Episode Notes

What makes some teams thrive while others struggle to get along?

In this podcast episode, we focus on transforming group dynamics to build a high-performing team.

We explore strategies to foster trust, clear communication, and alignment within groups, turning them into cohesive, motivated teams.

The discussion offers practical insights on managing diverse personalities and creating a culture that promotes collaboration, accountability, and sustainable success.

This episode is ideal for leaders aiming to elevate team effectiveness and drive positive outcomes.

Key topics include:

Strategies for fostering collaboration and trust within teams
How to identify and leverage individual strengths for collective success
Techniques for improving communication and conflict resolution
The role of leadership in guiding a team toward peak performance

0:00-05:38 Introduction To Group Dynamics and Team Dynamics 05:38-10:52 The Power of Vulnerability in Group Bonding 10:52-17:40 The Pitfalls of Fear-Based Group Dynamics 17:40-26:49 Group Intelligence 26:49-34:01 Individual Needs Versus Group Dynamics 34:01-38:18 Balancing Autonomy and Group Dynamics 38:18-44:09 Emotions and Group Behavior 44:09-52:51 From Group To Team: Purpose and Roles 52:51-01:07:37 Learning and Reflection in Team Development

is a global, leadership-strategy consulting company. 3Peak creates the roadmap that aligns behaviours, relationships and Functional Human-Systems™ to achieve your business strategy.

Co-Founder holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience, and did extensive research in Consciousness, Trauma and Physical, Emotional & Mental Health in various Institutes and Research Centers around Europe.

Co-Founder is one of the most sought after therapists in the world, mastering diverse modalities and opening wellness centers in Istanbul, Santiago, New York and Berlin. Her approaches bridges transpersonal psychology, meditation, bioenergetics, family- and business-constellations and more.

Co-Founder has extensive experience advising Fortune 50 and FTSE 100 C-Suite Executives in leadership, strategy, team dynamics, and organizational change. Before coaching, Mino worked in finance, management consulting, and mergers and acquisitions (M&A).

Transcript

Mino Vlachos: Hello and welcome to the 3peak master leadership experience. My name is Mino Vlachos and I am joined by Krisana Locke, along with Doctor of neuroscience Mazen Harb. We are the co founders of 3peak coaching and solutions where we support executives to master leadership. Our company provides coaching and team workshops. Our topic today is all about group dynamics and team dynamics. And anytime we're with other people, we start to see these group dynamics and team dynamics start to pop up. So we're going to have a nice conversation today about what are these dynamics and in what ways can we master group and team dynamics. I'm very excited to be speaking with Krisana today as always, but Krisana, I really see you as such an expert in working with groups of people. More than anyone else that I've seen in my professional or personal life. I've never seen someone who's able to work with groups with so much skill and mastery. So thank you so much for sharing some of your wisdom and experience when it comes to groups and teams.

Krisana Locke: Thank you, Mino. Pleasure. Pleasure to be here.

Mino Vlachos: So we're gonna start just with groups, and groups are all around us. Anytime we're with other people, we are in some form of group. Whether you're at the bus station or in the cinema or you're with a group of friends, there is a field that starts to open up, connections that start to merge and relationships that start to form. And so I want to give a quick example of a more kind of negative version of this and kind of get a little bit your take, Krisana, of how groups start to form. I don't know what to call it, this field or resonance, but it's a very simple story. The other day, I live in New York City. I was on a bus and we were all there and there was a gentleman who was playing music very loudly. That's the whole story. But I was sitting there and I had a headache and I was really like, ah, I'm very upset that this very loud music is kind of hitting me in the head. And I noticed that there are other people on the bus started to look at each other. And so all of a sudden there was as if kind of group dynamics started to form on this bus. And it's my feeling that almost anytime humans are with each other, we start to check each other out and start to kind of get a vibe. So I want to hear from your experience, your expertise, what happens when people start to gather together just loosely, right? There's no organization or structure, but people all kind of are in one place at one time. What starts to happen with that group?

Krisana Locke: Okay, well, we are mammals and we've developed, so we're part of the evolution of living together, living in social groups as mammals do, to feel safe. So what happens when people come together? So there's certain. There's certain guidelines or there's certain bonding that happens. For example, I'll give you the example of getting on the bus. There's already. There are already hidden guidelines or rules of, like, it's a bus, they're being transported. So people are in a transition, and normally on a bus, there's not normally loud music, so people will get affected because it's going against these unconscious consent of being in a bus together, as well as also people's own stress levels, people's own resilience, people's own tolerance to deal with outside stresses. So there's two impacts. There's the impact of it's a bit out of the norm being on the bus, and it's also a group of people together. And there's also people having to tolerate outside disturbances, and it's how we deal with that. So then when you're in a bus, there can be, then there's one person doing something that is disturbing the group, and the group feels that. So then there's a. There's a certain gathering of a collective of who feel this is disturbing, and so they tend to oscillate together and make a separation with the other person. So this is basically what's happening in, as I can say, just from that experience of group dynamics. Or if you're someone that can not be so identified, you can observe the behavior, you can observe your own actions, your own responses, and see what you're going to do with that. Do I choose to be an annoyed with it? Do I choose to go along with the group who's annoyed? Or do we separate? So for me, it's understanding all those dynamics that go on. So there's a lot of unconscious things that happen when we come together.

