocks, we learnt, we honed organisational related skills, somehow we worked it out!
A French politician (or a journalist) from the XIXth century left us the maxim: “Gouverner c’est prévoir”, or To Govern is to forecast, plan ahead! With some level of remote work still expected to happen along with physical gatherings, a new equilibrium will have to be found. If I could show you a simple way to prepare your team for a smooth return to the office, would you be willing to consider it?
Done… But now you might need more information… One of the things you are going to love about FIRO is how relatable it is. Though some background could help…
About FIRO
FIRO stands for Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation. It’s a model that was devised by an American psychologist Will Schutz in the 50s of the last century, in connection with the Korean War. He came forward with FIRO when it had been noticed that crews on different warships performed very differently despite the fact that they all came from similar organizations and training. The key element of his findings? The relations among the team members and how they were communicating was key to their performances. Somehow, though, the theory seems to have disappeared.
I personally stumbled upon it at a training event in Spring 2013. And when we started to look into it, for training related purposes, we could only find articles and documents in Japanese and Swedish parts of the web; seemingly the only places it was talked about for a long time. Luckily for us, our network can decode the Swedish part.
FIRO is a theory of interpersonal needs that claims to account for both the “what” and the “why” of an individual’s actions toward others in a group. According to Schutz, all humans possess three needs to a greater or lesser degree. They are the needs for inclusion, control, and openness.
A group being a collection of individuals with a common goal, the model also grew a principle for group interaction following a pattern that fulfill the individual needs in 3 phases: inclusion, control, and openness. In FIRO, Schultz says that a working team develops cyclically, it must pass all phases in turn. If an event occurs that changes the group, the group’s development can return to earlier phases. Let’s read more about these phases…
Inclusion
The newly formed group’s initial phase is the inclusion phase whose focus is on membership [affiliation]: Will I be accepted? Do I want to belong to this group? How much am I willing to adapt to this new setting?
This phase should help establish and maintain a satisfactory relationship among the people with respect to interaction and association.
Practically, one can transpose to physical gatherings some remote work rituals created by the team. It can also be possible to rebuild a team confort zone merging in-person and virtual interactions. What about resetting the office (decoration, sitting arrangements, etc)?
Control
The next phase is the overall role definition phase in which the focus of the group members is on finding their roles, their responsibilities, their tasks. It is about testing oneself and one’s own role in relation to other members, and trying to assess one’s position. During this phase conflicts occur when finding one’s role in the team and also defining the purpose of the team and its reachability.
It’s the phase during which positions, norms and rituals are being set. This phase is generally very demanding and lasts the longest.
If not done already, it might be good to think about what is to be kept, transformed or discarded to nourish honest exchange within the team. A new cycle starting, a team ought to set new arrangements and clarify roles, tasks and expected results.
Openness
The third phase is the overall openness phase whose focus is on creating an effective team. Here the group members ought to open up with each other and show their emotions, what they know, their skills and band together to deal with any challenge that arises in front of individuals or the team. The result is highly dependent on how much the team members dare to open to each other.
One can create a feedback culture in which members agree to give and receive feedback based on respect and solely for the purpose of developing colleagues. Another action could be to set up an open climate, judgement free, with functioning communication within the team, this way everyone can focus the energy on the tasks at hand and to achieve the team’s goals.
FIRO Dynamic
During initial meetings, members try to determine where they fit and how much they are willing to invest in the group. This is the inclusion phase.
As these primary identity issues are resolved, the emphasis switches to questions of control. What are the ground rules? Who will be the leader(s)? How much responsibility will be shared?
When this struggle is resolved, the group slides into the openness phase which centres on positive interactions, team efficiency, togetherness.
And then there is a break, whenever the team physically disbands. It can be for good, the project is done, the goal reached, or, more likely, temporary: a pandemic falling onto the world, or any pause in between these extremes.
Schutz believed that this sequence recurs in groups that continue to meet.
The FIRO diagram should better be seen as a ‘spiral’: consecutive cycles built on the previous ones that a team passes through while growing. A manager who keeps this in mind would be better prepared to identify and respond to the behaviour of their team and its members.
Implication for you
Groups develop with or without ‘external’ facilitation. As you now can foresee, being able to recognise the different phases and anticipate what may come next may allow a transition where the emotions, relations and involvement of the individuals and the group are taken into consideration. It is possible to anticipate and speed up the different phases, so the group reaches the desired ‘Openness’ (more effective, motivated and open to share with and support each other). Therefore, the dip in productivity, which will result from the upcoming big change, might be reduced.
In preparation for the return to the office, an existing team is not going to start from zero. As a manager or a team members, it might be relevant to plan for inclusion, to get everyone reacquainted. A new balance of control will have to be struck as most teams will have to contend with some mix of in-person and remote work; which will influence how people will open up and perform together as a transformed team.
I shared some actions that can be taken in each phase to spark some reflection. According to your specific situation, others ought to be more relevant.
Final words
One of the key findings that lead to FIRO is that differences in efficiency between warship crews were due to the working group’s mutual relations and the members’ ways of communicating. A framework was devised to maximise the chances that a given team would deliver beyond its training, based on the inner relations built which strengthen its cohesion.
Whether we realise it already or not, the fact is that we will have to start preparing ourselves and our teams to return to the office, soon. This will require, from all involved, quite some adjustments; especially from the ones who nested at remote locations. This transition can be organised, FIRO is a framework one can use. If the future belongs to the prepared, how ready will you be?
Like for many things in life, the model seems quite simple. If you want to know more, are willing to consider implementing some of the ideas at your workplace, and/or would like to be trained on this topic, do reach out!