I was with a non-profit board last week that made me jealous.

I love all my clients, but I’ve definitely encountered groups that don’t spark the same sentiment. I diligently support them, help them surface the hard things, help them reconnect to purpose, bond with them. But occasionally a group comes along that makes me think, “I’d join these folks in a second.”

This group is working on solving a technical problem I have zero experience with. So it’s not the content that’s attracting me—it’s the way they are with each other. In my introductory exercise of our retreat day, I asked them to share why this work was important to them. There were tears within 30 seconds. One man sad, “I’d do anything with this group. But to be able to do this is amazing.”

In the gig economy, the age of virtual work and very public bad bosses, teams get a bad rap. We want freedom from meetings, collaboration software, and shared calendars. All those things can be the shadow side of teams, for sure. When we bring a group of people together to get something done, we tend to focus on how connected and efficient we will be, and we forget to plan for all the problems that will come up. This is why I have a job!

But I want to assign all of us Judith Heumann’s memoir about her years of disability rights activism. Reading about the sit-in they did at the San Francisco federal building in the 1970’s revived my faith in groups and in collective action. People with all kinds of disabilities–mobility, chronic illness, cognitive, low sight, deafness–spent three weeks camped out in the federal building. They organized committees for food, medication, and PR. They helped one another to the bathroom, they made makeshift beds on the office floor. And, Judith says, they became friends. Working together on something they cared about brought unlikely people together–the Black Panthers, union organizers, church leaders. Protestors made lifelong connections, and they didn’t want to leave when the protest was over.

A lot of our groups these days tend to be held together with much weaker glue. We come together as a book club, or as enthusiasts for a certain sport or hobby. Or we are put together at work without a functional common purpose. We seek the high points together, but don’t really know what to do with the suffering or hardship. I’d suggest that most workplace teams I encounter these days ARE suffering, and they haven’t been able to meaningfully talk about it. So they are not getting as much done together. Or they are spreading unhappiness and toxicity.

I talked to a friend recently who’s in IT and led a team that became virtual overnight. They started a 15-minute check-in every morning with questions like, “What did you have for breakfast?” The meetings became both more routine and more essential as time went on. Many of his employees told him that these check-ins ended up being the one constant, positive thing in their lives as they parented and worked from home and tried to make sense of upended lives. What I take from this is that we need each other even when we think we don’t. We give up too soon. I give up too soon. If we’re waiting for the spark, if we’re waiting for things to feel easy or fun. we might miss out on what the group can give us–meeting shared goals, consistency, being seen, feeling connected.

There are bazillions of books and articles on what makes a good team. I’m not aiming to add any unique bricks to that wall of knowledge. But I’m here to say—it’s possible to fly high together. I have seen it, and it’s marvelous. It requires hard work, it requires being comfortable with discomfort, it requires being a trustworthy person who can admit faults. It requires being able to celebrate and appreciate, being able to laugh at yourself, being able to switch directions, honoring the past while not being tied to it. And maybe, most importantly, it requires believing it’s possible. You’ve got this.

P.S. I’ve included a photo of one of my very favorite collaborations—my parents making paella together at our yearly gathering on Lummi Island. It’s a dance we all marvel at. The outcome isn’t bad, either!