Mino Vlachos: And so when I've really studied this kind of topic, what I always come down to is that there's two ways groups tend to bond to that you can actually bring people together. One is from a place of vulnerability, so we share something about ourselves, and the other is more around either a fear or competitive or in group out group that we were saying with the bus, we kind of started to identify with the more I'm disturbed by music side of things, and we formed some sort of bond that was almost against this person. Right. But none of us were vulnerable or shared anything. So I'm going to start because I think sometimes we always focus a little bit on the negative because we're usually consulting and solving problems for people. Let me start with more positive. And today, this morning, I was thinking about the movie, the breakfast club, and how you had these five, I think it was five individuals, if I remember, and they were kind of different archetypes of high school students, and they were all in detention on a Saturday, I believe, together. And throughout the movie, if you haven't seen it, I think you've had probably almost 40 years to watch it. Spoiler alert. They tend to bond with each other and form friendships and relationships, but it only starts to happen when you start to open up about what's happening in their home situation, with their parents, what they're feeling. And what I've seen, Christana, in your work, is that there is this remarkable capacity to bond with people and form lifelong friendships, even after attending a short program, because I feel like you really help facilitate these very genuine, authentic connections. So, you know, and this isn't, again, there's no structure or organization that's forcing us to be with each other, and yet we form really tight bonds. So can you share with me a little bit, like from your observations and working with groups, like, when there's this kind of positive bonding, more out of vulnerability, intimacy, love, what you observe, that brings groups together.

Krisana Locke: Okay. I've been doing this for many years, and a lot of the work I love is working with people. And so when you're working with people in groups, when I'm leading a group, what's happening is it follows basic principles. So this is what I'm doing. So the. So the. How can I put it in a simple. So everyone is held in a safe space, and there's also. There's got to be attention to many people. And it's, what I'm doing is to guide the group collectively and so that they stay grounded. But there's a group energy that they're all guided and then needs first. At the first phase, it's like building trust. So I give a sense of, like, there's a safety and there's a trust, and there's. On the second phase is as we explore a depth of a topic or an issue. And on the third phase, it's like allowing the participants to go through an integration so they can digest it and process it. But in all of this, there's certain, for me, it's a way to guide people, but there's certain ground rules that have to be respected. So in the beginning, I have to set up the playing field that we all agree to play with, to be in. We all consent, and then also that we talk about ourselves and we don't judge others, we don't give opinions, but it's really about what's happening for oneself. And everyone has a right to belong and express themselves. I also give space for structures so people can work in structures. And I also give space when I'm working with people, a space where it's much looser, so they can also get a sense of themselves, and then so they can move beyond a personality, but more into the individuality. And the biggest first step is people start to learn to express of what's happening to them. So there's truly a meeting with themselves, and there's other people there listening to be also met by that. So there's a whole group process and guiding principles that if you follow this, you can guide the group energy, because it's a big energy, and you need to guide that so everyone can resonate in that. And when there's a resonance, there's certain things that start. More insights and more connection with oneself happens. There's more resonance to oneself, and there's more resonance to be able to be able feel safe, to be open, and there's no threat. So this is what's really just like the basic principles that follow. Working in a group process. It's very different to working with someone individually because it's a bigger energy, a bigger movement.

Mino Vlachos: That's exactly kind of where I'd like to take it. And even in asking this question, I perceive it as a difficult question. But I know we work a lot in kind of leadership development, team development. And right now, what a lot of practitioners do is they look at kind of individual styles, okay, this guy is hard working, this guy is lazy. And then typically what they're doing is actually averaging the scores of people's, like, online tests. And then they'll say the group dynamic is this or that based on, like, a summation and average of different test scores. And so the underlying premise is that all these individuals, if you add them up, the group or team, will somehow behave like the sum of a math test in terms of how these people will tend to behave. And what I have seen is that that's nothing true. So just because I act one way individually, if I'm in a group, like you said, there's a bigger group energy, there's a collective energy, and I see these are two very separate things when it comes to measuring an individual's behavior. There's so many data points that we need to even understand one individual, and we can't even do that very well. And I can get into the science of that at different time, if anyone's interested. When we get to groups, we almost have no way to truly, quantitatively measure group dynamics and group behaviors. And so what's left for us is intuition, which is a beautiful, very sophisticated mechanism that we've developed in our evolution for millions of years. So our intuition when it comes to group and team dynamics can be extremely powerful. And yet we, a lot of times, because we have this idea belief system that we have to quantify things, we say, let's quantify, even if it's not accurate. And so where you kind of left off is like this difference between an individual and this kind of group collective energy. And so I'm wondering, and this is why I think it might be a difficult question, because I'm asking you to almost analyze an intuitive process, but how do you read a group's energy? How do you understand how to guide this group towards something?

