It’s expensive and worth it to get people in the same room together.

Whenever I facilitate anything for a team, I’m always aware of the following:

  • They are not doing their regular work when they are with me
  • We’re working on the business instead of in the business
  • It took gas money, commute time, and sometimes airplanes to get there
  • It’s a risk—people will be interacting with one another, in real time, and it might be messy with a low return on investment

And certainly, most of us have stories of bringing a whole organization or a functional team together for a day and it was a big disappointment or worse. But when I’m facilitating, that’s not my experience. Recently I’ve seen:

  • The leadership team of a tree care business decide a path to growth and agree on what this means for their job descriptions
  • The board and staff of an education foundation deciding to overhaul the way they award grants
  • The leadership team of an aerospace manufacturing company agree they need a different strategic framework for this stage in their growth
  • 50 people in a governmental office map out their work processes and identify areas that need improvement
  • The staff of an environmental non-profit elucidate wins from the past year and notice their marked evolution over time
  • A group of civic leaders coming together to articulate a vision for a neighborhood

And even more than the deliverables of the day, people remember what it is like to have a generative dialogue. They build on one another’s ideas. They ask questions, are surprised by what emerges, and create things that could never be created alone. This is the power and promise of a team—the whole is more than the sum of its parts. And sometimes people play frisbee, tell jokes, share about their lives outside of work, and eat together.

We’re starting to get some data about the toll remote work takes on us. Many employees say they prefer it, but it turns out that we need to connect with one another just like we need to eat our vegetables. It’s good for us. We can give employees a lot of choice about where and when they work, but we also need to build in ways to bring our bodies into the same room. If people are given the right preparation, container, and focus for time together, good things happen. Sometimes friction, disagreement, boredom, or confusion is part of the process. In fact, we actually need those things. Just sending messages in Teams is liable to result in less creativity, more isolation, and certainly less fun. I’m so grateful for all the groups I’ve been with lately, the fun we have had, and all the good work that would have taken so much longer to do otherwise. It’s expensive and worth it.