Krisana Locke: Okay, well, you can see it when there's, there's a group of people. When you're leading a group, you can see when you've set up a group process and there's trust, you have the first phase and you've set guidelines and you've set, like, what we'll be doing. There's a certain resonance. You start to see with some people who are validating these processes, and you can see it. They're like, yes, I validate this, I'll go along with it. So this gives an indication for me, when I'm leading groups, that we can build the process on a solid ground. If these are following it, then slowly others will follow into it. So it's really to do with resonance, and everyone has a right to belong. And then if some are still like, I'm not sure. I'm on the fence, I'm out of the fence. I don't say, what are you doing? I really support. I let them be there, but I'm really seeing where we can move so the energy can build more on a resonance together. So this is why when we say, yes, we're here on, we're going to play a ballgame together, and we say, yes. So already we see the ones that say, let's go along and play. So we build a resonance together. And if someone doesn't want to validate it, I have to accept that there's a resisting part of them. They're allowed to have it, and it may take time, but I'll give them space, but they're allowed to be in the space, knowing there's certain guidelines. So it has to do with how much of this falling in tune resonance that I can see. And that just comes back to, okay, we cannot go deep into the structure until we formulate some form of safety and trust. And then when that happens, the collective energy can move. So this is. That's the I'm often feeling, or it's something that I know intuitively. I'm not saying, what if it's not? Yes, no, you can feel it and you support it, but you also. I'm also in touch with guiding the process, in touch with when to speak in my own presence, when to give pauses, when to support, when. So it's really tuning fork and understanding how to create this so we can all go through this process together in a safe way. I hope that's enough to try and explain it again.

Mino Vlachos: I return to it. I think it's very difficult to put into words something that is so deeply intuitive, but it's that intuition that will always supersede and always be more powerful than the power of the analytical mind. Because what we're talking about, if I put it in a quantitative way, there's just way too many data points of all the interactions that occur. You know, we've been. We've been playing with this little graph. I think it's hard for people who might be listening to imagine this, but if you have two points, they're connected by one line. If you have three points, there's three lines. But then when you have four points, the amount of line starts to explode, because the amount of lines of communication and relating lines starts to go very high very quickly. So we have a very tough time measuring such complexity. Human dynamics are one of the most complex things that I think we have in our lives. We underestimate it because we're so well built for them, because that's how we've evolved to be social beings. But it's very tough, I think, to put into words an intuitive process that's so wise and powerful. Now, there's another kind of mechanism by which we can bond groups together, and that is more through fear. And one common way we see in the kind of human realm is more of that competitive, fear based, someone is the enemy, someone out there is bad. And then we kind of group together and say, yes, we're good, and that person's bad. So that's like a very human way. But I actually wanted to share. I hope it's okay. Chris, on an example of an exercise we did in a personal development workshop that I participated in, that you hosted, where we went even more, I think, for me, embodied. So I'm not going to go fully into the like, you know, they're wrong, I'm right. But we were embodying different animals. And for most of the group there, we were embodying deer. And so I was prancing around. I was a little deer. I was moving around the room. I was kind of play acting like I was eating grass. And I was just kind of tending to myself. And everything was great. And then we had one individual of the whole group was play acting a lionesse. And the lion came in, and all of a sudden, without even thinking, I ran over to the other deer in the room. And we grouped together, and we were shoulder to shoulder, and we started shaking and shivering. And I was looking up and around and constantly trying to see, like, where is the lion? The lion's in the room. And all of a sudden, I was very aware of this kind of collective experience. And it was really happening in a moment of fear. And it binded me to this group. And what I noticed is that whatever the group kind of did, I was doing with them. So if someone startled and spooked and ran away, I would run with them. Whether it was logic or not logic. I would just kind of go with this sea of the sea change that has happening in the group. So can you tell us a little bit about this kind of other mechanism by which groups can bond with each other?

Krisana Locke: Okay, so, very interesting. We see success, especially in work, and are we winning or in life? But on a biological level, success means surviving. On a biological level. So it doesn't mean winning, it means surviving. So it's the object to stay alive. So I know the process. It was just an embodied experience we were doing on something with the nervous system to take in through, so we could understand what happens, fight, flight, how we can discharge. So obviously, like, when you're startled and when you're. What happened was, yeah, the survival instinct kicked in and it was like, it's not safe. So the first thing what happens with deer is it's. There's an orientation. Am I alone? I look for my group. I look for my group. I'm safer in a group. So they all come together, and it's much more that we can survive together. So then there's this in a group, we feel safe. So there's more chances of surviving on a biological level, and we deal with the consequences later. So if we put this in words today, a lot of people tend to stay in this herd mentality to feel safe, to survive, to stay in comfort zones, and they will deal with the consequences later of what they should have done or what I should have taken care of, because they're in this deep part of the reptilian brain that develop first. It's always there for our survival. And so the orientation comes in. The body gets ready with emotions to run or fight. It thinks it's under threat. So that's what happens to do with survival. And that's all we've been doing for thousands and thousands of years, is trying to survive. And we still do this also sometimes, well, a lot you see it, people are on this stress, and I got to win, I've got to achieve, but it's all part of this surviving. And there's another way when we start to see, well, we can be in success if we are much more human in a conscious way. So that's what's happening. So that was an experience I gave you, you know, and then you shared it, what happened in my body.

Mino Vlachos: And I'll share that a few years after that experience, I was, this is me living my life. I decided in 2020 to go to one of the protests that were happening during that summer. And what was very remarkable about that experience, I was walking with the group of protesters. And then in New York City at the time, there was a pretty strong response from the police in opposition. And when we were kind of at some point channeled, the police kind of, like, kind of channeled us to where they wanted us. So we were by this park, and they kind of as if we were imagined like a square. They came and surrounded us around three sides. Then the back was open, and then they were slowly going to move another police line up so that we would be fully boxed in. And in that moment, like, what would happen for, like, me and us as a group is if one person felt or thought something was happening and startled and panicked, they would start to run. And then thousands of people, without even knowing or understanding, we would all automatically start running with them. So this kind of, again, mob mentality, herd mentality, this kind of, like, stampede effect. And it was one of the first times that I had experienced this more kind of, like, stampede thing where my body was running and I wasn't even sure why I was running, but it's because the whole group startled and ran, and then we would pause. Okay, everything's okay. And kind of move back to where we were. But this thing kept happening, like, three, four, five times until the last moment where we actually, I think, did really run and disperse. And I found that such a unique experience of, you know, when we were play acting as deer, I. Okay, that's deer. But as humans, actually, we really do the same thing. Respond to the group, kind of the group resonance. And if there's a panic that ripples through, we run.

Krisana Locke: Yes. Yeah. And if you still have overwhelm or high levels of stress in your system that hasn't been discharged or completed or digested, you will often see that a lot of perception and experiences will be like, this is threatening for me, or it will filter, it will perceive. Something is always a threat when it may not be. So this is when we call. Like, different senses are coupled the wrong way. So we believe if some of our senses and images and behavior mean this, so they're all reactions from the past, and also when we haven't been resilient or when we haven't been able to step back and really check our responses and also to also see what actually is really going on and to respond instead of reacting. But yes, it is a huge. It's a gut instinct to save myself or go with the group. So it's like the group is running. So it's so ancient, like, I'm safer in a group, and this is how we're still running, running the world and what we live on. Instead of stepping back and saying, do I really still have to be that on that? Or can I find another way to get into my vitality and into my resource self to look at it from another reality that I'm actually safe?

Mino Vlachos: And so one of the things when we look at bringing groups together, and this is more you can think about in terms of cohesion or even performance, these two fundamental forces, vulnerability and fear. Vulnerability is much more long lasting and much more powerful. This is in, like, scientific literature when it comes to actually having groups perform with each other. When we operate on fear, we're able to kind of bind people together in a very short term capacity. But you have to keep feeding that motivation to keep people together. You have to keep reintroducing threat, fear, stress, activation, and performance deteriorates over time. So you can again have this very short term thing, us versus them. But in the long term, you cannot sustain it physiologically, biologically, psychologically, it's very hard to maintain that, and you have to constantly feed it, feed it, feed it. Whereas vulnerability. And you can think about it in my own life, in your own life and anyone's life, if you meet someone, even if it's for a passing moment and you share something deep and intimate, you can remember that decades later. I'm thinking. I don't know why. I'm thinking a lot of movies today, but even some movies like the before Sunset, right there before sunrise, one of those with. I think it's like Ethan Hawke. The whole concept of a lot of those really nice movies is that two strangers meet and they share something about themselves, and they have a really beautiful interaction that ripples across time and space, and it lasts with you. You don't actually have to refeed it, refeed it. And so these are the kind of two mechanisms by which we can bond people together. The next kind of concept I wanted to introduce was this notion of group intelligence. And so we have moments like I described when I was in a protest wherever the group intelligence, I would describe it as quite low, where we were very unconscious. We weren't working with each other in any capacity. We were on pure instinct. But then there's some groups that you can see have a higher group intelligence. They're able to communicate, regulate, and work with one another. One of the examples that I tend to give quite a lot is, so I've been living in New York for 15 years. Chrishana, I know you lived in New York City right after 911. So this is a 911 example where there's been books written about this. Why certain floors of the World Trade center evacuated and why certain floors did not evacuate after the planes hit the towers. And what one finds is similar to what we're talking about, which is on some floors, when the emergency hit and the alarms went off, people perked up, they started to look around to orientate, and they saw that everyone in the group was okay around them. And then they went back to work because they said, well, the group's not doing anything. The group's not moving, so I must be okay. And then there are other floors where the same exact thing happened. And either they had trained for emergencies, or someone or some people stood up and said, we need to leave. I don't feel safe. And I say that I don't feel safe. And then everyone was able to evacuate and everyone lived, whereas on the other floors, people unfortunately did not. So one of the metrics, I believe, is this kind of pendulation between my own feelings and being in contact with myself versus just being lost in the kind of group mentality. So, Krisana, so much of the work I benefited from is starting to learn this oscillation between what I need and what the group needs and how to kind of move between these two worlds. And can you tell me a little bit about that process of kind of. I'm in a group, but I'm also still in contact with myself.

Krisana Locke: Okay, so in the beginning, when people start to learn about taking care of their needs, their inner needs, it's a moment of like, oh, wow, I can take care of myself and what are my immediate needs? But basically we know them instinctively. Like, when we need water, when we need food, when we need to sleep, everyone overrides it, but your body is indicating it. When we need sensuality or sexuality, the basic biological needs, and then there's other needs of needing. When do I need to take care of myself, regulate myself on an emotional level? So when people start to learn that in the beginning I can take self responsibility for myself, that becomes a big need. So in the beginning, I've seen when I've worked with groups or in personal growth, it's like I've discovered something and it can override other people, the group energy, because I need to take care of this and becomes more important than the group energy. That's in the beginning stage. It's learning how I take care of it in my own space. But then how can I take care of my needs, but also be aware of being in a group energy being in. So it's. There needs to be a bit of maturity, of learning how to self regulate oneself, to take care of oneself, and also to be able to fall in tune with the group. But also knowing I may feel nervous or I might have something going on, I can take care of it, but I can also feel some safety. But it's okay to be like this. And somehow after a while, there's a. A co regulation that's happening. I hope I'm making sense.

Mino Vlachos: Yeah. So some people struggle to step away from the group, right? So even if they know they have an individual need. So when I was younger, that was a big thing for me, is, okay, the group is doing this, so I have to go along with it. I don't know why, I'm sure this silly example, but when I was a teenager, I had spent a summer at Columbia University taking classes, and I was with a group of people who were living in my dorm. And we went to Times Square, and I found this, like, very cool restaurant outside of Times Square that I was like, oh, it has very good reviews, it's local, blah, blah, blah. And everyone in the group wanted to go to Olive Garden. And Olive Garden is like a chain restaurant. The one in Times Square is complete and utter garbage. And I just, I was trying to, like, influence people. And then eventually, like, no, we really want to go to Olive Garden in Times Square. And at that time, I was just, like, furious. I was so angry. And I ended up going to Olive Garden. And it was a terrible experience. And evidently, you know, all these decades later, I'm still complaining about it, but I never thought to myself, you know what? I really want to go to this restaurant. I can just go and meet up with these individuals later. So there was something there that I was like, I have to stay a part of this group. What is the kind of, what binds us? So, like, why do we do this? Why do we go with the group? Instead of just, hey, I'm going to go eat my lunch and I'll meet up with you later.

Krisana Locke: I think that also comes down to personal profiles of everyone's own individual makeup, of conditionings, family conditionings, blueprints and, yeah, the aspect of learning to individuate, to have a sense of your own autonomy. And, and some, some people feel that they won't be loved if they give, have a sense of their own autonomy to do something, and then others can do that. I know for myself I've always been more of a, I need, I like to do things, find my way, and I'm not. So I was not probably because the way I was grown up, with so many brothers and sisters, there was a deep sense for me to find my way. So it depends on autonomy, being able to be autonomous, not that you can do it, and also when you can also go along with the group. So it's a certain, it's a certain rhythm you can do or of not feeling upset that people didn't go along. So it's about, I can individuate or I can go with the group. So in group processes or when we do group work, we give both of these. So people learn how they can do things, take full self responsibility, because basically what I'm doing, what we're doing with our work is the main thing is that people start to learn to take responsibility for their actions, for their behaviors, for the way they may have been stuck, how they can find with tools and processes to take their own responsibility. So in the group, working with people and in groups, there's also this that we start to say, I'm not just black or white, one can autonomize and one can go along. So. But there is a pool. There is a pool when some people, the bigger pool that people say, we want to go along and do this, and then it's like, okay, well, I'll go along because the whole group and I feel left out. So, yeah, there's, it can depend on how unconscious it is and how conscious they're conscious it is. And that when you're a kid, that's when you're younger, it's like, oh, we hang out with the cool, you know, we have to be cool. So it depends. I mean, if you're still doing that and you're running a company or you're a manager and you want to be cool to hang out with the team so you look cool. Well, then there's some, it's not this. Yeah. In those, it's about what's the best leadership. That's for myself. And then, and gives a good sense of in the right timings, in the right space, you know, when to autonomize, when to go along. So that's what happens. I would say it's a personal profile, but it does happen. Peer pressure.

Mino Vlachos: Yeah. And so now I'm going to share just briefly a piece of a case study from our work together. In three peak coaching and solutions. There was an organization that we were supporting where there was a corporate coup, where the level under the C suite. Under the C level, they went to the board and tried to get the CEO's kicked out. And when we showed up and there was a lot of kind of multifaceted complexity to that case. And we were eventually able to get them running up and smoothly again. But one of the dynamics that we noticed is that level under the c suite, they were called directors. So there's that director level. They were really going with group emotions. So if one person felt fear or even hysteria, it would ripple across the entire field and they would kind of bunch together and go into this kind of herd mentality and then make decisions that maybe we're also illogical at times. And so it was a moment where, again, I felt like the group intelligence was not very high. So one thing I wanted to touch upon is the role of emotions and emotional regulation in these group dynamics. And I really saw as if it was like lightning that would strike and just like zigzag across the whole group of individuals and. Yeah, like, so I called it emotional contagion. It was like a contagiousness, a viral nature to fear. So can you tell us a little bit. Krisana, when it comes to regulating one's emotions and the kind of outside influence of emotion, when it comes to groups.

Krisana Locke: Well, we cannot not influence each other. So when we're stressed, you're transmitting on your body with your emotions, the way you speak, your body language. You know, it's quite easy to see someone is under stress outwardly or inwardly, like on a more of a shutdown, but they're emitting through the body. And we do sense it being mammals and sensing that there is stress. So if you get a group of people who have all decided who will sense that we're not safe and we've sensed that we're being threatened, there's already a heightened activation and there will be already high emotions. So that's going to happen. And if you're not, if you don't have a sense of being able to self regulate yourself, you can be pulled into it. Anyone can see that. With couples, you know, one stressed, one says, I really don't want to talk about it right now, because we can go into, it's gonna, it can, it could go somewhere, it can spiral because emotions that are going everywhere can trigger other people's emotions. And then you have a boom, you have a, you have an explosive outcome which people don't want to happen. So it's being understood. It's being first to understand and not point the finger and go, oh, wow, they're all stressed. It's like if I'm in that miloor and you're already sensing like, whoo, there's a high input of high emotions that I see is happening, could affect me. But how do I stay grounded? How can I stay connected with a sense of my co regulation inside, staying relaxed, staying in my own rhythm. But if people don't know that they can do that, even in these high stress situations, you will be pulled into the mass, one can do it, one can support the others. It was just recently, yesterday I met someone who wanted to have a meeting, a coffee meeting, really lovely person. And I could just see that they had a lot going on, you know, the most charming person, but I could see, you know, even though they were wanting to meet, I could see that was an inner turmoil inside. And I, and even if I shared things, that wasn't going through. So for me was just to tune in and say, the only way I could support ourselves without saying you're stressed is just to really not go into those stressful stories, not to lead into something that has high activation, but also to come back to a sense of grounding and how one is feeling or to move it. So levels can come down, but this can only happen. You cannot shift a high group that's highly emotional. You can't change a group, but individuals can. When you once, let's see what I can do for myself. And then there's already a sense of co regulation can happen, but it's like a trigger thing. It can happen like this. And you don't condemn yourself. You say, oh, I got caught in it, now how can I come out of it?

Mino Vlachos: And so it's at this juncture that we're going to bridge from a group to a team. And I was talking to someone, this is a woman that works in HR the other day, and it's for work that we're proposing. And what she told me is that she's working with the C suite of a pretty large organization, and they are a group of individuals, but they're not a team. And so I hope, because we've already been talking about it for about 40 minutes, that you can see that even if it is just a group, there's still relational dynamics, there's still group dynamics. So there still is stuff going on, but it is true. There's a difference between a group and a team. And one of the big things that makes a difference is a sense of purpose. There's a sense of why we are together, and we have potentially a mission of what we're trying to accomplish with one another. Another big difference that starts to emerge is you typically form roles. So in a team, you have different roles that emerge. So you need to understand how to work with each other to make those roles work with one another. There is, of course, still the cohesion part, so how we relate to one another. And then there's also a piece around how do we learn with one another. So a team has the capacity to learn because it can have feedback loops. So I go, I have an experience. I reflect. We reflect with each other, and we agree how to improve the team itself. Those are the kind of the four pillars or four corners of what I believe defines a team. You have a purpose, a mission. You have roles that help you execute, you have internal dynamics, and then you have the ability to regenerate the team by learning and improving upon oneself, whereas a group doesn't have any of that structure. That's why I was talking about there's no structure or organization in a group. They form kind of unconsciously or different dynamics from, you say, personalities. Our cultures start to form within groups, but it's not a team. A team has a very clear reason for existing. So, Chrisana, I wanted to use a personal kind of story, if you're open to it, which is if you contrast being with a group of friends when you were younger versus I know you did competitive sailing and you are part of a team. Like, what was the difference for you when you were just in a group of friends versus operating within a team team?

Krisana Locke: The friends. When we hung out together, we just did friends things. We talked, you know, we hung out as friends, but when we were sailing together, there was. We came together to work together as a team. And so there's laws that are functioning unconscious laws to make that system, to follow that, to make it work. It's the same in structure. When humans come together and work together or come together as a team, there's certain laws that you follow that make the team work, and if you don't, there's going to be a disturbance, something's going to happen. So it's their unconscious dynamic. So when I was sailing, it's like we all are together on a team, and I was skippering and there's two to three other people in the boat, and they weren't motor boats, they were competitive boats with sailing gears. So, yeah, you had a strategy. You had, like, there's a race, you had to look at the wind, the tides, you had to strategize, because we were really good, like, already at the beginning, where to start, where's the best position to make the mate at the right time? So each one had their role, and mine was because I was skippering, so I had to. I had to take the boat somewhere. I had to know what I was doing. And I also had to have a sense of informing the team in brief verbalized structures. We're going to do this, we're going to do that, we're going to. We move this way or that way. But we weren't talking much. But we all agreed for an outcome for the goal, and we all abided with it, and we worked efficiently, so we never even talked about it. It just organically happened. The more we were in tune, the more we realized we were motivated, because there was something that we had together. We were the most optimum in what we could do. I was the most optimum in skippering and navigating and leading. My other team members were the most skilled and most optimum of what they had to do for their parts. So each part came together to move together as one. So any team, there will be a disturbance if you come together and someone wants to say no, I want to do it differently. It will disturb the team because there are certain unconscious laws that we're following and if you don't follow them, it will be disturbed. You don't have a team anymore. You feel like let down or lack of motivation, lack of drive. There will not be a clear strategy, there will be unclarity. So with teams, when working together, you decide, I'm on a team, I'm committed, I have the courage, I'm curious, yeah, I want to step in my shoes, I want to step up, I want to be open to all the possibilities, what's for me. And also we're going to grow together. But if someone comes along and wants to be in a team, but doesn't want to abide by the dynamics which create a team, then they're bringing in a lot of their own unconscious belonging or unconscious ideas of how they want to be. So we all come together to validate, to support something, to move forward and to support a goal or an outcome. And in the end we're all, we all feel a sense of achievement, not because we won, but there's like, we did it together, we're much more bonded and we can trust each other. I can trust those friends. It's interesting because one guy who I sailed with, and I haven't been in contact with him for many, many years, he told my brother I was probably like 1718 when I finished competition. Yeah, it changed when, yeah, I got interested more in the guys, the guys got more interested in me. So the dynamics changed, my sporting career changed and I was more wanting to change where I go in life. But he said to my brother, he got in contact and he said that Krissana was such a cool person to be sailing with, and I never saw myself as cool. I just saw myself as being part of the team. And he just said, you were, you were really. It was just so nice to be with you because you just really had a sense of how to be with each other. I was quite astounded. He said that and he goes, I guess you're still a cool lady, you've grown up to be. And I said, but at the time I wasn't thinking, that was just. But there's a sense of if I needed to go somewhere and build a team again, I need those type of people, you know, those type of people. When you have a great team, you say, can we do something together? Or you try to find that team spirit, that team aspect that makes that happen and you can't say to people, we've got a bond, let's go. You've got to understand, how does bonding happen? Are we going to validate it? We're going to do it together. Do we have. Yes, we're going to commit. So it's nothing. Yeah. A lot of these words of let's bond, but what do we bond on? What do we work for together?

Mino Vlachos: Thank you. I truly believe teams are the most powerful unit that we can operate in, and teams end up doing much more than any individual could do on their own. I noticed even in three peak, my first instinct, and we all have this. So this is just from my own lens, but my first instinct. If I ever feel the slightest kind of friction or alignment issue in how our team operates, immediately, like, let's stop everything. I think each one of us probably picks up on a different thing. For me, it's more the alignment. The moment I feel like we're not going the same direction. I want to stop everything and get the team realigned. I think Mazen feels a lot more like, if there's disharmony in the system, like we each have, and I'm not sure what your version is, but I know you also support us a lot in, if something happens with the team, stop, re put it back together, then we move forward. Going by oneself and just doing, doing, doing is a recipe for burnout failure. It's very tough. And as you were speaking, I was thinking about my own experiences in teams, and I played sports as well. But for me, a more powerful example in my own life was playing music in a band. And like you said, we each had very clear roles. I mean, you have an instrument that's different than the person sitting next to you. You have a piece of sheet music, so you clearly know your role, your position, and so a lot of it is more around the dynamics and the harmony. And you can feel like if a musician near you is just like, misses, like a beat or is just a bit off, and then how that can create discord across the whole bandaid, or there's other moments where everything is just so tight and it's just. You're in the pocket and there's just this, like, melting into one thing that's very hard to describe in words, but it's just one of the most beautiful things I've experienced in music, where you really almost become one, and that's a very beautiful, powerful moment. And of course, the music sounds amazing in that moment in time, that melding, like, as you were talking, I was thinking about the bee gees, right, where, like, they were brothers, so when they harmonized, like, there's a melting that can happen. That's just. You cannot get with, like, a stranger. Like, there's just, like, the fingerprints are very close to one another and there's this oneness that emerges. I recently watched rewatched, the HBO tv show Band of Brothers, which is about World War Two. And really, a lot of the show is showing how these men bonded together in war and how so many of the men, when they were injured, they would run away or escape from the hospital to get back to the front line, even if they were injured, to be back with their kind of comrades brothers. And they formed incredibly good bonds with each other. But they also, again, they had a clear purpose, a strategy. They had clear roles. Anytime there was friction, at least in the show, that it was portrayed, it's because someone wasn't able to perform their role. So that came actually way first, and then this beautiful kind of male bonding blossomed afterwards. But having roles and being able to be competent in your role was always the foundation upon which beautiful bonds were built. And so if I go back to Crisano, when we were talking more about group dynamics, I was talking about how we worked with the company where there was the corporate coup and there was this group bonding. And I don't know if the list, the listeners picked up on it, but I did describe it intentionally as group bonding because people were kind of in this more herd mentality. And one of the key things that we worked with them again and again is to sit in your role, in your function. So finance, finance it with it, HR with HR. And even that was very mind blowing in a way. And there was a lot of resistance. We literally asked people, just sit around the table in your functions, and we got almost startlement pushback. Can you tell me a little bit how important having roles is to a team?

Krisana Locke: It's very important because we come together, especially in organizations, companies, to. We're not coming together to bond, to belong. It's like being with the family. We come together to. We've been given employment to be part of the company, and we there because there's roles, and we have certain tasks and functions that we do to further the outcomes and goals or product or services. And if we lose sight of that, then we've just come together as a group to belong. And we've forgotten that we are part of a team, and we have other people who are underneath, say, in a team, if you're a director level, there's a whole team that is wanting to be guided. So if we lose sense of that and it's just about family belonging or belonging, because this is a big sense that one needs, it's then important to see like where am I not fulfilling that outside of work and where I'm trying to fulfill more belonging than being there as a team player and overriding that. Of course, in businesses, of course we need to have human bonding, but to override that, a company or a service doesn't function because bonding takes more proceedings. Then you don't have a, you won't have a business anymore. A service that can be given to people or a product. So, yeah, roles are important.

Mino Vlachos: Yes. And that's why the big question always is for corporate, how do I create a high performing team? And I already gave the formula, but I'm going to re give it is you have to check these, and I would check them in this order. Is there a mutual purpose or mission for why these people are together? And you can do exercises that, and if you want help with that, just reach out to me. I can give you exercises where you ask people individually to define what is the mission of the team, mission of the company, and if there's any difference in the, in the mission statement, in the purpose, then automatically you're going in different directions. So that's the number one thing is are we going in the same direction in like a sports team or like a band? Those are easier, or even like a war, because that mission is typically defined as winning. But in a corporate setting, it's usually not about winning. Winning what? There's no, there's not like a warrior winning. There's not like a musical piece you're putting on Orlando race that you're running. You actually, it's more multifaceted and complex, and you have to create the purpose. It's not as simplistic as like, I will go win this match. So that's the number one thing. If there's not clear purpose and alignment, then it's impossible to have a high performing team because why are we here? It will automatically dissolve into a group. The second thing is the roles. So really take a look at the roles and how people are executing. So this is more about position and competence and skills. Make sure that people get the adequate training and the role is very clear and they understand how that role fits into the bigger picture. We just talked about roles, so I won't go too much deeper into that. But that's a really big one. Then the third is the team dynamics, the bonding, the cohesion. So this is where we've given a lot of principles already in this podcast around psychological safety, intimacy, vulnerability. But it comes third, so that intimacy does not supersede roles or the direction, the mission. The mission comes first, the roles come second. Then we develop an appropriate, respectful intimacy so that we can acknowledge each other and have a good relationship, good ways of working. And finally, the team must have a mechanism by which to learn. So that really just means reflection. Oftentimes, you just need to debrief. So this is something that I actually think, like, when I played sports, I played american football, we did very poorly, is we would have a game, a match, and then after the match was over, everyone would just go home immediately. So, like, the whistle blows and you're in the car and driving home, there was never actually a getting together and saying, how are you doing? How did it go? What did you learn? What would you do differently? And one thing that I'm quite proud of within our company, three peak, is, yes, it takes time, but almost after any touch point interaction, we always come together and say, how was that for you? How are you doing? Did you learn something? Could you do something different? It can be quite quick, especially the more you get in the habit of it before me at this point, it brings a sense of closure, and without it, I feel very naked, very open to the wins, because I actually don't know how the team experienced a certain client call or certain workshop. So we're always doing debriefs, always doing debriefs. And many companies, many teams, they actually miss that element because there's so much. Let's do more, let's do more, let's do more. But unless you're learning and improving, I truly don't understand what you're hoping to do other than repeat what you've done again and again and again, and nothing will improve. So if something's not going well, you're just going to repeat that experiment again and again and again without improving. I don't personally see the point in that. I would like for things to be easier, better, more successful. The only mechanism to do that by is to reflect. It's to get together to debrief, to see what can we change in this team dynamic. So that's the. For me, the. It's not super, it's one of those things that, like, it's. I'm trying to put it simply, but it's not easy to implement because we all then bring in different systems, like Krisana's mentioned. We bring in our personal life, our family background, our cultures. Like, there's so many other things we bring to work with us. We're not just this, like, perfect vehicle or vessel for being in a team and being a part of this new relating dynamic. And then on top of this, group dynamics can still emerge within a team. So all the stuff we talked about in this podcast can still emerge and layer on top of a team. So I try to give a simple 1234 equation, but putting it into practice is not always easy. And that's why we have absolute experts, masters like Krisana, who work with groups, work with teams and really support them to transform into something that's. I've seen it with myself, I've experienced it myself. A very beautiful way of being. So, Krishana, with that, we're going to start to wrap this up. And so we've talked about a lot of things, ranging from how groups start to bond and form the two kind of ways, the paths that they can actually fulfill the bonding either through some vulnerability or through kind of more fear based. We talked about the kind of group intelligence and how being more in a herd mentality or going with the group, or not being in tune with one's own kind of individuality, autonomy, being able to regulate emotions, how that can affect a group. We then talked about how teams start to form and how to create a high performing team. So in all of this, what are your final thoughts that you leave us with as we conclude this podcast today?

Krisana Locke: My final thoughts are, you've said, like, you've seen me work and we've worked together. I think what my final thoughts are is observation. So I cannot go when we're working with a company or a team or team development team dynamic. I don't go with the preconceived conceived idea of, oh, it must be this. I go in to observe, to feel, to see, to understand, to hear their pain points and start to support. Like, what are the hidden dynamics? So honestly, for me, it's not a cookie cutter thing. It's like there are human, when humans come together, there will be dynamics, but it's unraveling it. And it's a lot about bringing awareness and observation. So it's really working in the field, on the field, moment to moment. And this can help shift what was resonating in the past in a. In an entangled way, will resonate now, will resonate in the future. So it's looking how to support to come out of that so there's not a disturbance, so it's bringing in a lot of awareness and observation and not, as I said, thinking that we know what it is we have to support. So they find also solutions and they get the Aha. So it can be different.

Mino Vlachos: And my last thoughts are really just that, a repetition that teams are incredibly powerful. They can accomplish much more than individuals. They can accomplish much more than groups. Being in a high performing team is one of the most beautiful experiences that people tend to have, whether that is at work, in sports, in music, or even war. That bonding that can take place when a team is truly operating at its highest capacity is one of the most rewarding experiences we can have as humans. So I encourage everyone who's listening. Yeah. Think about how your team operates and where you fall on the kind of spectrum of, kind of high performing team or group intelligence, and just think about what it might be like to be able to feel that oneness and accomplish more than you could ever imagine. And so with that, we are going to conclude this podcast. And thank you so much for listening.

Krisana Locke: Thank you.